The Case against the Peripheral Canal – and Increased Delta Water Exports

Summary

California is in a time of fiscal crisis. The state is essentially broke, furloughing employees and issuing IOUs.  Yet, proponents of the Peripheral Canal (“Canal”) seek to have the California taxpayer support a "Delta Water Package", that will empower a Governor Schwarzenneger-controlled "Council" that will posses near dictitorial powers, including the full ability to implement the Bay DeltaConservation Plan, which specifically includes that full authority to issue some $10 to $20 billion in bonds to fund construction of the Peripheral Canal.  The cost including interest can be expected to be far greater – and this does not include the substantial environmental mitigation costs that these huge projects will require, costs that will likely add billions more.  And just how much water will this $40+billion BOR-DWR boondoggle provide on might ask?  Not one drop in most circumstances!

Californians against the Canal urge visitors to this website to take some time and read through the various sections.  It is our sincere hope that once acquainted with the facts we present, the reader will understand that the California water wars are not about a little 3 inch fish before farms or people at all.   Our visitors will know about the vast corruption and windfall profiteering from gaming the system and the severe impact that water operations have had on the entire San Francisco Bay & Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta watershed and Pacific Ocean’s ecosystem.  Finally, we believe that when one considers the benefits of a 21st century water policy for California, which advocates infrastructure projects and other measures which will produce more water than has ever been exported from the Delta – all at far lower cost than the Canal – the decision to choose which alternative is best for California will be obvious.
The following are the primary reasons we object to the Canal and why we advocate for reduced – not increased – Delta water exports:

• As mentioned above – COST.  The proposed Canal and dams will cost far too much and produce far too few benefits for far too many Californians.  The Canal provides not one drop of additional water.  We cannot even fill up lakes and Oroville at the rate the pumps are going.  There are far superior solutions – see below and see separate page for “Water”
• THE CANAL WILL DESTROY MORE FISH!  The Canal will simply transfer pumping impacts to the last viable Salmonid river in the Valley!!  Think about the power the existing pumps have – to literally reverse the tides and cause Old, Middle Rivers and the San Joaquin River to flow backwards. Pumps so powerful that they draw fish from the Central Delta to the south Delta Operations.  So the BDCP proposes putting even more powerful pumps in a relatively narrow reach of the Sacramento River where sensitive life stages of listed species are found 12 months of the year?!! è  Nothing will swim past these Canal pumps.  It is a documented fact that the existing pumps in the south Delta have killed millions of Salmon smolt (and the tiny Delta Smelt), because the reversed currents confuses the fish into swimming towards the pumps, instead of swimming west to the ocean.
• THE CANAL WILL RENDER THE ESTUARY A CESSPOOL.  Closing off fresh water flows via numerous proposed gates and re-routing water outside of the Delta will mean the permanent death of the largest freshwater estuary in the western hemisphere.  An estuary needs fresh water flowing through it in sufficient amount in order to dilute and discharge municipal waste and other pollutants, in addition to supporting the needs of its plants and wildlife.  The latest biological opinions provide sound, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that excessive water exports are the primary reason for the Delta watershed ecosystem decline.  See June 4th BiOp here
• SECRECY – REMEMBER THE ENRON SCANDLE.  The process by which proponents seek to implement the Canal is secretive, and driven by powerful lobbying interests.  Rather than seeking to authorize a canal involving a public vote (as was done in 1982 when the Canal was rejected), the Governor and Canal supporters feel they can move ahead without approval.  They have reformatted a series of five water bills that will authorize a "water council" which will have full authority to bypass public input, issue bonds and build the canal via the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).  These bills allow the Governor the power to appoint a majority of members to the 7 member council (4), in addition to the Delta Protection Commission Chairperson (also an appointee of the Governor and his pro-canal cabal).  => It is this circumventing of the normal legislative process that brought us California’s disastrous experiment in energy deregulation and the subsequent fleecing of the California public by Enron and others.  We must never forget the Enron Scandal.   
• Don’t Reward Failure.  The same group which oversaw the wholesale destruction of the Bay-Delta estuary is behind the Peripheral Canal.  Nothing has changed since 1982.  Please see discussion of Conflicts of Interest below.   How could Californians trust the same people and same agencies that have actively violated existing laws, and allowed wholesale profiteering from water privatization to carryout such a controversial project?  The Canal will only further the water profiteering and will encourage more irresponsible irrigation practices.
• Toxic runoff: Californians must understand that the land where much of this exported water is sent for irrigation, produces toxic runoff from high concentrations of selenium, boron, mercury and other chemicals that leach back and poison the region’s water supply.  Much of this land has been earmarked for possible retirement from active use because of the known soil toxicity (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/02/BAOH14FHR2.DTL).
• Preserve the Endangered Species Act: The Bay Delta Conservation Plan and Delta Vision Process is essentially a massive water project masquerading as a Habitat Conservation Plan to circumvent the Endangered Species Act.  And this same group is pursuing state, federal and judiciary strategies to get around the ESA already.  Note Devine Nunes’ Amendment #63 to House Appropriations Bill 2847, where he sought to defund the most recent NMFS BiOp, which seeks to finally protect the estuary (and Killer Wales).  Several other San Joaquin Valley politicians have sought to gut the ESA in order to increase water exports.  Any environmentally conscious person from coast to coast should be terrified at these repeated attempts to attack the ESA. 
• 21st Century Water Projects Far Superior: Water conservation, reclamation, recycling, and environmentally beneficial groundwater management can create regional self-sufficiency and meet our water supply needs at a fraction of the cost of new dams and the Peripheral Canal.  Per the California Water Plan and reports from NRDC, among others we can pick up an additional 7 MAF from these “virtual river” projects.  And agricultural water conservation improvements – that we can pay for – can save another 3-5 MAF.  Throw in retiring drainage impacted lands and get a few more MAF!
  • =>  California can develop far more water than has ever been exported from NorCal – at far lest cost and in far less time!!!!
  • =>  Please see also "California Water Solutions NOW", released July 2009 by the Environmental Water Caucus.  This is truly a game changing, honest analysis of how California can implement timely, cost efficient and environmentally beneficial water projects to solve its water issue once and for all.
• Dams Worst Option: New dams produce the least amount of water and at a substantially higher cost than other water management solutions, and what little water produced by new dams will not be available for decades as the dams are constructed. This is even the conclusion of the LAEDC in its flagship 2008 report: “Where Will We Get Our Water – Assessing Southern California’s Future Water Strategies”
• The Ignored Mitigation Costs: The proposed new habitat creation sound great, but will be massively expensive to purchase, develop and maintain!  The past experience with such environmental mitigation and habitat improvements should serve as out guide?  è  What happened to the multi-billion state-of-the-art fish screens that were promised for the south delta?  The Canal would need even more expensive screens.  See the Secret Agreements below.
• No More Swimming? The proposed Canal will increase the concentration and bioaccumulation of pollutants.  Our estuary needs a certain amount of fresh water recharge in order to remain healthy. In summer 2008, we had algae blooms that were causing skin rash and prompting health advisories. This would only get much worse!

Key Arguments for the Canal (and our Rebuttals):

• The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports often sited by Canal advocates state that the Canal will actually increase survival rates for Salmon, Smelt and other fish. 
  • But these reports are based on a Canal and project operations with 40% LESS WATER EXPORTS!.  Does anyone think we would put a 110-lane freeway-sized “Panama Canal” 50-miles long and at a cost of $20-40 billion to export 40% less water?  The advocates for the Canal are pursuing every means to circumvent the ESA in order to INCREASE exports!

• The PPIC report paints a doomsday scenario for the Delta – earthquakes and rising sea levels turning the delta into an inland sea, and threatening SoCal’s and Santa Clara County’s water supply.
• Over a century of data indicates no failure as a result of earthquakes
• Delta Levees can be raised and strengthened, and in large measure, do not sit on peat soils after 100 years of compaction!
• Major parts of the Peripheral Canal will be below sea level and its earthen levees would also be subject to earthquakes
• There are no major faults in the Delta
• When Jones Tract failed, exports were only disrupted for a few days.  Southern California has sufficient storage to enable them to survive until salinity would stabilize and repairs made following any – unlikely – multiple levy failure
• We could easily be far more prepared for any future levy failures by developing readiness measures, such as having critical repair/fill material on hand on each island, procuring several stations of helicopters and other emergency lift equipment, etc. to be able to respond quickly to single or multiple breaches, should they occur.
• Please see blog post “..Levees can be protected for less than the cost of a peripheral canal” for more rebutting info on the prospect of Levy failure.
• And please also see  “Facts and Myths: The Truth About California’s Water, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the Proposed Peripheral Canal” for more general information rebutting arguments for a Peripheral Canal
• The final PPIC major argument for a Canal is that eventual sea level rises will overwhelm the Delta.  Well – Levees can be and have been raised.  And if the sea were to raise 5 feet, vast areas of the SF Bay Area and Central Valley would be completely under water – including the export pumps and Peripheral Canal!!!
• Final point:  Agricultural development within the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is completely unsustainable.  The SJ Valley corporate agribusinesses have clearly outgrown the water resources and simply must cut back to match crop output and value with reliable water supply.
  • Per a July 2009 extensive study by Claudia Faunt of the US Geological Survey, after 1900, when large-scale farming began in the SJ Valley, water tables dropped a whopping 400 feet from ground water pumping up to around 1960.  This was part of the reason the state and federal aqueducts from the SWP and CVP were built; to switch to surface storage water exported from the Delta in order to recharge and recover these aquifers. 
  • However, ground water pumping in the SJV apparently resurged, as the USGS notes than another 400 drop has occurred since 1961, bringing the ground water table down to near the historic low.  So this regions insatiable demand has used an increasing amount of surface water from Delta exports (collapsing the ecosystem) and has not stopped using ground water
  • This report shows that this region has drawn down a whopping 60 MAF of groundwater in last 4 decades (up to the year 2003).  This amounts to 1.4 MAF per year of net reduction in groundwater.  Gone!  (the Sac, Delta and east side CV farming ops have drawn ZERO down. In fact they have returned a net surplus!
  • California is essentially the only state in the US with no ground water regulations
  • This region’s ground water use amounts to over 20% of all the ground water usage in the entire US for this same period!

The Lies and Misrepresentations

The frantic push for the Peripheral Canal, the “Turn on the Pumps,” and the “March for Water” and other rally’s in the Fresno vicinity and the “Fish vs People” campaign are all orchestrated behind the scenes by billionaire’s that have managed to essentially privatize the distribution of exported Northern California water and make windfall profit there from.  Federal and state legislators must not be fooled by this Burson-Marsteller PR campaign that employs classic astroturfing.  This campaign seeks to portray a full fledged crisis, employs paid organizers and others to whip up frenzy in people, making them believe something has been taken from them. 

The California water war is back on.  And this time the war has expanded to the national stage.  House Republican Devin Nunes of Visalia (in the San Joaquin Valley) introduced amendment #63 to house appropriations bill HR 2847, which sought to defund the December 2008 and June 2009 National Marine Fisheries Service’ biological opinion (BiOp). These BiOp’s are attempting to stop the precipitous decline in all key fish species living or migrating through the Delta, and even to help save the Southern Resident Killer Wale population (which feeds on CA central valley Salmon). 

This Nunes amendment was part of a national strategy to attack the Endangered Species Act, and would have set a dangerous precedent.  The amendment almost passed, and had nearly unanimous support from the GOP at 171/3.  Surprisingly 37 Democrats voted along with the GOP, while 215 voted against the amendment.  What is tragic is that those 37 Democrats and 171 Republicans bought into a lot of political theater orchestrated by Devin Nunes. Specifically, Nunes lashes out this outrageous series of lies and slanders: (see CSPAN coverage at http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=287094-101&clipStart=16632&clipStop=17481)

• the “Democrat” congress is directly responsible (for mass unemployment / starvation) in the San Joaquin valley).  Nunes went on to say 40,000 lost their jobs because of congresses inaction to increase water exports!  Fox news now has this to over 80,000
• that a Government that cannot provide water to its people is a Government that has failed
• That through history, dictators like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe used water as a weapon; but never has a democracy starved its people of water – which implies that our president Barack Obama and his administration are behaving like this dictator!
• Nunes accused Delta hero Congressman Miller of spending the last three decades doing nothing but destroying the San Joaquin Valley economy (and yet farm employment in all counties there have actually increased through May 2009)!

These and more were just bold faced lies and malicious slanders told in OUR House of Congress. 

To Those Who Still Have Doubts:

• What if total agricultural employment has actually risen in the San Joaquin Valley, and that Congressmen Nunes proclamation of 40,000 jobs lost is completely unsupported by the facts?
  • While unemployment is higher in this region than the state as a whole, Mr. Nunez 40% and 40,000 figure does not bear out in the facts:  Mendota is a tiny city that has had unemployment rates above 25% for many years. Fresno County’s unemployment is about 15.4%, while Merced County’s stands at around 17%. So to site the “regional” employment at 40% is just plain misleading!!  Mendota’s unemployment now stands at 39%, but the town does not even represent 1.0% of the County!
  • Now make no mistake: there is some real suffering going on in the SJ Valley region, and we truly wish to see solutions brought to address the economic and humanitarian crisis; one that is partly driven by the increasing modernization of crop harvest techniques, which reduce the need for laborers (despite record regional crop output).
    • Mendota’s unemployment is at 39.10% as of May 2009, up from 28.6% in 2008 and an average about 25% from 2005 through 2007 (it has been higher in the past and is driven largely by seasonal farm employment).  However, Mendota’s has a labor force of only 4,600 people as of May 2009.  And this labor force grew by basically the same amount as its unemployed count increased. Yet total employment remained essentially the same over this period, at 2,800 through May 2009 (figures per the California Employment Development Department – see also here)

• Fresno County has seen unemployment rise from an average of about 9.0% from 2005 through 2007, to 10.6% in 2008, and a big increase to 15.4% through May 2009.  But – Farm unemployment has been essentially unchanged!  Non-Farm Employment, driven by construction, mining and services, drove this increase. => So what is Mr. Nunez referring to?
• It is just reckless and willfully misleading to site a regional unemployment rate of 40% when it is more realistically around 16%, and then to blame the entire trend on water export reductions!
• What if you learned that these water districts were specifically told that in low water years their water allocation would be cut? What if this is well established law, and that these laws were clearly violated over the last decade or so?
• And what if it were true that the irrigation districts making up the west side of the southern San Joaquin Valley (Westlands and others) really don’t have a legal right to enough water to be prudently allowing cultivation in certain areas with permanent crops – especially over the last decade?
  • => Growth in the west side of the SJ valley has helped drive the region to produce record breaking crop output year after year.  Most of the crops that have been planted in the last decade include almonds and cotton and pistachios.  It should be noted that Cotton subsidies in the SJ Valley are huge _____
• What if it were true that the California State Water Board (SWB) has promised over 5 times more water than even flows in the Delta watershed system? 
  • The SWB has granted some 245 million acre-feet (MAF) of water rights
  • => see “Water Ownership Murky,” May 23, 2009; Contra Costa Times Mike Taugher: http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_12437097; and “Gaming the Water System,” May 25, 2009: http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_12443070
• What if you learned that these huge water districts and agribusinesses make hundreds of millions of dollars gaming California’s water system, often by selling water (or even paper water) back to the federal and state government?
  • => See “Pumping Water for Cash from Delta,” May 23, 2009; Contra Costa Times reporter Mike Taugher: http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_12439808
• What if you learned that the San Joaquin Valley Basin agriculture industry has drawn down more ground water over the last 4+ decades than any region in the United States – and that this water is in addition to its insatiable demands for exported Delta water?
  • The San Joaquin basin has drawn a whopping 60 million acre feet of water out of the vast aquifers that underlie this basin per a July 2009 USGS study (see above).  This is NET, meaning a net reduction in the supply of ground water.  This amounts to an average of some 1.4 million acre feet per year through 2003 – and the trend is suspected to be increasing.
  • The Sacramento Valley Basin, Delta and east side agriculture regions of California’s Central Valley, however, have overall returned a net surplus to their ground water aquifers of several million acre feet!!
  • What this shows is that the expansion of agriculture in the SJ Basin is clearly unsustainable.  Some areas in the basin have subsided nearly 30 feet, and experts at the USGS caution that the state aqueducts which carry exported water could be damaged by future subsidence. 
• What if it were true that well researched and peer reviewed biological opinions had warned that if too much water is diverted away from the Delta, an ecological disaster would surely occur?  What if the same dynamic existed on the Klamath River?
  • See website page “Protect Fish.” 
  • To understand how all fish that migrate through the Delta have been imperiled, one must conceptualize the power of the export pumps in the south Delta.  Often when the pumps are running the flow of water as far north as Antioch (~15 miles away) are literally reversed, with water flowing backward to the pumps instead of to the ocean!
  • Taken to the extreme, is it ok to just increase the water export pumping to a level that just brings salt water from the Pacific Ocean all the way through the Delta?  Is it ok to just ruin 500,000 acres of some of the most prime agricultural land in the US from salt intrusion so more permanent crops can be grown far south, on land that has no natural water flow, and on soil that produces toxic runoff that to this day is still not mitigated?

We at Californians against the Canal (and unsustainable Delta water exports) hope that our readers of this Q&A session now recognize that the cutbacks in water exports as mandated by the National Marine Fisheries Service June 2009 biological opinions were not done to punish the people of the San Joaquin Valley!  So let’s explore the more cost effective, environmentally sustainable ways to solve California’s water issues. -> please see “Water Solutions” in the Water page of this site.

A Brief History on California Water:
(by notes from and discussions with Bill Jennings, CSPA Founder)

The Shasta and Friant Dams and the Madera Canal were completed in 1945. The Tracy pumping plant and Friant-Kern and Delta Mendota canals were completed in 1951. Folsom Dam in 1956; Oroville and San Luis Dams in 1967 and the Banks Pumping Plant in 1968.

Water exports started modestly, averaging 1 MAF between 1956-1959.  They increased to 1.8 MAF in the 60s, 3.7 MAF in the 70s, 5.1 MAF in the 80s, 4.7 MAF in the 90s, declining slightly due to the extended drought, but then rebounded to over 6 MAF between 2000 and 2007!

Contribution From North Coast Streams:
Delta Water Facilities (DWR) Bulletin No. 76 in 1960 states that after 1981, the operation of the SWP and CVP “will necessitate importation of about 5 MAF of water annually to the Delta from north coast streams…”  This water was supposed to come from the Klamath, Mad, Van Duzen, Eel and Trinity Rivers.

With the exception of the whopping 52% of Trinity River water now diverted, the diverting water from north coast streams never happened!  So where did the SWP get the water post 1981, one might ask? è  largely from illegal exports from counties-of-origin, riparians and the Public Trust needs of the Delta!!

The impacts of increased water diversions began long ago.  The winter run of Chinook Salmon was listed as threatened in 1989 and then endangered in 1994. Delta smelt were listed as threatened in 1993. 

Protection efforts began in earnest in the mid  1980s, with hundreds of days of contentious evidentiary hearings leading to water control plans in 1988 and 1990, only to be defeated by political pressure soon after.  The closest the fisheries advocates came to fully protecting the Delta watershed was with the State Board draft decision D-1630, released in late 1992.  D-1630 called for a significant reduction in water exports, along with no reverse flows in the Old River and Middle Rivers, among other things. This ruling went far beyond what Judge Wanger ruled pursuant to the last Delta Smelt BiOp.

In response to political pressure from water contractors, Governor Pete Wilson directed the State Board to drop D-1630 in 1993, and this was the last time the resource agencies (Department of Fish & Game, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service) truly went to battle to protect Delta watershed fisheries and wildlife.  Governor Wilson led California down the path of CalFed.

Ultimately, the State Board implemented the 1995 water quality control plan in 1999, which included draft decision D-1641, a decision which was fought heavily by the fisheries advocates but to no avail.  As exports have risen, fisheries have indeed collapsed.  The big lesson to be learned from this history is that mixing politics with science can have major consequences.  We just experienced more of this, with Governor Schwarzenegger wiping out all Delta protection standards with a stroke of a pen with his “emergency drought proclamation.”  

The Need for Adjudication of vested water rights and visions from the past:

• The California Legislature passed the Central Valley Act in 1933, but the bonds didn’t sell during the great depression.  Consequently, the federal government assumed control of the CVP in 1935, and the Board of Reclamation assumed control in 1937.
• Engineers and attorneys in Reclamation advocated for an adjudication of water rights throughout the 1930s (Walker Young, the Bureau’s supervising engineer in 1939..).  Adjudication is simply a proceeding to correlate water rights to actual water – but it is anything but simple. 
• In 1942, Henry Holsinger, long time chief attorney for the Division of Water Resources and subsequent chairman of the old State Water Rights Board, authored a report that declared a comprehensive adjudication of water rights on the Sacramento and San Joaquin was a fundamental necessity. 
• Later, in 1951 before Clair Engle’s Congressional Committee in 1951, Mr. Holsinger testified that adjudication of vested rights should have occurred before construction of the projects ever began.  The formal findings of the 1951 Engle Commission included:
  • “That for all practical purposes, the developed water supplies of the Sacramento River are overcommitted and oversubscribed.”
  • That without adjudication, “the State of California and Bureau of Reclamation officials may create a ‘legal Frankenstein,’ which would destroy all hope for state control of the Central Valley water rights…”
• And finally, legendary water rights attorney Walter M. Gleason submitted a 72-page opinion at the request of Senator Stephen Teale, Chairman of the CA State Interim Committee on Water Projects, for considerations in the 1960 deliberations over the Burns-Porter Act (Brown Water Bill).  Mr. Gleason described the consequences of failing to identify and quantify vested rights, and prophetically detailed the likely collapse of the Delta in absence of adjudication!

The Secret Agreements:

The Monterey Agreement:
While CalFed was being launched, the CA DWR and six water agencies (____list) secretly signed the Monterey Principals.  The agreement was intended to resolve the disputes that erupted over SWP financing and water allocations under the contracts during the drought years of 87-92.  But this agreement did much much more: 

• Illegally transferred control (of SWP Facilities (which ones) to (Whom_____?),
• Illegally transferred ownership of the Kern Water Bank from the SWP to ultimately billionaire Stuart Resnick, recently written about in the Contra Costa Times by Michael Taugher.
• It expanded delivery areas ___________
• It eliminated the Urban Preference that Los Angeles and Santa Clara water districts held.  (In case of drought, these urban areas would suffer less in terms of curtailed water exports than the large-scale farming operations of the western San Joaquin Valley.)
• But most of all, the Monterey Agreement allowed an end-run around D-1641 and the developing CalFed restrictions by increasing the amount of water that could be exported!
  • => Under the agreement, after the Delta is in “balance” (i.e., Delta and Vernalis standards and Table “A” allotments have been met), the rest of the water is deemed “Article 21 water” or “Surplus.”
  • => This explains the significant increase in exports since 2000 and why storage at Oroville and Shasta were at “1977” lows last year
  • => the water contractors simply outfoxed the State Water Board and resource agencies (DFG, NMFS, USFW), who until recently had not realized how much Article 21 water had been exported!

The Napa Agreement:
In mid 2003, the DWR and BOR, along with the water contractors and export agencies, met secretly in Napa to resolve operational conflicts to implement some of the elements identified in the CalFed Record of Decision.  This meeting led to the completion in June 2004 of the SWP and CVP Operations Criteria and Plan (OCAP), which again allowed for increased pumping at the state pumps.

The agencies (DWR and BOR) then bludgeoned the USF&W and NMFS into issuing “no jeopardy” BiOps for OCAP. These were the BiOps that were ultimately found to be illegal by the most conservative judge in the district!

The Silent “Agreement” to Ignore the CalFed Fish Screening Requirement
The 2000 CalFed Record of Decision required the construction of new state-of-the-art fish screens at the project pump operations.  But the State Water Contractors declared they would not pay for them.  To this date, the California Department of Fish & Game, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service have quietly agreed to ignore this requirement.