Driven by the haunting reality of lack of California farm water, the Democratic and Republican drought relief bills in the U.S. Congress tentatively are starting to merge into one.

Back in 2009, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., got her San Joaquin River Settlement Act through Congress. But it has come back to haunt her because it created a foreseeable but unaddressed farm-water shortage in dry years, such as now. Feinstein has recently criticized the environmentalists who helped her design the bill as “never having been helpful to me in producing good water policy.”

Passed when Democrats controlled both the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, the bill appropriated $88 million in planning funding for a proposed $2.2 billion restoration project. In 2010, Republicans took back the U.S. House of Representatives and subsequently have blocked any additional funding to implement the project.

Feinstein is now backtracking and has revised and successfully pushed her S. 2198, the Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2014, through the Senate on May 23.  It now will be considered in the House for merger with a Republican drought bill, H.R. 3964, by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford (formerly named H.R. 1937 by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare).

Valadao released a statement that Feinstein’s bill “is a positive step in the right direction.”

Neutered drought bill

To get her drought bill passed over stiff opposition from a large number of environmental organizations and Northern California lawmakers, Feinstein neutered the bill of any provisions that would impede passage by either political party.  The new revised version of the bill has dropped from her original bill provisions to:

• Reauthorize the Delta restoration program provided under the CALFED compact of 2002 (sought by Republicans).
• Authorize several hundred million dollars for drought relief (sought by Democrats).
• Soften the authorization of funding for expanding the capacity of Nevada’s Lake Mead to appease Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

As presently worded, the bill would not authorize anything new that is not already being undertaken to relieve drought impacts on farms and rural areas before the onset of summer. But that made the bill palatable enough for senators in both parties unanimously to pass it.

River restoration goal: 500 fish at cost of $4.4 million per fish

The 2009 San Joaquin River Settlement Act authorized 10 physical restoration projects in the river to be completed by Dec. 31, 2013.  None of the projects even has started. And the projected cost now is $800 million. What planning money has been available has been used physically to transport salmon across the dry reach of the river in tanker trucks.

This hasn’t stopped the NRDC from forcing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to release 180 thousand acre-feet of water from March 2013 to Feb. 2014 — with nothing completed that was called “necessary” by the NRDC for the success of the project. Success is defined as the return of 500 fish in the dry reach of the river by 2019.

The water storage situation in California would be much different if the NRDC had not released flushed water to the ocean for fish during drought. Recently, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Auburn, has criticized such releases of water as waste that could have been avoided if the Republican-backed drought bill, H.R. 3964, had been passed.

First ever water shipped from eastside to westside farmers

To relieve the drought, on May 15 for the first time ever, federal water managers conveyed 529,000 acre-feet of water from the Eastside of the San Joaquin River Valley (from Millerton Lake) to Westside farmers in Patterson and Mendota. That increased the water allocation to Westside farmers, but also increased water to wildlife refuges in the South Delta from 40 percent to 65 percent.

In response, the Friant Water Authority has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Fresno to challenge the unprecedented release of federal water to state water contractors.

Ron Jacobsma, FWA’s general manager, said that Eastside citrus-tree growers might have their water replenished later in the year. Then he warned, “But that may mean putting water on dead trees.”

The San Joaquin River Restoration Project has been a contest between political parties. But farmers didn’t take issue with it until the onset of the 2014 drought made them see how bad it is to release water for fish runs.

More water but greater water diversions for fish

Ironically, the table below tells the story that there is more water than in the severe drought of 1977, but more outflow for fish flushes resulting in less net agricultural water in 2014.  

                         Central Valley Project 1977 vs. 2014 (October thru March)
                                                            (In million acre-feet)

Crises commonly produce compromise. That seems to be happening in the U.S. Congress with solutions to California’s drought. In particular, Sen. Dianne Feinstein appears to be moving away from her San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009, which was a response to a 2006 court decision and gave priority to salmon runs over water for farming.

A March 10 editorial in the Fresno Bee paraphrased her comments to the paper’s editorial board:

“It is time, in light of climate change, Feinstein said, to ‘reassess’ the $2 billion plan that would revive salmon runs on the San Joaquin by rebuilding the 153-mile stretch between Friant Dam and where the Merced River empties into the San Joaquin.

“This is significant because Feinstein has been a strong river restoration advocate. She, along with former Rep. George Radanovich, was a key figure in pushing negotiators forward in the 2006 settlement of a long and bitter federal lawsuit filed by environmentalists over river diversions to farmers.”

And with Fresno in the heart of California’s farming country, the Bee’s editorial board also has been persuaded to change its stance. An Oct. 28 editorial in the paper didn’t foresee any problems with water releases from Friant Dam for fish. But its new editorial on March 10 wrote:

“The Editorial Board has championed the river’s restoration. However, we concur with Feinstein.

“The project has ballooned in costs. Deadlines have been repeatedly missed on this massive, unprecedented and unpredictable project. Indeed, the schedule for fully restoring the salmon runs was pushed back three years in mid-2012.”

Farm community

A typical response from the farm community came from the activist group Families Protecting the Valley:

“Is it possible that Senator Dianne Feinstein is starting to see the San Joaquin River Restoration project as the unrealistic dream that it really is?… There is no money, no promise of funding.  Yet, water has needlessly been sent down the river instead of to farms. Thousands of acre-feet [of water] could have been saved just in the past few months, but the restoration was ‘off the table’ for re-negotiation according to Senator Feinstein.”  

Feinstein’s new stance contrasts with her reaction to the drought legislation proposed in January by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, H.R. 3964, The Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act of 2014. The bill effectively would repeal her San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009.

In a Jan. 29 statement, she wrote of H.R. 3964:

“Today’s bill is another irresponsible proposal that puts politics ahead of the needs of California, and candidly, it’s very disappointing. … This bill is disingenuous, it is irresponsible and it is dangerous. I truly hope Valley farmers speak out against this ugly example of politics as usual and demand that Valley Republicans quit the games and fulfill their responsibilities as legislators.”

Pretty tough words. But since then, the drought only has worsened. President Obama toured the drought area. And the November election, with Democrats worried about losing House seats from California, approaches ever nearer. Indeed, just yesterday Democrats’ plight became more critical as Republicans won an election for an open House seat in Florida.

So it’s not surprising that Feinstein and other Democrats want to advance compromise solutions to the drought that put them in good light with farm voters.

Compromises

Where might compromises be hashed out?

Compromise 1. The San Joaquin River has a 60-mile stretch where the river runs dry during droughts because the riverbed is at a higher elevation. This hump in the river keeps salmon from running to the ocean. The present solution is wasteful: flushing the river with huge amounts of water to get the fish over the hump.

Feinstein’s 2009 San Joaquin River Restoration Act required lowering the riverbed to create a sort of Panama Canal for fish at a prohibitive cost of $1 billion to $2 billion. It has not been built. The project is a literal example of the old saying, “In California water runs uphill toward money.”