[env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Obama signs water bill with controversial rider

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_24718382-c728-11e6-bcf1-37f9d9c0a362.html

Obama signs water bill with controversial rider
   
   - By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal
 - 2 hrs ago
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President Obama on Friday signed a massive water infrastructure bill that includes controversial California provisions intended to maximize water deliveries for agriculture after years of drought.The overall bill, the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, includes federal programs for dealing with the lead contamination problem in Flint, Mich., and other areas with issues stemming from lead pipes. It authorizes water projects across the country to restore watersheds, improve waterways and flood control, and improve drinking water infrastructure.Much of the $10 billion water bill had broad support. However, the “midnight rider” added in shortly before the House vote in a deal between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has alarmed fisheries advocates.Feinstein touted the long-term aspects of the rider which she said are needed for California to not become a desert state.“We absolutely must hold water from wet years for use in dry years, and this bill will help accomplish that by investing more than $500 million in projects,” Feinstein said in a news release.The bill directs $30 million to desalinization projects, $150 million to water recycling and water conservation projects, $335 million to groundwater and surface storage projects and $43 million to projects that benefit fish and wildlife.Further California provisions that sunset in five years seek to increase water deliveries to farmers.The goal, Feinstein said, “is to run California’s water system based on good science, not intuition.”But critics, including fellow Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who worked on the broader bill, called the rider an attack on the Endangered Species Act.For example, the California provisions seek to maximize deliveries to farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Those deliveries currently are limited by concerns such as effects on fish from the reverse flow caused by pumping.The rider requires pumping from the Old and Middle rivers at the “most negative reverse flow rate allowed under the applicable biological opinion to maximize water supplies for the Central Valley Project and State Water Project.”There is the qualifier that pumping can’t harm fish listed under the Endangered Species Act or violate state law.The California provisions also call for mandatory CVP water deliveries to farmers based on water-year type.By basing water deliveries on water year but not water storage, there is potential for harm to fish and to other beneficial uses dependent on storage, including recreation, hydropower and even agriculture, said Tom Stokely, water policy coordinator for the California Water Impact Network.“It has a high potential to drain Shasta and Trinity reservoirs, especially during drought or recovery from drought,” he said.If strictly implemented, the California provisions could permanently deplete the cold water supplies for the Trinity and Sacramento rivers, Stokely said, causing massive mortality of fish.He did note that other sections of the bill prohibit conflict with state and federal laws, including the California Water Code, the Endangered Species Act and the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992.“The legal legacy of protection for the Trinity River provides adequate justification for the incoming Interior Secretary to ignore that part of the new law and keep Trinity Lake from being completely drained on a regular basis,” he said.Ronald Stork, senior policy advisor for Friends of the River, commented on the push to get more water through the Delta.“What tends to happen now is that the Delta is the bottleneck to getting water to go to the unfulfilled demand of the state and federal water projects,” Stork said. “To the extent that you push the rules that create the bottleneck more to one side it tends to leave the reservoirs in the areas of origin a bit lower on average.”Contractors are certainly hoping the bill increases water exports, Stork said, but he added that “this legislation does not prevent the State Water Resources Control Board from exercising adult supervision over the potentially new and reckless Reclamation.”Stork said the legislation was tempered due to Feinstein’s involvement, but he foresees more of this type of legislation coming down the pike.Because of the rider they referred to as a “poison pill,” the bill was opposed by Sen. Boxer, who sponsored the original legislation, and by Trinity County’s representative in the House Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who called the rider, “a slap in the face to all of us who want to enact good infrastructure policy, who have been working to deliver for the families of Flint, and whose states care about salmon fishing jobs.”But Feinstein called the bill the product of three years of effort and a compromise, saying, “A state with 40 million people simply can’t rely on a water system put in place when we were 16 million people, and this bill is a big step in the right direction.”   
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