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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><FONT face=Garamond size=4><B>Courtesy of Mr. Bill
Kier</B></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><FONT face=Garamond
size=4><B></B></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">Tom Stokely<BR>Water Policy
Coordinator<BR>California Water Impact Network<BR>504A Lennon St. (USPS and
UPS)<BR>Mt Shasta, CA 96067<BR>V/FAX 530-926-9727<BR>Cell 530-524-0315<BR><A
href="mailto:tstokely@att.net">tstokely@att.net</A><BR><A
href="http://www.c-win.org/">http://www.c-win.org/</A></DIV>
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size=4><B></B></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><FONT face=Garamond size=4><B>California's claims
of three-year drought are all wet<BR></B> <BR>By Michael
Fitzgerald<BR>Record Columnist<BR>March 11, 2009 6:00 AM<BR><BR>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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>» Sacramento River: 77 percent<BR>» American River: 102
percent<BR>» Stanislaus River: 96 percent<BR>» San Joaquin River: 91
percent<BR><BR>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><BR>Officials say the snowpack is critically low. False. The
snow-water equivalent, according to the DWR itself, is 90
percent.<BR><BR>Officials say rainfall has been below average for three years.
That is true. There should be water anyway. More on that later.<BR><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><BR>Officials say reservoirs are dry. False. Here are the 15-year
average percentages for regional reservoirs.<BR><BR>» Shasta: 69<BR>» Oroville:
68<BR>» Folsom: 108<BR>» New Melones: 74<BR>» Millerton: 88.<BR><BR>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><BR>They may not fill brimful. But that is far from "the worst
California drought in modern history."<BR><BR>Besides, state officials, SoCal
water importers and other Chicken Littles don't mention they drained Northern
California reservoirs prior to February's storms.<BR><BR>"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><BR>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><BR>They irresponsibly
sucked reservoirs down. They nearly killed the Delta. They stopped only when a
federal judge called a halt.<BR><BR>"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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>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><BR>This delusion has been abetted by a series of governors from
Southern California, misguided regulators and politicians caving to
constituents.<BR><BR>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><BR>The Delta and the law be damned.<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR><A href="http://www.recordnet.com/blogs">Contact
columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com.
<BR></DIV></A><X-SIGSEP>
<P></X-SIGSEP>Kier Associates, <I>Fisheries and Watershed
Professionals<BR></I>P.O. Box 915<BR>Blue Lake, CA 95525<BR>707.668.1822
<BR>mobile: 498.7847 <BR></FONT><A href="http://www.kierassociates.net/"
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