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California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
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CSPA to State Board: No Water in Mokelumne Left to Take

 

Chris Shutes, CSPA FERC Projects Director

April 25, 2009 -- In response to an inquiry by Water Rights staff from the State Water Resources Control Board, CSPA has declined to dismiss its protest of a water rights application on the Mokelumne River. CSPA’s protest was filed in 1996, challenging Application 29835 of the Mokelumne River Water and Power Authority.
 
MRWPA originally contemplated two project alternatives: building a new reservoir on the Mokelumne at Middle Bar, and siphoning off spill flows from the Mokelumne to a new off-river reservoir on Duck Creek. Having abandoned the first alternative, MRWPA directed a letter to CSPA in February, 2009 suggesting that our issues had largely been addressed.
 
This application has considerable competition in the Mokelumne system. The high flow water sought by MRWPA is presumably the same water that the East Bay Municipal Utilities District would like to use to fill up its proposed raise of Pardee Dam. CSPA also opposes a raise of Pardee.
 
A Water Availability Analysis produced by MRWPA in 2002 showed that water to use in support of its application would have been available in less than one third of the previous seventy-five years. Additionally, that Analysis made the assumption that water that spills or that exceeds existing minimum instream flow requirements and that is not used by other appropriators should be up for grabs, that it is “surplus to downstream demands.” 
 
This approach is by no means unique to the Water and Power Authority. It is an assumption that underlies most of the big picture water efforts in the state, including the operation of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, and the Delta Vision process that seeks to modify and sustain them. The effort is most simply described thus: Make the minimum flow the target flow. Put differently, it goes back to age-old phraseology: water over the minimum flow that is not captured is water that “wastes away to the sea.”
 
The stratagem of seeking to siphon off all high flows has recently gained a new spin: it is allegedly required in the name of Climate Change. This is a cornerstone of Delta Vision, and one of the principal arguments for an oversized peripheral canal. It is also the flavor of the century among arguments for new dams.
 
The recent emphasis on capturing high flows also stems from the recognition that the effects of removing too much water at the bottom end of the hydrograph is more easily and widely understood. Take out too much water at the bottom end and fish can be seen dying. Take it out when there is more water in the system and, incrementally, there are just fewer and fewer fish left to die. The benefits of leaving intermediate or high flows in a river, or in the Delta, are more difficult to directly quantify. It takes a long time to quantify many of these benefits. Moreover, it is necessary to use a lot of water to quantify these benefits. The parties who divert water frame the quantification as waste, then turn around and say the benefits of higher or high flows haven’t been quantified.
 
For the record, CSPA does also have serious objections to the Joint Settlement Agreement for the Lower Mokelumne that sets flows downstream of Camanche Dam and Woodbridge Diversion Dam. The minimum flows are grossly inadequate, for reasons detailed in part in our response to the Board. Only 253 salmon returned to the Mokelumne River hatchery in 2008. The assumption that the Joint Settlement Agreement provides protection for the lower Mokelumne is grossly flawed.
 
If we let folks siphon off the Mokelumne until there’s nothing left but existing minimum flows, and then multiply that by all the rivers in the Central Valley and all their pitifully inadequate existing minimum flows, we won’t need to worry about salmon and steelhead and stripers and Delta smelt in California.
 
READ CSPA’S RESPONSE TO THE BOARD HERE