[env-trinity] AP Story on Planned Delta Pumping Increase South

[Byron]

Plan to release more California delta water stirs controversy 

Associated Press - 11/30/04

By Juliana Barbassa, staff writer

FRESNO -- A plan to increase fresh-water pumping from the San
Joaquin-Sacramento river delta is pitting Central Valley farmers who want
the water for their crops against environmentalists and delta farmers who
fear the move will undermine years of fishery and water quality restoration
efforts.

The proposal would increase the amount of water pumped out of the delta, a
fragile ecosystem that already supplies water for 22 million Californians as
far south as Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of Central Valley
farmland.

The increased flow would help stabilize the amount of water delivered to
farmers in the western half of the Central Valley, giving them the ability
to better plan for long-term or higher-value crops, farmers in the region
said. Those farmers, who have had their water flows limited over the past
decade as water was diverted to wildlife refuges, say it is time they get
the water they were promised.

But environmentalists say the move could reverse years -- and millions of
dollars worth -- of ecosystem restoration work. Reducing fresh water flows
to the delta could affect its water quality by increasing salinity and
temperature, possibly threatening the salmon that have been slowly returning
to the region's rivers, advocates say.

Opponents to the plan also say it undermines a decade of cooperation under
CalFed, a state-federal water management program designed to balance the
water supply demands of urban and rural users with environmental
considerations.

"This is an old-fashioned water grab," said Barry Nelson of the Natural
Resources Defense Council.

Since 1992, CalFed has overseen the spending of about $500 million in state
and federal funds to reverse some of the damage that 150 years of mining and
water diversion did to the delta. The effort has helped restore the delicate
balance between fresh water from the mountain rivers and salt water from the
San Francisco Bay that is essential to salmon and other species of marine
and plant life.

The restoration effort has brought back a naturally reproducing salmon
population that had almost disappeared. In the early 1990s, only a few
hundred winter-run Chinook salmon were making their way through the Golden
Gate Bridge, through the delta and up Sierra Nevada rivers like the
Tuolumne, Merced and Sacramento. Now, thousands of fish fight the currents
to make their way up the rivers every winter.

At the center of the current controversy is the state-operated Harvey O.
Banks pump, nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Tracy. The linchpin
in California's Byzantine plumbing system, it currently sucks more than 4
billion gallons of water a day out of the delta. The proposal would increase
its pumping limit by up to 25 percent.

For the past 12 years, water agencies that serve farmers in the Central
Valley have endured federally mandated water cutbacks so that water quality
could be improved and fisheries could be restored, said Tupper Hull, a
representative of Westlands, an agency that delivers delta water to nearly
600,000 acres of farmland.

Growers working about 1 million acres in the western valley have been
getting only between 40 percent and 70 percent of their water allotment,
while nearly 1 million cubic feet of water they had relied on annually was
used for wildlife restoration.

"The impact of that was felt down in the Central Valley," said Jeff
McCracken, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation. "It's been
very hard to give them the water they need."

Now, farmers are pointing to the increased numbers of salmon swimming up
Sierra Nevada rivers, and saying it's time for state and federal agencies to
send them their share of water.

An increased flow of fresh water from the delta would give Central Valley
farmers a more reliable water supply, they say.

"It would let us do better planning, and it would give us more confidence to
invest in higher-value crops," said Jean Errotabere, who farms 3,500 acres
of lettuce, almonds, garlic and other crops in the Westlands.

"It would help us plan better. When we make investments, we can't have
uncertainty be a part of it," said Dan Errotabere, who farms 3,500 acres of
lettuce, almonds, garlic and other crops in the Westlands. He is the
irrigation district's chairman.

But environmental groups and farmers who work the low-lying islands inside
the delta's meandering canals want the water cutbacks to Central Valley
farmers to remain in place. They worry that the increased pumping will
affect the delicate ecological balance of the delta.

That could degrade water quality, kill thousands of endangered fish and
further alter river flows, said Nelson of the NRDC.

Water quality is "absolutely a question of survival" for delta farmers, said
Dante John Nomellini, who represents the Central Delta water agency. The
agency serves about 120,000 acres of farmland in western San Joaquin County.

It doesn't make sense to take more water out of the delta while water
quality is still a worry for farmers, urban users and environmentalists in
the region, Nomellini said.

"We could blend this into a workable solution that could be beneficial to
the exporters, the people in the delta and the fish and wildlife," he said. 

"But there's a lot of work to be done."

 

 

Byron Leydecker

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 519 4810 ce

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://www.caltrout.org

 

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