[env-trinity] Times-Standard- Trinity advocates watch Central Valley contracts

[Tom Stokely]

Eureka Times-Standard 
http://www.times-standard.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,127%257E2896%257E2714403,00.html 
Trinity advocates watch Central Valley contracts 
By John Driscoll The Times-Standard 

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - 

Northern California interests are lining up to protest the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's 
plans to forge long-term water contracts with irrigators in the Central Valley -- pacts 
Trinity River advocates believe threaten the river's source of cold water. 

Humboldt and Trinity counties, fishing and environmental groups and the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency are among those who have lodged complaints about 
the environmental documents drafted for the 25-year contracts for the Central Valley 
Project. Specifically, the groups focused on contracts for the San Luis Unit, which 
include eight water contractors in the Western San Joaquin Valley. 

Essentially, the groups say that the document doesn't explore just how Reclamation 
will supply promised water to the unit while cutting exports from the Trinity River, as 
cleared in a case won by the Hoopa Valley Tribe in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of 
Appeals. 

One longtime expert, Trinity County Senior Planner Tom Stokely, believes the water 
in part will have to be pulled out of Trinity Reservoir. If the lake were drawn down 
further than typical in the fall, more water from winter rains and snow could be 
stored before spilling over Lewiston Dam, he said. That could allow more water to be 
exported to the Sacramento River, from where water is sent to Central Valley 
irrigators. 

"It's the only way they can send more water to these districts," Stokely said. 

It could also deplete the cold water available in the fall for salmon in the Trinity and 
the Klamath River, which it flows into. 

Among the districts whose contract is up in 2007 is Westlands Water District, the 
nemesis of the Hoopa Valley Tribe during the five-year legal battle and 30-year war 
over the river's water. Westlands in January conceded its case to the tribe, clearing 
the way for higher flows and fish restoration efforts on the river. 

In recent years, the state and federal water pact called CalFed has provided Westlands 
with between 55 percent and 70 percent of its contracted deliveries. The 2000 federal 
decision to restore the river -- cleared through the circuit court -- calls for a reduction 
in that amount, to 50 percent. 

But a Dec. 23, 2004, letter to Congressman George Miller from Reclamation 
Commissioner John Keyes III suggests that the agency intends to deliver the full 
amount to its contractors by 2025. In Westlands' case, it's difficult to know where that 
water would come from. The district is the primary beneficiary of Trinity water as 
laid out in the 1955 legislation that authorized the Trinity project. 

Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said a number of studies are underway that look at 
increasing the yield of the Central Valley Project, a vast array of reservoirs and 
canals. The assumption that 100 percent of the water could be delivered is from 
projections that new or improved storage will come on line, McCracken said, and that 
increased yields can be gained from the system's reservoirs. 

"To meet all our environmental needs we use water from our reservoirs," McCracken 
said, "and in order to meet all our contractual needs we would use all of our reservoirs." 

But in allocations for 2005 released Tuesday, Reclamation is allowing for 65 percent of 
water deliveries for agriculture south of the Sacramento River Delta, including the 
San Joaquin Valley. 

Stokely can't see how that figure can be reached, since the Trinity restoration plan 
calls for a reduction in water exports to 50 percent. The water would have to come 
from storage -- including Trinity Lake, he said -- since none of the bureau's long-term 
projects have been realized. 

Nearly half of Westlands requires drainage service that it doesn't have, and some 
districts in the area are waterlogged and contaminated with boron and salt. Providing 
for drainage could cost billions. 

The draft document for the San Luis Unit doesn't look at a range of alternatives 
including not renewing the contracts; doesn't address reducing water deliveries to 
waterlogged lands; or consider how contaminated runoff will be drained from those 
areas, Humboldt County's letter to Reclamation reads. 

The EPA called the document "inadequate" since it doesn't deal with the 
environmental impacts of full water deliveries or those deliveries' effects on drainage. 

A slate of environmental groups like Friends of the Trinity River and California Trout 
ask that the draft document be tossed out. It never addresses the benefits of retiring 
land in the Central Valley, or deals with the toxic drainage issue, the groups wrote. 

It also only casually references the bureau's trust responsibilities to the Hoopa Valley 
and Yurok Tribes. 

In its comments, the Hoopa Tribe claims Reclamation is looking at the contract 
renewals in a vacuum, without considering the needs of the Trinity. Reclamation 
must consider reductions in water exports as a possibility, the tribe wrote. 

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