Delta Flows- July 7, 2010
Training wheels
Richard Roos-Collins, one of Governor Schwarzenegger’s appointees to the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC), has resigned. Roos-Collins, an attorney for the Natural Heritage Institute, had previously served on the BDCP steering committee. Restore the Delta and other groups thought that this constituted a conflict of interest, since one function of the DSC is to evaluate the BDCP.
Roos-Collins had not yet been confirmed by the Senate. The Governor’s other three appointees – Phil Isenberg, Randy Fiorini, and Hank Nordhoff – also have not been confirmed. California law allows a Governor’s appointees to serve for one year pending confirmation.
The DSC will have a Delta Plan long before that. So confirmation is kind of a moot point: so much for legislative oversight and accountability.
And think what the newly-reactivated Water Commission could do with water bond money before they are formally confirmed in their positions? Newly condemned land in the Delta for new conveyance? New dams?
Pipe dream
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) has produced a June 2010 Status Update with several interesting maps. They’re looking at management strategies and “opportunity areas,” and considering “site selection criteria” for 5 in-river intakes at 3,000 CFS capacity each (“to avoid high population density areas”).
If you aren’t looking carefully, you could miss this subtle change on the map titled “Proposed Conveyance and Habitat Restoration Options”: the central alignment is identified as a “Pipeline/Tunnel.”
We don’t remember seeing the term “pipeline” being used in earlier BDCP documents. This map describes the “Pipeline/Tunnel” as having “2 bores, each 33 feet inside diameter.” That was the same as last summer’s “tunnel” description.
In a future update, we expect to see “tunnel” dropped altogether. “Pipeline” seems so much smaller, so inconspicuous.
You can find a PDF to download at this website: http://www.baydeltaconservationplan.com/bdcppages/BDCPInfoFactSheets.aspx
We’ve been framed
Have you noticed that certain words and phrases are used over and over again to describe the Delta, while other conditions never get described at all? Discussions about the Delta have been “framed” by people invested in seeing it in a particular way, whether or not that way is accurate.
Think about how often you have seen the Delta described as the “hub” of California’s water system, as if that image conveyed everything important about the region.
But anyone looking at the system honestly would have to admit that the Delta’s days as a “hub” are over. Water coming in is limited, fluctuating, and/or compromised. Sending historic levels of that water out is fatal to the ecosystem.
Describing it instead as “an estuary formerly used as the hub of California’s water system” might help push public perceptions in the direction of regional sustainability.
Another example of insidious framing: In the early drafts of the Regional Conditions Report for the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, every time the phrase “levee failure” appeared, it was preceded by the word “catastrophic.”
People in the Delta know that not every levee failure is a catastrophe, and catastrophe is less likely if adequate emergency response systems are in place. Restore the Delta managed to get a lot of those “catastrophics” out of the report, but not all of them.
One indicator that Senator Feinstein is still thinking inside the box about the Delta is the language in the bill proposing a NHA. Look at what the language says and what it doesn’t say.
Said:
“The Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta is in crisis . . . invasive species are predominant in the Delta . . . the native species of the Delta . . . are in decline . . .”
Not said:
Changes in hydrology resulting from export pumping have given invasive species a foothold in the Delta and have pushed toward extinction four ESA-listed runs of salmon that depend on sufficient clean cold water flowing through the Delta.
Said:
“pollutants and chemicals have deteriorated the water quality . . . studies indicate that effluent from wastewater treatment plants on the rivers and tributaries of the Delta have changed the food web and negatively impacted native species . . . derelict ships, in particular, the Ghost Fleet of abandoned World War II era Military Ships, leach toxic chemicals into the waterways . . .”
Not said:
Toxic run-off from unaddressed drainage issues in the Southern San Joaquin valley contributes to degraded water quality in the Delta. The history of Kesterson Reservoir tells us that the selenium packed runoff from the Westside of the San Joaquin Valley is capable of causing disfiguring mutation to the offspring of waterfowl.
Said:
“the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta is at risk. . .”
Not said:
Conditions in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta make it impossible to continuing exploiting the region as a hub of the state’s water system and a profit center for exporters of taxpayer-subsidized water.
Said:
“as levees and water exports have altered the flow of water through the system, many of the islands of the Delta are between 10 and 20 feet below sea level . . . many of the levees in the Delta are at risk of failure, threatening communities and infrastructure with flooding, and the risk of an earthquake in the Delta is high. . .”
Not said:
The state has increased exports of water through the Delta without committing to maintaining all the levees that contribute to sustaining the export system and regional infrastructure. Periodic levee breeches that would otherwise have primarily local impact thus become a threat beyond the Delta region. Despite the region’s proximity to fault lines in the San Francisco Bay Area, Delta levees have never collapsed in reaction to earthquakes to the west. However, the rigid, concrete-lined California aqueduct on which millions of export users rely runs along a fault line on the western side of the Central Valley, making continued reliance on this infrastructure unwise.
Plus, rather than developing new technologies for environmentally sensitive/responsible dredging to help with levee maintenance, dredging for Delta maintenance has been curtailed by the state.
If the NHA process were to begin in the Delta itself, we would start out with a much different picture than the one painted by DWR, the PPIC, and Delta Vision and now seen everywhere in government documents and in state and national media.
The more control we have over how the Delta is described, the more control we will have over its fate and our own.
New lawsuit considers groundwater and the public trust
The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) and the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF) have filed a lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board and Siskiyou County based on the idea of using the public trust doctrine to regulate groundwater.
Since 1980, the State Board has regulated pumping of groundwater within 500 feet of the Scott River, where the Legislature had found geology and hydrology to be uniquely interconnected (Water Code Section 2500.5 (b). PCFFA and ELF assert that failure to regulate more distant pumping has depleted surface flows and hastened the decline of the coho salmon.
See “Should the public trust doctrine be extended to groundwater?” at http://baydelta.wordpress.com/
“Paper Water” online
Bruce Tokars of Salmon Water Now has been prolific in producing informative videos about water politics and posting them online where they can reach a lot of viewers. His most recent effort is “Paper Water: and Other Sordid Tales.” This is a great overview of Stewart Resnick, the Kern Water Bank, The Monterey Amendments, and Paper Water. You can watch this in four parts on YouTube. The whole 35-minute video is also posted on Vimeo.
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