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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The Trinity River is an artificial tributary of the
Sacramento River and its Delta. </FONT></DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><BR>Tom Stokely<BR></DIV>
<DIV></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV class=articleTitle><STRONG><FONT size=4>A 75-year-old promise no longer
holds water</FONT></STRONG></DIV><!--subtitle-->
<DIV class=articleSubTitle>
<LI>Backlog of requests for Delta water pile up as experts say system is already
maxed out</LI></DIV><!--byline-->
<DIV class=articleByline><A class=articleByline
href="mailto:mtaugher@cctimes.com?subject=ContraCostaTimes.com: A 75-year-old promise no longer holds water"><FONT
color=#000000>By Mike Taugher </FONT>
<P>STAFF WRITER</A></P></DIV><!--date-->
<DIV class=articleDate>Article Launched: 02/24/2008 03:05:04 AM
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<SPAN fd-id="default" fd-type="start" fd_id="default"
processing_id="43"></SPAN>During the Great Depression, the southern and central
parts of the state cut a deal with the north: Let us build big pumps and canals
to take your surplus water, and we'll give it back when you need it.
<P>The time to deliver on that promise may be nearing -- but coming through will
be tough because California's water supply is already threatened by climate
change, a declining Delta ecosystem and a desiccating Colorado Basin.
<P>The state agency responsible for doling out water rights, it turns out, has a
massive backlog of pending applications for Delta water at the same time experts
are coming to the conclusion that the system is already maxed out.
<P>This puts the state Water Resources Control Board in a difficult position:
how to satisfy historic assurances for the north at a time when the amount of
water available for other parts of the state is already being cut?
<P>"Those (applications from the north) can change the equation pretty
significantly," Vicky Whitney, the water rights division chief for the State
Water Resources Control Board, testified recently.
<P>The pending applications, which total more than all of the Delta water
delivered each year to Southern California, would, to the extent they are
granted, take water directly from the San Joaquin Valley and Southern
California, Whitney told a task force formed to develop solutions to the Delta's
water supply and environmental problems.
<P>California, Whitney said, "let permanent demand occur in geographic areas on
borrowed water." </P>
<P><B>Too much demand</B>
<P>The problems posed by the pending applications emerged in recent months
during meetings of the Delta Vision task force, appointed to solve the
intertwined problems of the Delta's deteriorating ecology and the state's
increasingly unreliable water supply.
<P>Members of the task force, who were becoming convinced that too much water
was being promised from the Delta, wanted to know how much more water was being
sought in the rivers and streams that ultimately drain to the estuary.
<P>The number that came back was startling: 4.8 million acre-feet a year, a
figure greater than the 4.1 million acre-feet under contract -- but rarely
delivered fully -- from the sprawling State Water Project that serves 25 million
people in Southern California and 750,000 acres of farms in Kern County.
<P>And that does not count an additional 3 million acre-feet to 5 million
acre-feet being requested by the state on behalf of Northern California
counties.
<P>Not all of those unfulfilled claims will prove legitimate.
<P>But played out to its worst extreme, the situation could dry up Delta water
supplies to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, regions that are
highly dependent on Delta water delivered through the State Water Project and
the smaller, federal Central Valley Project.
<P>"I don't get terribly panicky about this," said Jerry Johns, deputy director
of the state Department of Water Resources, which manages the State Water
Project. "This is something that will play out over a series of years. There
will be time to adjust to this."
<P><B>Solution didn't happen</B>
<P>The situation echoes the fight over the Colorado River, where seven states,
including California, divided up rights to the river's flow in 1922. That
dilemma arose because states, relying on a string of wet years, assumed the
river carried more water on average than it really did.
<P>Meanwhile, Southern California was, for a time, allowed to use more than its
share of the Colorado River. That began to end in 2003, when California agreed
to wean itself off the excess use of the river so other states, especially
Nevada and Arizona, could take their share.
<P>In the Delta, water contracts were signed at a time when optimistic state
planners were counting on major new dams to supply water from the Eel, Klamath
and Trinity Rivers on the North Coast.
<P>Those dams, which might have supplied an additional 5 million acre-feet of
water to the Delta, were never built.
<P>The result is that just like what happened on the Colorado River, parts of
California developed on overly optimistic water supply estimates and an
obligation to eventually return "surplus" water.
<P>Johns said it is incumbent on Southern California water agencies to develop
more water supplies, conservation programs and other plans to make up for future
losses on the Delta.
<P>It is unknown how many of the pending applications will be granted. But the
fact that the demands in the north are on a collision course with the rest of
the state should not be a surprise because the North Coast rivers were put off
limits to dams in the 1970s and 1980s when those rivers were designated wild and
scenic.
<P>"They've known that water supply wasn't going to be there for about 25
years," said John Herrick, manager of the South Delta Water Agency. "Nobody
planned. That doesn't mean the solution would be easy, but they've had 25
years."
<P>Further, the solution most often touted by some water agencies -- an aqueduct
to connect the Sacramento River directly with south Delta pumps -- will not work
if the underlying problem is an insufficient water supply, some critics contend.
<P>"The early plans anticipated developing a lot more water," said Greg
Gartrell, assistant general manager of the Contra Costa Water District. "That
never happened. The result is that the system has been squeezed to what appears
to be a limit. A (peripheral canal) will not solve the lack of water."
<P><B>A promise from 1933</B>
<P>The deal over water distribution stems from a string of laws dating more than
70 years that were intended to prevent a repeat of Los Angeles' water raid on
the Owens Valley, an incident made famous in the movie "Chinatown."
<P>The laws, referred to collectively as "area of origin" laws, require water
users in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley to give Delta water back
when the region needs it and can use it.
<P>But the laws have rarely been exercised or tested in courts, leaving it
unclear how far the rights extend.
<P>The key is a 1933 promise that water will be made available to the watershed
where the water originates or in areas "immediately adjacent to" the watershed
that can be "conveniently" supplied with water from it.
<P>Rather than test how broadly that language applies, state water officials in
2002 negotiated a deal with the cities of Benicia, Fairfield and Vacaville that
provided the cities with the water they wanted without setting a precedent that
defined them as being in the area of origin.
<P>Benicia, in particular, was making a claim that some water officials did not
want to see cemented in precedent. That city's watershed drains to the Carquinez
Strait, which the city argued was a historical source of fresh water but other
water officials said did not properly belong in the area of origin.
<P>Today, the biggest applications are from the Stockton East Water District,
Delta Wetlands Properties, a private enterprise that is trying to build
for-profit reservoirs in the Delta, and the Westlands Water District, a
600,000-acre farm district whose claim to San Joaquin River flow sparked outrage
from other farmers. Other applicants include the growing Sacramento region and
the cities of Davis, Stockton and Woodland.
<P>"Part of their responsibility was to go out and develop that water," said
Kevin Kauffman, general manager of the Stockton East Water District, which has
applied for 1.4 million acre-feet of water to accommodate growth and recharge an
overused aquifer. "They just simply haven't done it."
<P>Taken together, those applications represent an enormous potential strain on
a water system that has already been stretched past the breaking point.
<P>In December, for example, a federal judge imposed water delivery cuts to
prevent one fish species, Delta smelt, from going extinct. State wildlife
officials are imposing more restrictions to protect another fish species, the
longfin smelt.
<P>And the Delta Vision panel all but concluded that Delta water supplies would
shrink in coming years to protect the environment.
<P>"Everything points in the direction of not just being fully allocated, but
way overallocated right now," William Reilly, a former U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency administrator under the first President Bush and a member of
the Delta Vision panel, concluded at a recent hearing.
<P>Michael Jackson, an environmental lawyer in Plumas County and a director of
the California Water Impact Network, said about 5 million acre-feet of water
originates in the Sierra Nevada county but only about 2,000 acre-feet of water
rights exist there.
<P>He said it is time for the water resources board to open a formal proceeding,
likely to take years, to straighten out how much water is available and how best
to distribute it while protecting the public trust values of that water.
<P>"The thing that makes the state board the only place you can probably solve
it is they have the ability to put everybody's five leading experts on the
stand, and then let everybody's leading lawyers cross-examine them," Jackson
said. "There's no more B.S."
<P>Jackson said the board has not wanted to exercise that power in the past.
<P>"It comes with unexpected result," he said, adding that the board appears
more willing to wade into the problem recently.
<P>"It's like they're waking up from a deep sleep," he said.
<P>Mike Taugher covers natural resources. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or <A
href="mailto:mtaugher@bayareanewsgroup.com">mtaugher@bayareanewsgroup.com</A>.
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