The real water wars

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 12, 2010 | 0 Comments

A while back, On the Public Record complained about widespread use of the term ”water war” to describe what’s going on in California and the San Joaquin Valley.

I agree. Although I cannot claim that I’ve never used the term myself.

In cleverly crafted bureaucratese, OTPR wrote that what’s going on now is “an extended, complicated, multi-party conflict over resource use that will be resolved through incremental progress in courts, administrative plans, white papers and legislation (or maybe earthquake-caused collapse of Delta levees).”

You wanna water war? Here’s a map of real water “conflicts” around the globe, courtesy of the Pacific Institute.

Zoom in on California. You won’t find the 2007-09 drought. You will find a snippet about bombings of the L.A. aqueduct which was sucking the Owens Valley dry in the early 1900s. And a brief report of a man who attempted to poison L.A.’s water supply with a biological agent in 1982 — the same year a peripheral canal was rejected by voters. (A quick Google search — like, 3 minutes — failed to find any further details on this incident. Can anyone help?)

Head across the Atlantic and you’ll find reports of ”conflicts” as far back as the sixth century B.C. when the Assyrians poisoned the wells of their enemies.

Now those were water wars.

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Delta counties are not ‘obstructionists,’ supervisor says

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 10, 2010 | 0 Comments

Larry Ruhstaller remembers when representatives from the five Delta counties visited U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein late last year during a lobbying trip to D.C.

They were pleading their case to the senior senator when she interrupted.

“She said, ‘It’s the law. Get over it and get involved,’” Ruhstaller, a San Joaquin County supervisor, told legislators during a Delta oversight hearing on Tuesday.

“We have taken that to heart,” he said. “We are involved. We will do whatever we can to work with you and the different agencies to get what needs to be done. We are not in any way obstructionists.”

Ruhstaller asked for the legislators to approve increased funding for the Delta Protection Commission, which is now smaller and more locally-focused, and has additional duties including writing an economic sustainability plan for the Delta and considering whether or not to expand the primary zone.

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LAO: Legislature should audit DWR’s bond spending

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 8, 2010 | 0 Comments

While there’s a lot of talk about the $11.1 billion water bond on the November ballot, the general public may not realize that Department of Water Resources has already been on the receiving end of over $15 billion in bond funds over the past decade. Of that sum, several billion are still available, according to a report released today by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

In its analysis of the governor’s proposed budget for natural resources, the LAO concluded that DWR bond spending should be audited.

“These recent increases in the availability of bond funding for DWR are unprecedented in their magnitude,” the report says. “This has led to concerns about the department’s capacity to effectively manage such a high level of funding.”

It’s been difficult to track how DWR spends bond money, the LAO says, because the department administratively shifts money between different projects and programs. “It is not clear that, in all cases, these funding shifts were in line with the Legislature’s original funding intent,” the LAO said.

Besides recommending an audit, the LAO also zeroed in on the proposed budget for the new Delta Stewardship Council, appointments to which could come any day.

The council would receive $49.1 million in funding for 2010-11, most of it from bonds. Much of the money would pay for contractors to help write the new Delta plan which may endorse a peripheral canal or tunnel.

The council would consist of 58 staffers, including 50 existing positions transfered over from the old Calfed structure. The eight new positions would include seven council members and an assistant to the chair.

The LAO was mostly OK with the new council’s budget, but recommended killing one proposed contract position (saving $200,000) and eliminating a small amount of money that would go to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California as a “liaison” between Calfed and the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan. Such an arrangement, the LAO said, could be construed as a conflict of interest.

The LAO also warned that last November’s water deal did not include a long-term plan to pay for all the new policies put in place. It recommended the Legislature adopt such a plan.

And finally, it says the state should not spend $28 million in bond funds on the Two Gates project, since the feds have put that plan on hold pending further study.

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‘Save the salamanders’

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 5, 2010 | 0 Comments

 

The Fish and Game Commission listed the California tiger salamander as a threatened species this week.

Watch this parody. Spoiler: Guy in amphibian suit solicits signatures for a ‘Save the Salamanders’ petition outside a FoodMaxx.

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‘Bubble car’ owner was a classic

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 4, 2010 | 0 Comments

I was sorry to see a death notice in the paper for Carol Lee Dooley, whom I met on a cold December morning in 2007 at her north Stockton apartment.

Carol drove a way-cool “bubble car” which, as my story pointed out, “measures 99 inches bumper to bumper, tops out at 25 mph and resembles a golf cart from outer space.”

She and her dog, Prince Charming, toodled all over town in that thing. She figured she’d saved thousands of dollars on gas, and she got a kick out of the smiles and waves from kids she passed on the sidewalk. (Or did they pass her?)

Some drivers lacked patience when they pulled up behind Carol, though she said in 2007 that she’d only been honked at once.

Carol didn’t seem to mind. She’d “ride the gutters” whenever she needed to. And she liked going slow so she could check out Christmas decorations in folks’ front yards.

I didn’t know her well. I can tell you she was friendly and outgoing, eager to show off her bubble car (it’s a Global Electric Motorcar, to be precise). She told me she volunteered with the library’s Adult Literacy Program, and she was a frequent writer of letters to the the editor. She entered The Record’s cookie contest. Her answering machine sings to you.

Carol passed on Feb. 24 at the age of 66. DeYoung Memorial Chapel is handling arrangements.

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Snow surveys already out of date

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 3, 2010 | 0 Comments

The snowpack in California is above normal, the Department of Water Resources reported today. Central Sierra Nevada numbers are lagging, but that may be because of the timing of snow surveys in our area.

And of course, it’s dumping today. These numbers were likely ancient history long before they were announced.

As usual, the amount of water stored in our snowpack is higher to the north. The Northern Sierra/Trinity Alps are already at 115 percent of what you’d expect to find on April 1, meaning there’s nearly a month for those numbers to go even higher before the snow season typically wraps up.

The Central Sierra, including the watersheds that feed much of the Stockton area, are 83 percent of normal for April 1 and 93 percent of normal for today. Specifically, the Stanislaus River basin is 97 percent of normal for today, and the Mokelumne River basin is 92 percent of normal. Keep in mind, however, that, many of the Stan and Moke surveys were completed around Feb. 22 or 23, before this latest round of wet weather.

Here’s the best and the rest of the individual snow survey stations:

Stanislaus River basin: The best numbers are at Black Springs, weighing in at 134 percent of the April 1 average with 22.0 inches of snow water content. At 6,500 feet, however, Black Springs is one of the lower stations. The worst number came in at Clarks Fork Meadow off Highway 108, which was 65 percent of the April 1 average, with 39.8 inches of snow-water content. (While depth is much easier to visualize, the amount of water in the snow — the “snow-water content” — is much more important to surveyors.)

Mokelumne River basin: Let’s hear it for 150 percent of the April 1 average at Lumberyard 2 (again, this is a bit deceiving since the low-elevation station has only 13.8 inches of snow-water content.) Like the Stanislaus, higher-elevation stations are not faring as well; the worst is Blue Lakes, 62 percent of the April 1 average with 36.2 inches of snow-water content. Again, these measurements were taken BEFORE all of the rains of the past week and one-half.

Expect the numbers to go up. They likely are as I type this.

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Snow: Delta council appointments are ‘imminent’

By Alex Breitler | Published: March 2, 2010 | 0 Comments

At last week’s Delta Protection Commission meeting, California Secretary for Resources Lester Snow said appointments to the seven-member Delta Stewardship Council should be coming sometime this week.

It’s unclear which day.

We already know one of the members — Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli, who will serve on the Council by virtue of his position as chair of the Delta Protection Commission. Nottoli was elected to that post on Thursday.

Four more members will be appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and two more by the Legislature.

The Council may have only one member thusfar, but it already has its own Web site.

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Where beats collide

By Alex Breitler | Published: February 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

Dan Parises, the longtime Delta College trustee who sat at the dais from 1975 until 2008, wants to dive back into public service. This time, it’s water.

Parises, 73, served as a San Joaquin County supervisor from 1971-1975 and was once a member of the county’s Advisory Water Commission. And he’s been growing grapes since he was 15, so an opening on the North San Joaquin Water Conservation District Board of Directors was an obvious goal. He was interviewed earlier this week and expects to find out if he’s been selected by early March.

Parises has been bottling wine since he left public service in 2008. “We’ve got to have something to do besides sitting around,” he said.

He said he favors the controversial groundwater pumping fee previously approved by the North San Joaquin district.

“The resource that is going to be in demand in the future is water,” Parises said today. “No matter what goes on, I think if you’ve got an allotment of water you’d better use it or else you’re going to lose it.”

Parises — a somewhat controversial figure at Delta — decided not to seek another term in 2008, citing not only health problems and a desire to spend more time with family, but also the state of “dysfunction” that plagued the board at the time. Parises says he hasn’t attended a North San Joaquin meeting; let me tell you, the ones I’ve attended make Delta College trustees look like members of the Lollypop Guild. The water fee has bitterly divided landowners and water district board members. If Parises is appointed, it will be interesting to see how that dynamic changes. 

“I’m going to be like the eagle (on the board) since I have experience,” he said.

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‘They just think it’s too big’

By Alex Breitler | Published: February 24, 2010 | 0 Comments

Jonas Minton of the enviro group Planning and Conservation League told the audience at Monday’s UOP water forum that the state and water exporters should consider building one small tunnel, rather than two large ones, to convey water past the Delta.

The plan right now is to focus analysis on two tunnels, each capable of carrying 7,500 cubic feet per second of water. Combined, that’s 112,200 gallons per second — enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in five seconds. (See this post for visuals.)

That’s too large to reassure opponents that any future guidelines on how much water can be taken will not be bypassed the next time there’s a water crisis in the south San Joaquin Valley, Minton said. He used U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s recent proposal to tweak biological opinions and send more water south as an example.

Feinstein’s proposal “gives no one confidence that a new facility, a huge facility… can be trusted,” Minton said, adding that critics “just think it’s too big.”

His pitch is for study of one tunnel with 3,000 cfs capacity. It’d be cheaper; it would ensure that water would still be exported through the Delta itself, which in turn provides assurance that Delta levees won’t be abandoned; and it would still, like the larger tunnels, provide emergency water supply should the levees fail.

“Potentially, there’s less opposition,” Minton said.

If a 15,000-cfs tunnel (or canal) is pursued, Minton told the crowd — including many students at Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law — “You law students, that’s how you’re going to pay back your loans.”

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Michael: Salmon job losses also inflated

By Alex Breitler | Published: February 22, 2010 | 0 Comments

University of the Pacific business forecasting prof Jeffrey Michael dropped an interesting bit of news at today’s water forum in Sacramento.

The news: Job loss estimates by the salmon fishing industry may be greatly exaggerated – as were earlier estimates for agriculture in the south San Joaquin Valley.

“Job loss exaggerations are now officially an epidemic in the water debate,” Michael wrote in his blog, Valley Economy.

For months, Michael has been saying publicly that water-related job losses in the south Valley were not as severe as other economists and many media reports had portrayed. He said most of the area’s struggles with unemployment were because of the flattened economy, not a lack of water. And of those job losses that could be blamed on lack of water, most were because of the drought and not Endangered Species Act protections for fish.

This didn’t go over well with the mayor of Mendota, among other interests in the south Valley, where fish have become the primary villain. Michael was basically accused of racism in this opinion piece co-authored by Mendota Mayor Robert Silva.

That issue, combined with Michael’s decision to publicly question the PPIC’s math on supporting the peripheral canal, had him labeled in some quarters as an anti-farm activist.

His latest announcement, however, seems to call out the “other side” in the war of water rhetoric.

While he’s not finished working the numbers, Michael said he is seriously questioning an economic analysis commissioned by the fishing industry which claims 23,000 jobs lost between commercial and recreational salmon fishing in 2009.

Michael told the crowd at today’s forum that about 20,000 of those “lost” jobs were a result of ”dubious treatment of statewide seafood retail sales.”

Michael said he believes actual job losses because of the salmon fishing shutdown may be closer to 2,200 jobs — less than 10 percent of the 23,000 figure which has been repeated in some media accounts and, last week, by members of Congress who wrote a letter to Dianne Feinstein opposing her bid to send more water south.

In the end, both of Michael’s analyses tentatively reveal what appears to the layman to be almost a wash: 2,200 fishing jobs lost because of plunging salmon populations, and 2,000 farm jobs lost because of environmental restrictions to protect smelt at the pumps.

Michael cautions that all jobs are not created equal and that there are other factors in play to determine the ultimate economic cost for both the fishing and farm sectors. Ultimately, however, the salmon fishing losses reported thusfar “may be more inflated” than the early estimate of 80,000 farm jobs, he said.

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