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.
Subscribe via RSS
One Comment
Thanks for calling for public response to support the flow studies. The delta critically needs more water, especially in dry years and especially from the San Joaquin River. There needs to be monitoring and conservation upstream of the delta, as well as
more restricted exports from the delta. We have been using the delta simply as a conveyance system for water, ignoring it habitat needs, as the National Academy of Sciences discovered recently. See story at http://californiaspigot.blogspot.com.