Senior Attorney and California Water Legislative Director

A water weary reporter recently asked me why people should pay attention to the State Water Resources Control Board’s public trust flow recommendations, due to be finalized next week. “I mean, isn’t this just another report to sit on another shelf?” It’s a fair question, but adding more paper to more shelves was certainly not the intent of the lawmakers who fought hard to keep this key aspect of last fall’s Delta legislation intact.

Others are seeing value in the Board’s work as well. As the San Francisco Chronicle put it last week, the Delta “is not a bottomless well.” The Chronicle went on to say that the Water Board’s draft public trust flow analysis is a “bell-ringing reminder of the obvious,” that our 70-year trend of increasing diversions from the Delta is not sustainable and that “California can’t keep tapping the Delta without harming it.”

The San Jose Mercury News reached similar, if even more pointed, conclusions opining that, “The first, second and third priority for the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, is preserving its health.” This is no wild-eyed green diatribe, but the view from the Valley, Silicon Valley, that its economic future is linked to ensuring the health of the Bay-Delta. The Mercury News connected the dots from last fall’s water deal to tomorrow’s water costs, noting – perhaps with a touch of irritation – the disparity between what is being asked of cities versus agriculture: “The agreement [in the Delta legislation] demands that urban water users reduce their consumption by 20 percent. How much does it ask of the agriculture industry, which grabs 80 percent of the water used by California? Zero.”

And of course the flow criteria will not stay shelf bound if the fishing industry has any say in the matter. The always colorful Zeke Grader (you have admire anyone who can find a way to use “horse manure” and “reflexive mendacity” in the same article) makes the point that in many ways the Board’s determination that we are over-diverting from the Delta is not new, but echoes prior draft findings that did not make their way to Board adoption. In the view of Mr. Grader and many of his compatriots, nothing less than the future of salmon fishing in California may be at stake.

The Board and its staff have done the hard part, pulling together years of science and piles of studies demonstrating that the higher flows are needed to restore and preserve the health of the estuary. Adopting this report and its flow criteria should be easy. Editorial boards and salmon fishermen are noticing the significance of the announcement, and you can bet that legislative leaders and others will notice too. The Board’s findings will be a significant data point for key water policy decisions going forward, including the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process. Californians are beginning to recognize that we need to conserve our water resources for the future. A weary corps of water reporters may just have some significant news to look forward to next week.

Senior Attorney and California Water Legislative Director

The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) took a critical step forward today by issuing draft public trust flow criteria for the Bay-Delta Estuary. Synthesizing 30-or-so years of data collection and scientific analysis, the State Board concluded that the oft-stated goal of restoring the largest and most biologically important estuary on the West Coast will require better and more regular freshwater flows.

To synthesize the 190-page document into a couple of sentences: over the last couple of decades, California has diverted about 50 percent of the flow of the Sacramento River, and about 66 percent of the flow of the San Joaquin River, and about 50 percent of the water that used to make its way to the San Francisco Bay has not for quite some time (see page 5 of the report).

The draft criteria acknowledge what the overwhelming weight of science has shown for many years: this level of diversion is not compatible with our long-stated goal of a healthy Bay-Delta Estuary, a functioning salmon fishery, and an end to conflict over listed endangered species.

It confirms that the best available science shows that substantially increased flows are critically necessary to keep the largest and most biologically significant West Coast estuary from continuing its downward spiral. Read more »

Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF

What a difference a year makes.

In 2009, some farmers within Westlands Water District, having received only 10% of their maximum contractual entitlement for water from the federal Central Valley Project, were forced to pay $450 per acre-foot for the limited supplies that were available on the open market to keep their trees alive. That’s why it seems so surprising to us that now, just a year later, in 2010, as part of an exchange agreement with Metropolitan Water District, some Westlands farmers will be sending part of their supply to urban southern California expecting to get only 2/3 of it back in 2011.

An urban water district banking water for an agricultural district? Read more »

Senior Water Resource Analyst

Last Tuesday marked the second formal gathering of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences Committee on Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta. The meeting (the first of three days of meetings) focused on an overview of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan and “other stressors” impacting the ecosystem including pesticides and nutrients. The panel, which was formed at the request of Congress and the Departments of Interior and Commerce, is in the midst of the second phase of the project after releasing their first influential report on the scientific basis of the smelt and salmon Biological Opinions in May 2010.

The second phase of the project is focusing on incorporating science and adaptive management (adjusting restoration approach based on outcomes) into management and restoration of the Bay-Delta. Read more »

Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF

It was nice to read yesterday that Fresno is finally installing water meters. It is about time. You do not have to be an economist to realize that when customers pay for the water they use, they somehow find ways to use less. Read more »

Last Thursday, the Delta Stewardship Council took a firm stand by failing to act. They declined to approve a proposal from the Department of Water Resources to spend $35M  in State funds on a series of levee projects (see Agenda Item 8). Council members posed several tough questions that went unanswered and eventually asked DWR to return in June for further consideration of the matter. By declining to rubber-stamp the proposal, the Council may have set a precedent that could lead to a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach to solving problems in the Delta than we’ve seen in the last several decades.

Read more »

A guest post by Ben Tulchin, President and Founder of Tulchin Research, a leading polling and strategic consulting firm.

Yesterday the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released poll results about the California water bond. These results vary wildly from the poll Tulchin Research conducted back in February.

Our February 2010 poll showed the water bond losing big—with 55 percent of likely voters indicating they would vote no on the proposed $11 billion bond.

To me, this was an indication that the water bond is in deep trouble. Read more »

Mark Hitchcock Legal Fellow, EDF

Yesterday’s federal court ruling issuing an injunction against portions of the 2009 salmon Biological Opinion is disappointing and even alarming. We are extremely appreciative of Earthjustice and NRDC for their great work in handling the litigation, but dismayed that a federal judge chose to strike down measures that were recently endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. As Doug Obegi from NRDC points out, the Court ignored numerous findings that the salmon protections at issue are supported by the best available science.

In halting implementation of protections for salmon, the Court regurgitated old arguments and invented some new ones. Read more »

Eric Holst is Managing Director of EDF's Center for Conservation Incentives

A guest blog post by Eric Holst, Managing Director of EDF’s Center for Conservation Incentives.

Nitrate pollution in groundwater is a critical and under-reported problem associated with food production in California—an issue that journalists Julia Scott, Sasha Khokha, Christopher Beaver and Lisa Pickoff-White have reported on over the past week.

Nitrate is a reactive form of nitrogen that can leach into groundwater as a result of a number of agricultural practices including over-application of nitrogen fertilizer or manure on crops, and pastures. Additionally, discharges from wastewater treatment plants and septic tank leakage can lead to nitrate pollution in surface and groundwater supplies. Read more »

Ashley Rood is a Research and Outreach Associate.

“The Delta is a solvable problem.”

These were the closing words of Lester Snow, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, in his testimony at Tuesday’s legislative hearing on the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).

(For any hibernating blog readers, the BDCP is a planning effort centered around the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary that would restore marsh habitat and enable recovery of a variety of endangered fish while improving reliable water supplies to farms and cities in California.)

It was the second such oversight hearing convened by Chair Jared Huffman of the Assembly Parks and Wildlife Committee. Read more »