A little-known 2008 study by four graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara warned that farmers first needed to be given replacement water before their water was taken for river restoration.

The river restoration was ordered in 2006 by federal Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in the case NRDC vs. Rodgers. In that case, the National Resources Defense Council complained that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation failed to release enough water from Friant Dam to prevent the destruction of the river’s salmon runs.

Karlton wrote, “In the words of the Department of Interior, Friant Dam’s operations have been a ‘disaster’ for Chinook salmon.”

But in 2008, the students predicted shifting the water from farms to salmon would be a disaster for the farms. The students were Laura Bauer, Natalija Glusac, Marina Kasa and Kara Mathews from the U.C. Santa Barbara Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

The study was titled, “The San Joaquin River Settlement: Analysis and Implications for Future Negotiations and Funding.” It was supervised by environmental economist Gary Libecap, PhD.

The study calculated that total water usage in the San Joaquin Valley decreased by 800,000 acre-feet during the 1991 drought. And surface water deliveries dropped 53 percent below normal.

The study emphatically concluded:

“As a result, obtaining the water necessary for restoration projects will result in water being reallocated from current users, decreasing the water supply many of these users rely upon for their livelihood. As such, it is necessary to develop water supply mitigation measures.” 

Two options were discussed for mitigating lost farm water:

1. Get more water by importing it from the Sacramento Delta, transfers from other water users, or increased groundwater pumping;

2. Decrease water demand by shifting crop types or reducing planted acreage.

Not discussed: Lining irrigation ditches or other technological ways to lessen water losses.

Planning failure in farm water diversions for fish

The implication drawn from the U.C. student study is: If you’re going to mandate diversions of river water away from farms for fish, fund farm water replacement projects first in the event of a catastrophic drought.

Otherwise what occurs is that, when a prolonged drought hits, there is no water storage to buffer the impact on farmers. Environmental court orders and regulations have reduced 58 percent of the farm water allocations in the Central Valley Project since 1990 (see Slide No. 5 here).

Farming has now become unsustainable in much of the Central Valley because there is no reliability of water from which to make agricultural investments.

Congressional actions

Following Karlton’s court order, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pushed her San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act H.R. 146 through Congress as a trailer bill to the Omnibus Lands Act of 2009. This effectively circumvented the farm lobby in Congress. 

Feinstein took advantage of a political window of opportunity at the time when the Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. In 2011, Republicans took back control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

H.R. 146 called for the restoration of salmon runs in the San Joaquin River at a cost of $800 million to $1 billion to create a man-made link across a 60-mile dry stretch of the river that historically dried up in past major droughts.  However, only $88 million was authorized under H.R. 146 for planning and pilot project activities.

The appropriation of the remainder of the funding has since been blocked in House after the GOP came back into power.

Surcharge

Additionally, a $7 per acre-foot of water surcharge was assessed on Central Valley Farmers to pay for the remainder of the restoration.  Up to 2014, farmers paid $180 million into the restoration fund.  Now that an historic drought has hit the state, salmon spawning pools and river runs are shrinking and farmers have ended up subsidizing their own demise.

One of the engineering problems with the restoration of the river for fish is that taking from 247,000 to 356,000 acre-feet of water from farmers resulted in nearby farms switching to reliance on their groundwater rights. Subsequently, the riverbed sank due to subsurface water withdrawals.  Now engineers cannot figure out how to get water to flow uphill across the 60-mile dry gap.

It remains a quandary why courts dictated that salmon runs had to be restored through rich agricultural lands instead of on wild rivers such as portions of the Sacramento and Klamath Rivers.

Feinstein’s H.R 146 contains a provision to allocate $102 million of funds collected from farmers’ higher water rates to replenish their lost farm water allocations. But the replacement water projects have never been implemented.

The fail safe drought planning principle

When it comes to environmental mitigation, parks and open space bureaucracies want their dedication of mitigation lands and restoration projects completed upfront.  However, when it comes to upfront mitigation of impacts to farmers, it’s tough luck. The consequences of this policy now are becoming catastrophic, as the drought has decimated Central Valley farms for what could be years. 

A “fail safe” drought planning principle was ignored in the court order and ensuing legislation to implement the restoration of the San Joaquin River.  If it had been adhered to, Central Valley farmers would not have had 800,000 acre-feet of water flushed to the ocean in 2012 without recapturing it for farmers.  If a fail safe policy had been adhered to, new groundwater recharge basins, upstream reservoirs such as the proposed Temperance Flat Reservoir, and water efficiency measures might have been built out before undertaking any fish restoration activities.

The courts are perpetuating this policy failure in their rulings that the Endangered Species Act preempts state water law in Texas, which also is experiencing catastrophic drought.

“People Before Fish” means pre-mitigation of lost farm water

It is for the above reasons that a group of Republican Central Valley congressmen — Reps. Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy and David Valadao — have repeatedly tried in vain to get the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act, H.R. 146 repealed by passing the new San Joaquin River Water Reliability Act, H.R. 1837. Recently, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, visited California to back an effort to again try to repeal H.R. 146.

The drought is opening the public’s eyes to the disastrous policies of river restoration and what farmers mean when they say “put people before fish.”

Feinstein, who sponsored the San Joaquin River Restoration Act, has tried to balance fish habitat restoration and farm water issues. But the Federal Endangered Species Act is imbalanced and ignores potentially catastrophic droughts. Rep. Nunes asserts his H.R. 1837 bill is a more balanced approach to drought management.

Escaping the snow-stormy Northeast, also on Wednesday U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, held a drought rally with fellow Republicans in Kern County. ABC News in Fresno reported:

“From Washington D.C. to the fallow cotton field in Bakersfield, House Speaker John Boehner stood up next to Central Valley Congressmen Devin Nunes, David Valadao, and Kevin McCarthy who all support the proposed legislation to stop river restoration in favor of drought relief.

“‘How you can favor a fish over people is something the people in my part of the world would not understand,’ said Boehner.”

Here’s what’s behind the headlines. The specifics aren’t clear, but what’s known so far is that a new bill by Nunes, so far without a number, would revive his H.R. 1837, the San Joaquin River Valley Water Reliability Act of 2012.

H.R. 1837 did not pass. But it tried to repeal H.R. 146, San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act of 2009, by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Her bill emphasized the environment over local water allocation. (H.R. 146 originated as battle landmarks legislation, but was modified; hence the “H.R.,” House Resolution, designation, instead of “S.” for Senate Resolution.)

The correlation of political forces changed in the past three years, with the drought striking California and with Democrats worried about losing California House seats in November. (No California U.S. Senate seat is open this year.)

Additionally, Nunes’ bill would create a joint House-Senate committee on California’s drought problems that would take control of federal water transfers to the State Water Project by usurping Brown’s new Drought Task Force.

Republicans usually push “federalism” and local control, but are using the drought for federal power to trump state power.

Rally

Will the GOP rally actually bring more water to Californians? A sharp response was given by Bakersfield Californian reporter Lois Henry in a video interview given at the rally. She is widely regarded as a frank and independent voice on California’s water situation. She said:

“No!  So far what they have described has already been pushed in the House by Devin Nunes numerous times and died at the Senate every time…. This is mainly something to put pressure on Dianne Feinstein.  This is her home state.  This is affecting her constituents as well…. They are serious about pushing this bill, but this is really something to push Dianne Feinstein…. The devil is in the details of the new bill proposed by Nunes and thus far there are no details.”

Henry was skeptical that another new bill proposed by Nunes would work. Even if it passed, she warned, it would invite endless lawsuits. “We will see snow in the Sierras before we will see that bill passed,” she quipped.

And Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, branded the proposed GOP bill “misguided” and “dangerous.”

Court settlement

Feinstein’s bill, H.R. 146, was intended to comply with a court-ordered settlement 18 years ago to restore salmon runs along the San Joaquin River by diverting water from farmers. H.R. 146 requires farmers to pay for up to $800 million of river restoration costs from higher farm water rates; $180 million will be collected from farmers by 2014.

California was to pay $200 million of this cost from two water bonds voters passed in 2006: Proposition 84, $5.4 billion; and Proposition 1E, $4 billion.  However, the propositions did not provide for drought relief for farmers.

The court settlement requires 247,000 acre-feet of water to be diverted from farmers in dry years and about 356,000 acre-feet of water in wet years.  That would be roughly enough water to irrigate from 82,333 to 118,667 acres of farmland each year.

A provision in H.R. 146 to allocate $102 million of funds collected from farmers’ higher water rates to replenish lost farm water has never been implemented.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, charged federal regulators worsened the situation last year “by failing to pump and store 800,000 acre-feet of water runoff” by letting it run to the sea.

And in a statement released at the drought rally, he urged, “It’s time for Congress to act.”

What is particularly aggravating to Central Valley farmers is that their allocation of water this year has been cut back by 95 percent after they have paid $180 million for more fresh water for fish, even though the water ended up flowing to the Pacific Ocean.  Farmers have ended up paying for their own demise.

Explosive crisis

State Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, said in an interview that it was only a matter of time before the farm economy is dead; that it won’t be long before many Northern California communities that normally don’t suffer from droughts are going to be parched right behind the farmers; and that there is no contingency plan for providing for a drought of this kind.

She said it’s embarrassing that President Obama has not even responded to the letters from Republican state legislators calling for immediate action. And she said that, even if Brown suspended California’s environmental laws to aid in drought relief actions, that federal environmental laws also would have to be suspended.

She warned, “It is only a very short time before this crisis explodes.”

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner crosses the California “Rubicon” today on a visit to Kern County with a platoon of California congressmen to set forth a Republican strategy to alleviate the official state drought called by Gov. Jerry Brown — and maybe pick up some more House seats for the GOP.

The contest of this drought war is between Brown and Boehner over who controls the releases of water from the federal Central Valley Project to lessen drought impacts to either fish or farmers.

On Jan. 17, Brown issued a call to create an Interagency Drought Task Force, whereby his team would control the releases of federal water to California. Some California environmentalists see Brown as a foe of the California Environmental Quality Act, while caving in to farmers’ water demands. Others hold out the prospect that Brown will pander to the powerful environmental lobby in California, especially U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Democrats like Brown.

Boehner’s entry into California signifies the Republican-controlled House wants to manage any water releases to assure they will go to farmers. Backing Boehner are Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of Tulare, David Valadao of Hanford and Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

Nunes has proposed floating a new bill in the House that would:

• Allow the pumps run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River to remain running as long as water is available.
• Re-establish salmon runs, put a stop to the San Joaquin River Restoration Program that would allow river water to flow to the ocean instead of farms. River restoration plans have run into difficulty, not necessarily because of farms having taken water from the fish, but because engineers need to find ways for water to run uphill along former riverbeds.
• Create a joint House-Senate committee to find long-range solutions to California’s drought problems.

CEQA suspended by Brown

Brown has not let Boehner take all the action in the water wars. Under Paragraph 9 of Brown’s Emergency Drought Declaration issued Jan. 17, the provisions of CEQA have been suspended.

That means any measures taken by the governor to alleviate drought do not have to comply with water quality plans, prepare scientific documentation of environmental impacts or hold public hearings and solicit official comments on any environmental impacts as a result of those measures.

The governor’s action to suspend CEQA has created quite a reaction among California environmentalists. Charged Nick di Croce, facilitator of the California Environmental Water Caucus, “The need for more conservation and greater efficiencies in water management should not result in abrogation of equally needed environmental safeguards benefitting both humans and other species, including fish.”

Federal-state water transfers now possible due to Mendota Intertie

Returning to the federal level of Boehner’s field of play, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has a new potential mechanism to alleviate drought that heretofore has not been available in California history.  The USBR recently completed the Mendota Canal Intertie to the California Aqueduct. The intertie is comprised of two nine-foot diameter subsurface pipes that invisibly connect the federal and state water systems.  Prior to the construction of the intertie, the two systems existed for 45 years about 500 feet apart near the City of Tracy without any way to cross-transfer water.

The bigger question is whether there will be any water available within the federal Central Valley Project to transfer to the State Water Project.  That is because of the severity of the predictable drought and no new water capture reservoirs being built in the state since the 1960s.

Latino Water Coalition lobbies governor

Mario Santoyo of the Latino Water Coalition has lobbied the governor for relief for the population dense and lush Eastside farmers in the Central Valley, not just the parched, unplanted acres of the thinly populated Westside.  The present drought is believed to be so severe that it can’t be isolated to Westside farmers, as in past dry spells.

The political struggle is over environmental water.  If water were released from Millerton Lake to restore salmon runs on the San Joaquin River, the result would be turning off the spigot to Eastside farmers all the way from Fresno to Kern County.  Millerton Lake is an artificial lake near Fresno run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Central Valley Project.

Families Protecting the Valley, a Madera-based association of farmers, reacted favorably to the governor declaring a drought emergency. But they are taking a wait-and-see posture if he will override the state’s powerful environmental lobby to provide water for farmers.  Democrats lost the seat for State Senate District 16 in the midterm election of 2013 to Republican Andy Vidak mainly for choosing fish over farmers.

Boehner also is eager to exploit such problems for Democrats to try to pad his Republican majority in the House with a couple of more California representatives.

Environmentalists so far have been losing due to Brown’s suspension of CEQA and now Boehner’s entry into California to capture the San Joaquin River pump houses away from Brown.

To many farmers, winning the drought war means economic survival.  To the victor go the perks of California’s drought war.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Almost out of nowhere, the Obama Administration has opened up discussions for possibly privatizing the model asset of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, to bring in revenues to the federal government and reduce the long-term national debt.  Part of President Obama’s strategy is to divest and decommission 59 coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky and replace them with green power.

The TVA is a massive rural redevelopment project of 46 dams and hydropower stations, 59 coal fired power plant units, 14 natural gas fired power plants, five nuclear power plants and navigation channels sprawling over Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Kentucky. The TVA reports an $11.6 billion annual budget for 2013 but a projected net loss of $183 million.

Would Obama privatize the Central Valley Project too? 

The question for California quickly becomes: Could Obama also propose to privatize the Central Valley Project that delivers water to farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley?

The federal Central Valley Project is not the same as the State Water Project, which was built five decades ago through state bonds.

To give an idea of the magnitude of the CVP, it delivers about 6 million acre-feet of irrigation water to about 3 million acres of farmland in the central San Joaquin Valley.  By comparison, the State Water Project supplies only about 1 million acre-feet of water to farmers.

In the 1930s Great Depression era, the federal government built the Central Valley Project when California was broke.  The federal government had to take over the state water plan to stimulate the agricultural economy and bail out California.  Also, by building a separate water system for farmers that was not under state control, the long-term water disputes between farms and cities were lessened.  The CVP carries water to the Sacramento Delta, which is pending a major re-engineering called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. 

Unlike the TVA, the CVP does not have coal-fired power plants that the Obama Administration wants decommissioned and replaced with green power purportedly to reduce air pollution.  Tennessee air quality is graded as spotty patches of “C,” “D,” and “F.”  California air quality is graded as “F” for most of the Central Valley.

Central Valley Project has only 1/15th the Budget of the TVA

The CVP is not as large as the TVA.  It has 20 dams and reservoirs, 11 hydropower plants, and 500 miles of major canals.  It has a $174.1 million annual budget.   The entire budget for the Central Valley Project is less than the operating deficit for the TVA.

The CVP’s congressional budget appropriation is offset by $39.6 million in fees collected from farmers to fund the San Joaquin River Restoration Project ($1 billion unfunded by Congress, but temporarily funded with $9 million in discretionary funds) and the Indian Water Rights Settlement Account ($26.7 million).

Recovery from farmers of the original capital outlay to build the CVP is projected to fall short by $330 to $390 million by the payoff date of 2031.  Auditors have warned that “the repayment shortfalls could become significant enough to require political intervention.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the proposed San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, H.R. 1837, would have accelerated farmers’ repayments by $221 million.  Republican Reps. David Nunes (R-Tulare), Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), and Jeff Denham (R-Merced) authored and supported H.R. 1837.   H.R. 1837 is sitting in the U.S. Senate without any action taken by California’s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.  Feinstein and Boxer oppose H.R. 1837 because it would de-fund the San Joaquin River Restoration Act, a $1 billion jobs program to re-wet the dry portions of the San Joaquin River to restore salmon runs.

H.R. 1837 is best chance at reforming Central Valley Project

It would be much more difficult to privatize wholesale water storage and delivery systems compared to retail water companies. The California Public Utilities Commission regulates private retail water companies, but not wholesale government water agencies. In 2001, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California pulled back from buying outsourced water from a private supplier, fearing complications to its water rate structure from the deregulation of its monopoly.

It is unlikely the CVP would be privatized for many reasons.  One big reason is that it does not have so-called “dirty” coal-fired power plants that are a target for elimination by the Obama Administration.

H.R. 1837 would have eliminated the Central Valley Project from being a jobs program and vehicle for politicized reparations.  By contrast, Feinstein’s “Bandit River” restoration project would likely:

* Take away more private sector jobs than gained.
* Require more expenditures to enlarge levees.
* Take away water from farmers without any plan to “restore” it with new supplies.
* Result in high salt content in water and seepage to farmlands.

The Obama-Feinstein-Boxer plan for managing the Central Valley Project has been to regulate first, think later.  Stated differently: the policy of the federal government has been to create jobs programs first and only later deal with the consequences to farmers and farmlands.  This is what I explained in my earlier article, “Salmon eating farmers along the the San Joaquin River.”

Alas, the Central Valley Project is not going to be privatized anytime soon. But it could be reformed so that restoring fish to the river doesn’t end up destroying farm jobs.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Tomorrow California voters will not be voting on the proposed California Water Bond, which has been postponed until 2014.  But voters will be voting on a number of local water projects such as the proposed Hetch Hetchy dam removal, which is Proposition F in San Francisco.

More importantly, California voters will be deciding on three crucial congressional races that will have statewide influence on water policy and projects. The three incumbent members of Congress shown below are California’s “movers and shakers” in federal water policy for California.  Half of California’s water system — called the Central Valley Project — is owned and operated by the federal government.

Below is a summary of the positions of each of the candidates on water issues.  No endorsement of candidates is expressed or implied.

U.S. Senator at Large — California

Congressional District 4  – Northeastern California

Congressional District 21 – Central California

Editor’s note: For clarity, this article has been modified to include an excerpt from the letter by Robert Pyke. 

June 11, 2012

By Wayne Lusvardi

Should we save the endangered red herring fish in California’s San Joaquin River?

The question is meant to fool you.  Herring is a saltwater fish not found off the coast of California or in the fresh waters of the San Joaquin River.

A red herring is a fish that has a reddish color after being been dried and smoked.  It has such a foul smell that in Hollywood movies red herrings were used by escaped jailbirds to mislead hound dogs that were tracking them. The term “red herring” today is used to describe anything that is misleading or distracting from the central issue.

And that is what the issue about restoring Chinook salmon in California’s San Joaquin River is all about: a red herring meant to draw attention away from the central issue about the sham restoration of the San Joaquin River.

The San Joaquin is Central California’s largest river. It starts in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, flows through the San Joaquin Valley, then ultimately into the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. It flows through or near Clovis, Fresno, Madera, Turlock, Modesto, Stockton and the Sacramento Delta on its way to the Bay. It is heavily dammed to prevent flooding in the Central Valley. The river has not flowed naturally since the Friant Dam was built in the 1940s.  Its flows have been so drastically reduced to prevent the Delta from becoming a periodic “inland sea” that salmon no longer exist in the river.

Rep. Denham Delays Restoring Salmon in San Joaquin River

On June 5, the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment by U.S. Congressman Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, to H.R. 5325, the Energy and Water Related Agencies Appropriation Act of 2013. It would prohibit the premature introduction of salmon into an inadequate San Joaquin River system.

Without full restoration of the flows of the river, the salmon could not migrate from the ocean to upstream spawning pools.

Blogger Doug Obegi at the National Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard website seized on the House’s action to accuse Denham of trying to undo the court approved settlement to restore the San Joaquin River for salmon runs.

As Mike Wade of the Farm Water Coalition responded:

“[Obegi’s] criticism of Rep. Denham’s amendment and claiming the SJR Exchange Contractors are reneging on the river restoration settlement are efforts to mislead public opinion without providing all of the facts. The restoration agreement provided protection for third parties along the river, including farmers within the Exchange Contractors’ region. Past efforts have already seen these farmers suffer from undue seepage problems caused by high water releases into the river. The agreement also called for multiple construction projects and it was acknowledged that early introduction of salmon a year or two before the completion of the projects might take place; but none of the necessary construction projects needed for a successful fish passage have begun. It could be 5-10 years or more to reach completion of the Phase 1 projects once construction begins, depending on funding. Why introduce salmon that are listed as endangered that stand no chance of reaching the ocean? 

There is not much to be shown for the $100 million already expended for the restoration. Those groups pushing for the salmon introduction insisted that the restoration effort could be accomplished for $250 million. It is readily recognized that this number will fall far short of the amount required. Now is not the time to compound this oversight with efforts such as early introduction of salmon that serve no purpose.” 

Thus far, $70 million has been spent on San Joaquin River restoration mainly on environmental studies with nothing to show for it. No physical improvements have been made to bring about restored salmon runs in the San Joaquin River.  That’s $70 million that might as well have been flushed down the proverbial toilet to run to the sea.

This is one reason why California has spent $18.7 billion on five water bonds (Propositions 12, 13, 40, 50 and 84) since 2000 and has no added water to show for it.  Instead, the bond monies have gone for open space acquisitions, greenscaping and environmental studies around upscale residential enclaves.

Using the “red herring” distraction of alleged obstructionism by Denham, Obegi is trying to shift the public’s attention away from the squandering of public funds on environmental studies with nothing to show for it.

Where is Water for River Restoration Coming From?

This begs the question: where is the water for restoring salmon runs in the San Joaquin River coming from?  It is coming from U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s H.R. 146, the San Joaquin River Restoration Act, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. It was passed as part of the Omnibus Lands Act of 2009 when Democrats had a supermajority in Congress and the presidency.

Feinstein’s bill took contracted water from Central Valley farmers to restore salmon runs along the San Joaquin River.  It also hiked federal water contract rates for farmers to pay for the restoration. And it subjected farmers to paying environmental mitigations to commercial fishing, recreational and real estate development interests in Northern California when their water contracts are due.  The farmers not only had water taken from them, but would have to pay for a gigantic $1 billion redevelopment scheme for the San Joaquin River cloaked as a salmon restoration project.

After Republicans took back control of the House in 2010, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare authored H.R. 1837, the San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, to repeal Feinstein’s water grab.  H.R. 1837 was folded into Utah Senator Orrin Hatch’s “The West Act,” which has been blocked in the U.S. Senate by Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

This is the problem of not obtaining true “consent of the governed” — in this case, those who have to pay for such schemes; or of not relying on voluntary market transactions.  Without voluntary consent of those taxed or a market transaction, what happens is an endless “water war.”  This is tragic, as an engineer has recently revealed that the Sacramento Delta has too much water in wet years.

Northern Cal Water in Wet Years

Robert Pyke, a geological engineer, recently wrote an interesting letter to Ken Salazar, the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and John Laird, the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. Pyke wrote:

“the inherent variability in precipitation in Northern California has not been addressed in the [Bay Delta Conservation Plan] to date. I know that they now talk about taking more water in wet winters and less water in dry winters but that is just talk without there being any mechanism to actually accomplish this. When I met recently with Secretary Laird and suggested that what was needed was a plumbing system that allowed the extraction of up to 8-10 million acre feet in wet winters to make up for the fact that you can’t take more than 2-4 million acre feet in dry winters, he said that he had never heard anyone suggest that previously. Maybe so, but that is indicative of a problem.”

Now, 8 to 10 million acre-feet excess water in wet winters is enough water to serve 8 million urban people per year over a five-year drought; or irrigate 533,000 acres of farmland per year over a five-year dry spell.

But the present conveyance system, the California Aqueduct, cannot take more than 2 to 4 million acre-feet per year.  Thus, there is need of a new, larger conveyance system — a so-called Peripheral Canal or Delta Tunnels — to convey the excess water out of the Delta during wet years, to farmers and cities which then can store it dry-year usage.

By taking the excess water during wet years from the Delta, the threat of flooding and of an earthquake breaching heavily flooded levees would be reduced.

So environmentalists continue to shake down farmers in the Central Valley for contracted water and higher water rates to pay for a $1 billion water-related redevelopment scheme along the San Joaquin River.  But they are also opposed to the completion of a Peripheral Canal or Tunnel system that would provide farmers with more water for banking in local groundwater basins during wet years for use in dry years.  Northern Californians and environmentalists want to eat their water cake and have it too!  And they are opposed to any water for farmers and cities in return.

Then they have the nerve to call elected representatives of farming districts “obstructionists” to a one-sided so-called court “settlement” mandating the restoration of the San Joaquin River.

Bad Water Law

As Judge M. Smith wrote in the dissenting opinion in a June 1, 2012 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case, Karuk Indian Tribe vs. U.S. Forest Service, Central Valley farmers will suffer from the impact of “extremist” environmental decisions.  Smith pointed out that, because judges are unelected, they should be limited to interpreting environmental law, not creating de facto new legislation for which they are unaccountable to anybody (see pages 6126-6127 of the case).

Welcome to the wonderful world of California’s water wars, where water flows to the San Joaquin River are to be restored for a fictional endangered Red Herring fish that is a ruse for a $1 billion river-related redevelopment scheme and jobs program for environmentalists.  Environmental disputes are almost never really about preserving some fish or ecological habitat.  They are about wealth effects created from water-related redevelopment for commercial fishing, recreation and tourist lodging and real estate development to be handed out to the politically connected.