News articles and links from Sept. 20, 2011

Delta

Delta water grab fears unfounded, says U.S. resources chief

Story

From Contra Costa Times - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

From SJ Mercury News - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Coalition response...The response to Secretary Salazar's welcoming words that a SWRCB study calls for more water to flow through the Delta is misleading. Last year's study was in direct response to legislative direction that limited what researchers could address in their study. Here is what the study said:

"The State Water Board did not solicit information on the need for water for other beneficial uses, including the amount of water needed for human health and safety, during the informational proceeding. Nor did the State Water Board consider other policy considerations, such as the state goal of providing a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian."

"It is not the State Water Board's intent that these criteria be interpreted as precise flow requirements for fish under current conditions, but rather they reflect the general timing and magnitude of flows under the narrow circumstances analyzed in this report. As physical changes occur to the environment and our understanding of species' needs improves, the long-term flow needs will also change. Actual flows should be informed by adaptive management. Only the underlying principles for the numeric criteria and other measures are advanced as long term recommendations."

In other words, this study should not be used to formulate policy without further research.

(Secretary Salazar's speech to the Commonwealth Club is available by clicking here.)

WATER SUPPLY

Salazar: Klamath dam removal will cost far less

Story

From Fresno Bee - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

From Modesto Bee - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

From Appeal-Democrat - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Salazar: Klamath dam removal cheaper than forecast

Story

From Eureka Times-Standard - Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar jabs GOP on San Joaquin River pact

Story

From LA Times - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Homeward bound: The areas of origin

Blog

By John Howard

From California Water Wars - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

All-American Canal silt removal estimated at $2.5 million, but not for IID

Story

From IV Press - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Reclamation releases environmental documents for the San Luis drainage feature reevaluation demonstration treatment facility

Press release

From USBR - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

DELTA

Judge backs humans over fish in Delta

Blog

By Wayne Lusvardi

From Cal Watchdog - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Delta Independent Science Board releases comments on the fifth draft of the Delta Plan

Report

From Aquafornia - Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011

BDCP update: Fish facilities technical team technical memorandum now available

Report

From Aquafornia - Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011

News articles and links from Sept.19, 2011

Delta

Report on SF Bay details progress, problems

Story

From SF Chronicle - Monday, Sept. 19 2011

New report: SF Bay getting healthier, not in the clear yet

Story

From San Jose Mercury News - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

From Contra Costa Times - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

Scientists say San Francisco Bay is healthier

TV news

From CBS 47/Fresno - Monday, Sept. 19, 2011

(The following response is posted to the above news stories.)

Coalition response...It is not surprising that critics of water flowing through the Delta that is delivered to farmers and 25 million Californians would claim that diversions are a serious problem for the SF Bay. DWR historical records prove that prior to the State and federal water supply systems, salt water intrusion in the Delta occurred as far inland as Walnut Grove in 1931. A sugar refinery in Crockett, located along the southern edge of the Carquinez Strait leading into the Delta, was forced in the 1920s to send barges 28 miles into the Delta to obtain fresh water for its operation. That need no longer exists because of the operations of the State and federal water projects. Blaming diversions for salinity encroachment into the Delta is lacking in facts.

Specific plan needed to protect Delta, deliver water to users

Editorial/Slideshow

From Contra Costa Times - Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011

From The Oakland Tribune - Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011

Coalition response...While this editorial provides some very thoughtful positions, it falls victim to the myth that California farmers use 80% of the water in our state. Whether intentional or not, this statement misleads the public into thinking that agriculture's share is the majority of all of the water in the state. It is not. A greater amount than the amount of water farmers use to grow food is dedicated for specific environmental purposes.

This statement purposely ignores the environmental water that has been so designated through governmental laws and regulations. For example, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act took 800,000 acre-feet of water away from farms, homes and businesses and rededicated it to the environment. If that water was counted when it was producing food how can it be ignored when it is reallocated to the environment? It doesn't make sense. The Department of Water Resources identifies water use in California during a normal year as environmental, 48%, agriculture, 41% and urban, 11%.

Delta water plan could worsen poison in S.F. Bay

Story

From The Record - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

(The following response was posted Friday to other stories regarding this same story.)

Coalition response...This selenium question is not new to those involved in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, as indicated by spokeswoman Karla Nemeth. The analysis by BDCP researchers is moving forward and is expected to provide science-based answers rather than to raise unanswered questions by jumping to conclusions or providing less than full disclosure. The full story regarding the BDCP study reviewed by government scientists last year is that the study was interim and already under revision when the scientists conducted their review. During a press conference by members of the scientific review panel, they acknowledge that the study was undergoing an updating. Understanding the full circumstances surrounding the review of the BDCP study is important, just as allowing the BDCP analysis to continue to completion.

The "dramatic reductions" in selenium discharged from farm fields into the Delta is significant and needs full disclosure. The 100,000 acres in the Grassland Drainage Area south of Dos Palos has been underway for years as a cooperative effort by farmers, public water agencies and State and federal agencies. From 1995 to 2010, selenium discharges have plummeted 87%. Salt and boron discharges have also dropped, 72% and 64% respectively.

WATER SUPPLY

Wasting Stanislaus water: Down the river it will go and out to sea

Commentary

By Dennis Wyatt

From Manteca Bulletin - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

Water: Why 'the Rubik's Cube of Public Policy' misses the point

Blog

By John Fleck

From Inkstain - Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011

TCCA files appeal for water rights

Story

From Corning Observer - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

From Appeal Democrat - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

Resolution proposed in Tulelake Irrigation District case

Story

From Siskiyou Daily News - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

DELTA

Delta water talk Tuesday in Concord

Story

From Contra Costa Times - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

COURTS

Wanger denies feds' X2 stay request

Story

From ACWA - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

X2 stay request denied; court finds feds to have engaged in "bad faith"

Blog

By Brandon Middleton

From Pacific Legal Foundation - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

Court denies "Fall X2" motions and finds agency bad faith

Blog

From KMTG - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

FISHERIES

Uncle Sam: Destory fish to save them

Story

From Manteca Bulletin - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

NOAA fisheries scientists work to bring back a historic salmon run in Southern California

Story

From NMFS - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

SALTON SEA

Step up efforts to save the Salton Sea

Editorial

From Desert Sun - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

Perez to set sights on Salton Sea in new year

Story

From Desert Sun - Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

News articles and links from Sept. 16, 2011

Delta

Environmental toxins in San Francisco Bay could increase with Delta water plan

Story

From Contra Costa Times - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

From San Jose Mercury News - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

Coalition response...This selenium question is not new to those involved in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, as indicated by spokeswoman Karla Nemeth. The analysis by BDCP researchers is moving forward and is expected to provide science-based answers rather than to raise unanswered questions by jumping to conclusions or providing less than full disclosure. The full story regarding the BDCP study reviewed by government scientists last year is that the study was interim and already under revision when the scientists conducted their review. During a press conference by members of the scientific review panel, they acknowledge that the study was undergoing an updating. Understanding the full circumstances surrounding the review of the BDCP study is important, just as allowing the BDCP analysis to continue to completion.

The "dramatic reductions" in selenium discharged from farm fields into the Delta is significant and needs full disclosure. The 100,000 acres in the Grassland Drainage Area south of Dos Palos has been underway for years as a cooperative effort by farmers, public water agencies and State and federal agencies. From 1995 to 2010, selenium discharges have plummeted 87%. Salt and boron discharges have also dropped, 72% and 64% respectively.

WATER SUPPLY

Californians are fighting a big war over a little fish

Story

From Washington Examiner - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

Early winter prediction: La Nina making a big comeback

Blog

By Ken Clark

From AccuWeather - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

New Melones would be drained

Letter

From Modesto Bee - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

DELTA

The X2 files

Blog

By Brandon Middleton

From Pacific Legal Foundation - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

Sept. 16 is X-day for Delta smelt case

Blog

By Wayne Lusvardi

From Cal Watchdog - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

News articles and links from Sept. 15, 2011

Fisheries

Where have all the salmon gone?

Opinion

By Allen Harthorn

From Chico News & Review - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

Coalition response...A major problem for juvenile salmon during their out-migration to the ocean is the array of predators waiting for them in Delta waters. Biologists have studied the striped bass and its appetite for salmon and determined that predation of salmon in the Delta is far greater than salmon salvaged at the pumps. The UC Davis/Stockholm Environmental Institute also pointed to a poor food supply in the ocean as a major factor in the dwindling numbers of salmon. Add to that the 14 tons of ammonia dumped every day into the Sacramento River leading to the Delta by the Sacramento Regional Sanitation District and you get a more complete picture of the challenges faced by out-migrating salmon.

PEOPLE

A Conversation with California's Resources Secretary

Column

From Capitol Weekly - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

WATER SUPPLY

When times get tough it's time to build stuff

Opinion

By Jim Earp

From Capitol Weekly - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

At the heart of agriculture is the struggle for water

Story

From Capitol Weekly - Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011

Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority plans to appeal area-of-origin ruling

Story

From ACWA - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

Water Commission workshop speakers stress creativity in water storage approach

Story

From ACWA - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

DELTA

Which of the PPIC Delta alternatives is most like the Economic Sustainability Plan?

Blog

By Jeff Michael

From Valley Economy - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

BDCP juggernaut presses ahead

Blog

From Restore the Delta - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

A long but important read

Let them drink dust!

Commentary

By Dr. Henry Miller

From Forbes Magazine - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

In any scientific dispute spawned by the Endangered Species Act, the government almost always wins. Even if persuasive scientific evidence shows that federal environmental regulators are wrong or that they ignored all the facts that didn’t fit their preconceptions, the courts routinely defer to them.

But not always. In litigation that has been playing out in California for the last four years, regulators have been so incompetent and dishonest in the federal (mis)management of the state’s water supplies that the courts ruled against them. The U.S. District Court has found repeatedly that federal regulators failed to perform the most rudimentary analysis before ordering massive cuts in water that have reduced California’s supplies by more than a third during the last three years. “This is evidence of [Fish and Wildlife Service] intransigence,” the court ruled in the most recent of these cases at the end of August. “The agency’s ‘lack of data’ apologetic is the premise for the agency to do what it chooses.” (As the principal federal partner responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has primary responsibility for recovering and conserving imperiled plant and animal species.)

In this instance, FWS was proposing to use 300,000 to 670,000 acre-feet of water to flush a handful of minnows called delta smelt a few miles farther west in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. (The lower amount is enough water to meet all of San Francisco’s drinking water needs for nearly two years.)

Instead of being available to help California’s cities and farms recover from the ruinous combined effects of three years of drought and federal regulation, all of that water would simply have run out into the ocean, unconserved, unrecycled and unavailable for any other use. In 2009 this loss of tens of billions of gallons of water left hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland barren and forced cities in Southern California to ration their supplies. The drought is over now, but under federal rules, the more it rains the more water gets wasted by release into the ocean.

According to the court, by bypassing NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act) the federal fish agencies “completely abdicated their responsibility to consider reasonable alternatives to the [proposed] action that would not only protect the species, but would also minimize the adverse impact on humans and the human environment. The result is the issuance and implementation of a one-sided, single purpose [action] that inflicts drastic consequences on California water users, a situation NEPA prohibits.” (NEPA requires that federal agencies consider the environmental impact – construed broadly – of any “major action” they take.)

The court found the regulators’ fundamental error: “There is essentially no biological evidence to support” this massive waste of water. And the feds knew it. The proposed action had been criticized as lacking any clear scientific basis by the National Research Council (the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences), by the federal government’s own independent review panel, and by numerous senior scientists who had studied the issue. The “biological opinion” – a sort of regulatory directive — which includes this massive water release had already been rejected by the district court as “shoddy science’ which is “arbitrary and capricious” in its misapplication of science.

Yet FWS was undeterred. Its idea was to move the point at which salt and fresh water mix in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to a place that they opined was ideal for the smelt. But the scientific evidence shows that the smelt exist at many different salinity levels. Rather than clustering at one point, they range over 24 miles of the delta. In fact, the feds were forced to admit in court that their analysis failed to include 60% of the smelt population that is in an area that would be completely unaffected by the proposed action.

No one has been able to demonstrate that the location of this mixing point has anything to do with the abundance of smelt. The National Research Council found that the fish agencies’ claims on this score were “poor and sometimes confounding.” Even when the feds brought together a review panel and cherry picked the data by refusing to provide the evidence that questioned FWS’ proposal, the panelists nevertheless complained that the government’s plan was “woefully deficient.”

The principal proponent of the smelt plan is a federal biologist who supported his claim with a chart that used one data set on both axes. When you compare something to itself you find correspondence. Duh! But as more competent scientists pointed out, it is “meaningless.” The same guy had also once produced a model of the smelt’s life cycle to support his theory, but it was withdrawn because of what he called a “practical complication.” And what was that complication? As he admitted on the witness stand, it showed that 54% of the time the application of these massive water releases would produce “negative abundance” — that is, it would kill the smelt, not help them. In the end, the court concluded euphemistically that his “credibility is called into question” and “his scientific objectivity is compromised by inconsistency.”

But the 3-inch-long smelts, which nobody eats and which have no commercial value, are not really the issue. They are just a pretext for the federal bureaucrats and their academic and environmental allies to attack a water system they blame for all the woes of the delta. Together they have been managing the decline of that estuary for decades, and as one of the attorneys in the most recent case quipped, “No other experts need apply.” Their objective, according to one of the academic high priests of the smelt cult, is to persuade people to get over our addiction to water. Where is the outrage at this sort of arrogance and idiocy?

This situation stinks like a dead smelt. The public water agencies responsible for serving two-thirds of California’s inhabitants shouldn’t have to go to court to protect the public from federal irresponsibility. Fortunately, case by case, science and the public interest have been pushing back against ideology. The academic defenders of the blame-the-thirsty faith have denounced this process as “combat science.” People who think Galileo was right would call it telling truth to power.

Because the FWS plan is part of an earlier case that is currently on appeal, the court couldn’t prohibit it altogether. At least the damage will be severely reduced. But as the judge observed at the end of his opinion, “The agencies still ‘don’t get it.’ They continue to believe their ‘right to be mistaken’ excuses [the lack of] precise and competent scientific analysis for actions they know will wreak havoc on California’s water supply.”

Why hasn’t anyone else in government or academia simply called a halt to this nonsense? The answer may be that careers are at stake — along with so many lucrative research grants and consultancies. Meanwhile, the feds are trying to enforce the Endangered Species Act from inside a hen house in a way that makes foxes of us all.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA.

News articles and links from Sept. 14, 2011

WATER SUPPLY

Salazar to speak at Commonwealth Club

Announcement

From Commonwealth Club

Regional water planning group to meet in Willows on Thursday

Story

From Chico ER - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

Success Dam project gaining ground

Story

From Porterville Recorder - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

DELTA

McNerney blasts feds' involvement in peripheral canal

Story

From Central Valley Business Times - Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011

FISHERIES

Is the end of salmon near?

Story

From Discovery News - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

SALTON SEA

IID board: Salton Sea mitigation cannot wait

Story

From IV Press - Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011

News articles and links from Sept. 13, 2011

Delta

Record fish numbers salvaged in Calif. water pumps

Story

From Fresno Bee - Monday, Sept. 12, 2011

From North County Times - Monday, Sept. 12, 2011

Coalition response...Biologists knew in advance that this year's water conditions would result in increased fish populations and high numbers of fish salvaged at the pumps. The hue and cry by environmentalist representatives ignores the fact that these high numbers provide supporting proof for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to deny protected status to the splittail under the Endangered Species Act. The environmental claim that fish are killed by predators while at the pumping facilities is lacking in studies that provide real numbers.
 
Delta pumping operations have not prevented splittail populations from recovering, as evidenced by the huge numbers in the ecosystem this year. The record numbers, contrary to Jennings' claim, are not evidence that the biological fabric is continuing to collapse. It is evidence that the pumps have little or nothing to do with the long term condition of splittail populations.
 
It is important to recognize that the water conditions that spurred the higher fish populations were naturally created and management of the State and federal systems supplying water to public water agencies cannot create the same conditions.

The Delta water wars heat up

Story

From Bilingual Weekly - Monday, Sept. 12, 2011

Coalition response...This mish-mash of claims is rife with inaccuracies and false claims. Carter has publicly demonstrated a disdain for the farmworker community and his rush to "put water back into the Delta" ignores the lives that have been built on water delivered to public water agencies. Thousands of farmworkers lost their jobs in recent years as deliveries were reduced due to drought and environmental regulations lacking in science.

Further citing a SWRCB report by claiming that more water needs to remain in the Delta leaves out an important disclaimer made by the authors. The authors emphasized that their report required further study and should not be the basis for policy development.

Farmers have not needed legislative guidelines to achieve increases in water use efficiency. From 1967 to 2000, the per acre application of water has experienced only a 2 percent increase while crop production has skyrocketed 89 percent. Benefiting from this improved use of water has been consumers across the globe.

This diatribe serves no purpose in resolving the issues that surround California water.

WATER SUPPLY

Mountain Counties Water Resources Association gears up for action

Story

From Mountain Democrat - Friday, Sept. 9, 2011

Condition for major reservoirs: Sept. 12, 2011

Chart

From DWR - Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2011