[env-trinity] Sacramento Bee November 30, 2006

Byron bwl3 at comcast.net
Thu Nov 30 15:11:10 PST 2006


As many of you know, I don't like my name in print, but this one is worth it
- just state the facts.  Land in the Western San Joaquin Valley irrigated
with Trinity River water can be retired (and ultimately it must be - see
USGS Open File Report 

00-416) for far less money than any one or more of the current proposed
unproved, uncertain "solutions." 

 

Byron Leydecker

 


Selenium fix remains elusive


A solution to the problem will be expensive and could spawn its own
environmental issues.


Sacramento Bee - 11/30/06


By David Whitney - Bee Washington Bureau



Negotiations are under way to resolve one of the Central Valley's messiest
issues -- how to drain selenium-laced runoff from hundreds of thousands of
acres of federally irrigated land.

 

The Bureau of Reclamation, irrigators and other interested parties met for
about a week earlier this month in Sacramento in an effort to reach
agreement. More meetings are planned.

 

"We've begun talking with irrigators to come up with some sort of
collaborative resolution that meets everybody's needs, including the federal
taxpayers, the water users and the environment," bureau spokesman Jeff
McCracken said Wednesday.

 

Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral that in the right amounts is
essential to good health. But in vast areas of the Central Valley, farmlands
are so rich with it and other compounds that they must be flushed to remain
productive. The result is huge amounts of drain water that has such high
concentrations of selenium that it is toxic to fish and birds.

 

The dangers were dramatically revealed in the 1980s after drain water had
been directed to Kesterson Reservoir.

Deformed waterfowl were found in 1983, and releases there were halted in
1985. While there is some limited disposal into the San Joaquin River, a
permanent solution has remained elusive.

 

The drainage disaster spawned a federal lawsuit. One consequence so far has
been an order that the Bureau of Reclamation must find a way to drain and
dispose of the water that has inundated tens of thousands of acres.

 

Among the solutions on the table are bureau proposals to retire 308,000
acres of highly productive agricultural land so that it is no longer
irrigated, or to pump the contaminated drain water into the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta or the Pacific Ocean.

 

Other alternatives include treating it in the Valley by constructing four
large treatment plants with evaporation ponds as big as 3,300 acres.

None of the alternatives is environmentally benign, and all are expensive
and controversial.

 

Pacific Ocean dumping would involve construction of a pipeline through San
Luis Obispo County and into Morro Bay, with the outfall just 10 miles south
of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

 

Prospects for that alternative are not good. But the mere threat has
reinvigorated an effort to extend the boundaries of the marine sanctuary so
that ocean dumping would be barred in waters off the county's famously
spectacular coastline.

 

Neither is the proposed dumping in the Delta winning much support. One
alternative would end with an outflow near the Carquinez Bridge, another on
Chipps Island near Antioch. The volume of effluent could be as much as
70,000 acre-feet a year.

Westlands Water District spokeswoman Sarah Woolf called ocean or Delta
dumping "politically unviable."

"Congress is unlikely to fund it," she said.

 

But environmentalists don't like other alternatives that include four
industrial-size plants using a process called reverse osmosis to separate
the waste, sending it to huge evaporations ponds to dry for disposal.

 

Byron Leydecker, chairman of Friends of the Trinity River, said the
technology is untested and the evaporation ponds amount to
"mini-Kestersons."

 

"From the point of view of rational human beings, the answer is to retire
much of that land," Leydecker said.

 

But ceasing the irrigation of valuable cropland has met with resistance on
Capitol Hill, and is opposed by Westlands, the biggest irrigator in the
talks. Retiring 308,000 acres would cut its land base in half.

 

Whatever is decided will have to go before Congress for funding. The
cheapest alternative is the San Luis Obispo dumping at $589 million, and
other proposals range upwards of $700 million, although some think the costs
ultimately will soar past $1 billion.

 

The bureau issued a final environmental impact statement in May laying out
its alternatives. But on Aug. 1 the agency announced that it was suspending
completion of a final decision because the parties in the lawsuit had
indicated they wanted to explore settlement.

 

After a delay of more than three months, those talks finally got under way
two weeks ago. McCracken estimated that there were about 40 people attending
the sessions but could provide no other details because of their
confidentiality.

 

There is some time pressure, however. The bureau has notified the court that
it intends to move ahead with its own solution by Feb. 15, assuming no other
deal has been struck.#

 

Byron Leydecker

Friends of Trinity River, Chair

California Trout, Inc., Advisor

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810

415 383 9562 fax

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://www.caltrout.org

 

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