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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:26.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
color:#003C62'>California's claims of three-year drought are all wet</span></b><span
style='font-size:26.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:#003C62'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:26.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:#003C62'><br>
</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>By </span><b><i><span
style='font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:#212121'>Michael Fitzgerald<br>
</span></i></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Stockton
Record Columnist<br>
March 11, 2009 6:00 AM<br>
</span><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><br>
</span><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>California's
"drought" is overblown. The alarmists calling it a historic disaster
are trying to pull a fast one.<br>
Rain fell constantly through February. The drought broke. Yet at month's end,
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ominously declared a "drought emergency."<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Earlier,
Lester Snow, head of the state Department of Water Resources, proclaimed,
"We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern
history."<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Not
even close. In reality - a word seldom placed in the same sentence as water in
California - rainfall is nearly normal for this time of year.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Don't
take my word for it. Here are the current 15-year average watershed
precipitation levels, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation:<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>»
Sacramento River: 77 percent<br>
» American River: 102 percent<br>
» Stanislaus River: 96 percent<br>
» San Joaquin River: 91 percent<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>That
is not a drought. That is below-average rainfall. And not far below average:
91.5 percent. But it is true Stockton's only at 75 percent.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Officials
say the snowpack is critically low. False. The snow-water equivalent, according
to the DWR itself, is 90 percent.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Officials
say rainfall has been below average for three years. That is true. There should
be water anyway. More on that later.<br>
Officials say there are more people in California now. Well, yes. The addition
of more people, however, does not constitute a drought, only perhaps an
expansion beyond resources.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Officials
say reservoirs are dry. False. Here are the 15-year average percentages for
regional reservoirs.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>»
Shasta: 69<br>
» Oroville: 68<br>
» Folsom: 108<br>
» New Melones: 74<br>
» Millerton: 88.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
average is 81.4 percent of normal - and rising. The inflow into Lake Shasta as
of midnight Saturday was 13,239 cubic feet per second. Reservoirs are filling.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>They
may not fill brimful. But that is far from "the worst California drought
in modern history."<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Besides,
state officials, SoCal water importers and other Chicken Littles don't mention
they drained Northern California reservoirs prior to February's storms.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>"In
the first year of the drought, we passed water like a drunken sailor,"
said Bill Jennings, head of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Some
perspective: In the 1990s, the state and feds exported 4 million acre-feet of
Delta water annually. In this decade - and well into the drought - officials
imprudently powered up exports to more than 6 million acre-feet a year.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>They
irresponsibly sucked reservoirs down. They nearly killed the Delta. They
stopped only when a federal judge called a halt.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>"We
cannibalized Northern California to sock it away in the Kern water bank and
Diamond Valley water bank down south," Jennings said, "giving no
thought to the question of a second or third year."<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>This
controversy is about more than a peripheral canal. It is about a state that
forgot how water rights work. Or special interests who are attempting to
overthrow them.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Many
of these distant users are last in line. Their contracts promise surplus in wet
years. Yet they now feel entitled to water deliveries every year.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
irony is, the entitlements are bogus. Be they big metropolitan water agencies
or small farmers, they've been had. Or they've been foolish.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
80-year average for Delta water is 29 million acre-feet annually. The state and
feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre-feet: 41/2 times reality.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Other
contracts bring total export contracts to an insane 245 million acre-feet, an
ocean of paper water promised to people who gauged their farms, businesses or
urban water consumption accordingly.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>This
delusion has been abetted by a series of governors from Southern California,
misguided regulators and politicians caving to constituents.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>So
the "solution" to the ginned-up drought really amounts to an
old-fashioned California water grab based on the failure to face nature's
limits.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
Delta and the law be damned.<br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>"It's
an attempt to rewrite 150 years of California water law and legal precedent,"
declared Jennings, "by giving the most junior and inferior water rights
equal footing with the most senior water rights. And to do that, its screws the
Delta and Northern California."</span></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bwl3@comcast.net"><span style='color:blue'>bwl3@comcast.net</span></a></span></i></b><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org"><span style='color:blue'>bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="http://fotr.org/"><span style='color:blue'>http://www.fotr.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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