A time to deliver water solutions

By Tom Philp -
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, January 14, 2007

There is a Spanish proverb about procrastination: "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week." It could have just as easily been written by a California water official. The scale of the state's water projects -- hundreds of miles of aqueducts and more than 2,000 dams -- is only matched by the scale of the side effects. A dam and two aqueducts on the San Joaquin River, for example, diverted water to Central Valley farms and dried up the river downstream. The dam was built during World War II, but the solution didn't take shape until recently. Why? Waiting until tomorrow is a tempting alternative when the safest option is to do absolutely nothing.

The politics of procrastination, however, may finally be reaching its limit for several California water fights. Lawsuits, legal deadlines and acts of Mother Nature are changing the political landscape. At some point, doing something becomes the only option. Is it now? If so, things are about to get interesting, and expensive. Major problems tend to get solved with somebody else's money, namely yours. This isn't a proverb, but it might as well be.

For those working to fix some of the complex problems facing California's water needs, this is a year decisions are supposed to be made that would break through decades of gridlock and lead to historic changes in the state's plumbing system. Four dams in Northern California might come down. A controversial canal in the Delta might be built. A strange, dying sea in Southern California might undergo a resuscitation and reconfiguration. And stretches of the San Joaquin River, which have run dry since the Truman administration, might flow with water once again.

"It is no coincidence that these are all teed up at the same time," said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which quenches the thirst of 18 million people and is one of the dominant water players at the table in the state's quest to divvy up water.

Uneasy about procrastinating any longer, water districts like Metropolitan -- in a combination of civic altruism and naked self-interest -- want to shore up the reliability of their water supply.

"We are entering a period that we know to have reliable water supplies, we have to solve the environmental issues," Kightlinger said.

Is this truly the Era of Doing Something?

Here is a tour of the terrain -- the problems and controversies -- that lies ahead.

THE DELTA

THE PROBLEM: "It's broken," said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top water official.

That pretty much sums it up.

The fish that live in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are struggling. The official counts of species such as Delta smelt, shad and bass are at, or near, the lowest numbers ever recorded.

One of the hemisphere's most important estuaries, the Delta also doubles as a water transportation conduit for Southern California residents and San Joaquin Valley farmers. State and federal pumps at the southern end of the Delta pull water past some 1,500 miles of levees that protect Delta islands. Many of the islands are like bowls sitting in water. The farmland at the bottom of these bowls is kept dry by the levees. Tilling the islands for crops year after year has exposed the rich peat soil to the sun, causing the soil to oxidize and blow away. Were the levees to fail due to an earthquake, a flood or age, as one did on a calm day in June 2004, entire islands could quickly disappear as saltwater rushes in from the San Francisco Bay, rendering the Delta an undrinkable water supply.

"There is no way that the Delta can maintain its present configuration," said Peter Moyle, a fisheries biologist and professor at the University of California, Davis, who has studied the Delta for years. "You can't have islands subside as sea level continues to rise. That is incompatible."

THE HAMMER: There are several.

Schwarzenegger is expected to appoint a commission to propose solutions. He signaled in his State of the State speech his desire to increase water supplies -- a near impossibility without a healthier Delta. State and federal agencies are working in a separate process to devise a long-term plan. Snow's agency is coming up with yet another plan to deal with the disaster scenario, a sudden collapse of the Delta levee system. And three lawsuits are challenging whether the state and federal pumping projects comply with environmental laws to protect fish.

THE CONTROVERSY: The peripheral canal.

Rejected by California voters in 1982, the aqueduct was proposed decades earlier. The proposal is back. "It is going to be in the discussion, for sure," Moyle said. "It has to be."

As its name implies, the canal would bypass the Delta by transporting water from the Sacramento River, south of the capital, east around the Delta and connect with the federal and state aqueducts to the south. The Delta would have less fresh water moving through it. But this water would behave more naturally, heading out to sea rather than toward huge pumps sending the water south. Two big upsides: A water supply for two-thirds of the state's residents would no longer be dependent on suspect Delta levees. And the fish in the Delta may prefer the change. One big downside: A saltier Delta would imperil agriculture on the Delta Islands, threatening these businesses and requiring a transition to a different future.

"This is the year where we need to take a hard look at it," Kightlinger said of the peripheral canal.

THE SAN JOAQUIN RIVER

THE PROBLEM: California's second-longest river essentially stopped being a river in the 1940s, when two aqueducts fed by a dam took much of the water away. Ever since, the San Joaquin River has been a schizophrenic shadow of its former self. Friant dam, creating Millerton Lake northeast of Fresno, releases water into the two canals -- the Madera canal heads north and the Friant-Kern canal goes south. What water is left for the river flows west before it elbows to the north and heads toward the Delta. Somewhere before reaching the elbow, the river typically runs dry. That leaves about 150 miles of river without much of its original water source. The river was sacrificed. But farming communities from Chowchilla to Madera to Visalia to Shafter, far to the south of the valley, came to life.

THE HAMMER: U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, a federal judge in Sacramento.

In 1997, he stopped the renewal of water contracts to thousands of farmers dependent on the two canals. In 2004, he ruled that the federal government was violating the Endangered Species Act by drying up the river. Farmers reached a settlement last year with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that filed suit challenging the water system's compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act. Essentially, the river would get enough water to actually look like a river -- and even support salmon. And the farmers would keep most of their water, at least for 20 years.

"We're reviving a river from the dead," said Barry Nelson of NRDC. "There are so many people who want a living river. I've never seen anything like this."

THE CONTROVERSY: Money.

Restoring the river is more complicated than releasing water into its dry riverbed. Some channels have to be widened, others narrowed, with new levees built along the banks. The total price tag is somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe $800 million, if new levees have to meet tougher construction standards. Congress has to agree to pick up much of the tab, or the settlement may fall apart. The litigants have to appoint a leader and scientists to help oversee the restoration.

"We simply need to get started," Snow said. "We've talked about this long enough."

SALTON SEA

THE PROBLEM: Strange, but true. California's largest body of water started out when Mother Nature exploited a weakness in a man-made canal. In 1905, the Colorado River was swelling from a flood. As it broke through an agriculture canal, the river changed course. Rather than heading to Mexico, it headed toward the dry Salton Sink and filled it up. So was born the Salton Sea.

For about 400 species of birds, the new sea was a godsend. Now, the Salton Sea is getting saltier. The desert sun evaporates water over 376 square miles of the lake's surface, leaving behind salt on the dry lake bed. Farms throughout the Imperial Valley, fed by agriculture canals, send runoff into the Salton Sea, but it doesn't provide enough water to maintain adequate levels to compensate for evaporation. If steps aren't taken to maintain water levels, the shrinking lake will expose 100 square miles of dusty lake bed to swirl in the winds. What's left of the sea will triple in salinity. Doing nothing, according to a new estimate from Snow's water agency, would cost California a billion dollars "because of dust control issues," he said. "There is something that has to be done no matter what you choose."

THE HAMMER: The state had a legislative deadline to have come up with a Salton Sea restoration plan by the end of 2006. Schwarzenegger's team at the water resources department is a little behind schedule, but working feverishly. Once the administration's solution is unveiled, it will be up to the Legislature to implement the plan or amend it.

"I do think we are heading toward a political and technical solution," said Kim Delfino, state program director for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife.

THE CONTROVERSY: A dam. And the price tag.

There seems to be general agreement that the southern edge of the sea should be reconfigured with a system of concentric canals that create shallow habitat for birds. The question is on the northern end. That would be the site of the permanent "sea." The question is how big to make it. The bigger the sea, the bigger the dam, the more water it needs. All this would mean less water for the birds in the shallows to the south.

Nothing is small about the price tags for any of the alternatives. Of the options being studied by the state, upfront costs for the changes range from $2.3 billion to $5.8 billion. That doesn't count the annual costs to maintain the new and improved sea, which could exceed $100 million. Given that there is no big pot of money sitting around for the solution, the Salton Sea will have to compete against other needs.

"There isn't a solution where you build this one thing, and everything is fixed," Snow said. "It is more of a long-term investment strategy."

THE KLAMATH RIVER

THE PROBLEM: The 250-mile river through southern Oregon and Northern California used to produce one of the Pacific Ocean's largest salmon runs. No more. Its coho salmon run is officially threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. The National Marine Fisheries Service curtailed commercial fishing off the coast of California and Oregon to protect the few salmon destined to return to the Klamath River. Many reasons for the depleted salmon runs are suspected, such as years of logging along the river's banks and large diversions of water for agriculture.

More than a century ago, Congress began approving dams and aqueducts that have altered the Klamath. Four of the dams, owned by PacifiCorp, a private electricity provider, have cut off about half of the historic spawning grounds for the salmon. The dams were built to produce electricity -- about 167 megawatts, enough for about 70,000 homes -- not for water supply.

THE HAMMER: Federal licenses for the four dams have expired and need to be renewed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC can't order the dams to be demolished. However, the commission can impose costly new requirements: more fish ladders, more monitoring, less power production.

THE CONTROVERSY: Dam removal versus dam modifications.

A study for the California Energy Commission concluded that PacifiCorp could save money by tearing down the dams rather than building the fish ladders and other modifications that FERC has been reviewing.

"The more analysis we do, the better it looks for dam removal," said Craig Tucker, who is coordinating a campaign by the Karuk Indian Tribe to tear down the dams.

PacifiCorp -- although willing to discuss dam removal in private negotiations with the tribe, environmental groups, farmers and wildlife agencies -- disputes the notion that removing the dams is the cheapest course. "The dams currently have more than 20 million cubic yards of sediment behind them," said Dave Kvamme, a spokesman for PacifiCorp. "I don't know how you get a permit to remove that kind of stuff."

FERC is on a timetable to issue its relicensing decision later this year, but a negotiated settlement seems to be the goal.

"We're heavily engaged in discussions with all the communities to come up with a package that works," Snow said.

Will the dams come down?

"Our customers' interests need to be protected," Kvamme said. Translation: Somebody needs to come up with money to make it happen. The Klamath River hardly has the political world's undivided attention. It is just another water issue on a crowded table. And it's a gamble that dam removal alone would revive the salmon runs.

"Under the present situation, it is not at all certain whether taking down those dams will solve the major problems of the Klamath," said Moyle, who has studied the river on behalf of the National Research Council. But something is bound to happen. For FERC, which must decide on a relicensing plan, doing nothing is not an option.

Welcome to the club.

* * *

The proverbial author in Spain was on to something about procrastination. And while the clock is now ticking for a series of solutions for California's water problems, don't be surprised if it's a Year of Doing Nothing. The governor's budget, for example, proposed billions for new reservoirs rather than for the restoration needs. An ideological fight over dams could push everything else to the sidelines. Or those needs could lose out to others in the political fight over money. Decision don't come easy. And, change is hard, even if it's the right thing to do.