New Melones Dam (Wikimedia)

As a solution, Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Modesto, has proposed H.R. 2554. In the bill’s language, it aims “to increase water storage availability at the New Melones Reservoir to provide additional water for areas served below the reservoir, and for other purposes.” The bill further specifies that none of the added water storage can go toward the dam’s “conservation account,” which already takes most of the water stored during dry years.

New Melones is California’s first “Green Dam”

Melones is a former settlement formed around a ferry terminal along the Stanislaus River in Calaveras County. It now sits submerged under a lake formed by the New Melones Dam built in 1979 mainly for flood control and agricultural irrigation.  Water originally designated for farming has mostly disappeared, except in very wet years. The water didn’t disappear from drought but from a series of regulations.  An April 9, 2013 Board Letter of the Tuolumne Utilities District explained:

“The Bureau [of Reclamation] has not been delivering the water because the water for delivery to a contractor hasn’t been available from Melones, except in above normal years.  The shortage results, not from drought conditions, but from Congress’ enactment of the Endangered Species Act in 1972, from Congress’ enactment of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act in 1991, and the SWRCB’s [State Water Quality Control Board’s] adoption of the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan in 1995 and its implementation decision D 1641 in 2001.  All of these resulted in required increases in bypass flow from Melones.  All of these actions combined have resulted in the Bureau saying that, except in very wet years, all of the yield of New Melones is now required for water quality and fishery flows in the lower Stanislaus and in the Delta and there is no water available for the [irrigation] Project.”

New Melones Dam may now be called California’s, and the U.S.’s, first “green dam.” It is only able to meet its contractual obligations to supply farm water to all recipients during wet years.

Farming and commercial mining losses

Environmental water diversions from New Melones also have caused the Stockton East and Central San Joaquin areas to suffer the greatest shortages of contracted water.  In dry years these agricultural districts were shorted more 100,000 acre-feet of water.

Part of the dam improvements include a system of pumps costing about $11.3 million in today’s dollars owned and operated by the Tuolumne Utility District to supply the Columbia and Sonora Mining Company. In the current operating regime, the pumps have sat high and dry during three dry years, causing even greater loss of commercial productivity over and above agricultural losses.

Denham’s Bill

Denham’s new bill would require that local irrigation districts be offered a contract to store up to 100,000 acre feet of water in the unfilled portion of New Melones reservoir.  The reservoir has a capacity of 2.4 million acre feet of water.  That is enough water to irrigate about 800,000 acres, or 1,250 square miles, of farmland for one year.  Some 450,000 acre-feet of the water are stored for flood control.

But the reservoir is reported to be often less than half empty due to priority diversion of water to the environment.  As of July 6, the California Department of Water Resources reported that New Melones reservoir is at 51 percent of total capacity, but 82 percent of its historical average of 2.0 million acre-feet of water.

The additional water proposed for storage in the reservoir could also be used for water transfers or exchanges for water-short Central Valley farmers; or to provide a source of cold water for migrating fish in dry years.

The Denham bill requires no appropriation of federal funds and no construction of new dams. It would not have significant negative environmental impacts and would help recharge Central Valley groundwater basins. Farmers have offered to pay to park the added water in the reservoir, and water could be made available for the 2014 irrigation season. All that would happen if the bill is passed by Congress.

Denham’s bill offers to drain part of the proverbial swamp of regulations that is keeping farmers, miners and the environment from needed water supplies.

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.

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.