[env-trinity] SF Chron Editorial: Invest in water infrastructure - forests

[Sari Sommarstrom]

AB2480 bill includes Trinity River, Upper Sac River watersheds.

Invest in water infrastructure - forests

San Francisco Chronicle

July 23, 2016 Updated: July 24, 2016 5:04pm 

 

Photo: Tom Stienstra, The Chronicle 

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This photo shows muddy water flowing into the McCloud River watershed.

As California has struggled to live with drought, cries have gone up for new
dams, expanded reservoirs, and construction of a pair of enormous water
tunnels to store and deliver water more reliably. But what about the need to
maintain the capacity of the land to soak up and slowly shed rainwater and
snowmelt? Shouldn't we consider the water-gathering capabilities of our
forests as part of our water infrastructure, too?

 
<https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=20152
0160AB2480> AB2480, carried by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica,
would recognize watersheds as essential to water storage and delivery as the
pipes, canals, dams and aqueducts that make up our state's water
infrastructure. This would mean watershed maintenance and restoration would
receive the same consideration for financing as building a dam.

Laurie A. Wayburn, the co-founder and president of
<https://www.pacificforest.org/?gclid=CIK0jsiuiM4CFYaYvAodHeMG0A> Pacific
Forest Trust, which is working with Bloom on the legislation, suggests
improvements in the five key watersheds of California - the Trinity, the
McCloud, the Feather, the Pit and the Upper Sacramento - could yield 5 to 20
percent more water. These five watersheds, all located in the northeastern
corner of the state, provide 80 percent of California's water, including 85
percent of the water flowing into San Francisco Bay.

The concept, though, could apply to any watershed.

The northeastern forests, however, are not in the best of shape - Bloom
described their condition to the state Senate Natural Resources and Water
Committee as "distinctly suboptimal." These logged-over forests are now
crowded with young, second- or third-growth pine and fir. Most of the land
(62 percent) is federal forest, with 32 percent private lands, and much of
the rest tribal domains.

To bring them back to their natural best, land managers would need to thin
the forest to create more gaps between the trees. A less dense forest canopy
would allow more snow to fall to the ground than cling to treetops, where it
evaporates quickly. The shade would slow the snowmelt and cool the air,
allowing the watershed to store more water and - importantly - shed it into
streams and rivers later into the spring and summer. Thinning, and other
activities such as stream restoration, would provide 7,000 jobs (direct,
indirect and induced) in a region of high unemployment.

"We need to invest in the state's water infrastructure," Wayburn said. "This
is the cheapest thing we can do to get more water and more reliable water."

Climate models show that as the state warms, this northeastern corner will
become cooler and wetter - and thus potentially yield more water in the
future.

Wayburn's trust and a host of environmental organization are on board in
support of AB2480. The Association of California Water Agencies supports the
objectives (which are also embodied in the state water plan), but is opposed
to any scheme to tax water users to finance watershed restoration.

While "who pays" is always the question, it is one to take up another day.
AB2480 recognizes nature's work as valuable as human-engineered parts of our
water infrastructure - and just as worthy of restoration, care and
maintenance.

 

 

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