From Controversy to Consensus
n many parts of the state, groups have been warring with one another for decades over rights to water and environmental preservation. Each region has a unique set of stakeholder conflicts, existing patterns of land and water use, aging infrastructure systems, and water alternatives that have to be taken into account. Local emotions tend to run high.
That’s why community activists, farmers, environmentalists and government leaders are greeting the implementation of several recent water-centric “accords” with such great excitement. Below we cite three such solutions whose innovative approaches manage to serve human needs for water (by which we mean sustainable levels of high-quality drinking water as well as sustainable quantities of water for agricultural and commercial use) while achieving environmental goals of long-term habitat protection and restoration.
The Lower Yuba River Accord, the newest of these landmark consensus agreements, is under way, following the success of two one-year “pilot programs.” The Yuba Accord, developed collaboratively by 18 parties, including conservation groups, agricultural interests, and local, state and federal agencies, resolves nearly 20 years of controversy over the Lower Yuba River. This 24-mile stretch of river runs from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Englebright Dam and Reservoir (built in 1941) to the Yuba’s confluence with the Feather River. The Yuba Accord will begin to reverse damages done more than 150 years ago when miners, pursuing their dreams during the famed California Gold Rush, employed crude methods of hydraulic mining to unearth gold ore, choking the river with habitat-destroying debris in the process.
Through the Lower Yuba Accord, Yuba County Water Agency (YCWA) is releasing higher flows for salmon and steelhead, providing an additional 170,000 acre-feet of water annually. The new flows exceed state and federal requirements and are essential, environmentalists say, to protect one of the last wild chinook salmon runs in California’s Central Valley. A comprehensive conjunctive use program, involving YCWA and seven local irrigation districts, ensures water supply reliability for farmers and salmon and steelhead in dry years. YCWA is also replacing older, diesel groundwater well engines with efficient electric motors. These water supplies will benefit fish and wildlife in the Bay-Delta ecosystem and supply cities and farms with desperately needed water in dry years. Revenues from area water transfers are being used to finance scientific studies on the Lower Yuba River and to strengthen local flood control levees. YCWA recently financed $40 million in costs for a new six-mile long Feather River setback levee to improve flood control protection for local residents and create 1,500 acres of wildlife habitat. In September, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger awarded YCWA the state’s most prestigious environmental award for the Yuba Accord.
San Joaquin River Restoration Program (SJRRP), another notable agreement, grew out of a settlement reached in 2006 between several federal agencies and the Friant Water Users Authority (FWUA). It marked the end of an 18-year legal wrangle over the protection of fish habitat in the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam near Fresno. The State of California has expressed full support for the SJRRP settlement and is collaborating in carrying out the settlement.
The SJRRP, one of the most ambitious river restoration projects ever undertaken in the western U.S., has two goals. The first is to restore and maintain fish populations in the San Joaquin River, the 153-mile stretch between the Friant Dam and its merging with the Merced River. Successful restoration is defined as the ability for salmon and other significant fish species to achieve spring and fall runs sufficient to sustain their populations. The second goal of the SJRRP is to reduce or avoid water supply impacts to the affected water users. On average, long-term water deliveries from the dam will be reduced by about 15 percent under the terms of the settlement, but tools by which to recapture, recirculate, transfer, and exchange water to supplement that loss are to be developed under the settlement.
On March 30, 2009, an omnibus public land management bill that included funding for the SJRRP was enacted into federal law. The legislation provides a complex formula for state and federal payments of up to $390 million between now and 2019, with additional funding as needed after that.
The official rewatering of the San Joaquin River was launched on October 1, 2009.
The Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program (LCRMSCP) is another distinctive agreement in which California is just one of three participants. The program came into being indirectly, as part of increasing pressure from the Interior Department that California live within the 4.4 million-acre-feet allotment of water per year that had been agreed upon in the 1922 Colorado River Compact. (For decades California had taken its full share plus 50 percent of any declared surpluses available, but with the continued population growth of the six other basin states, not only has the surplus largely disappeared but the river’s environmental health has declined sharply.)
Since new, stricter guidelines were implemented in 2001, California has taken several bold measures to use its basic allotment of the Colorado River more efficiently, including the replacement of earthen canals with cement-lined conduits, groundwater banking, and water recovery. The state has also quantified the shares that the highest volume water districts — Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley Water District and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — can receive and trade as needed. As a result, the San Diego County Water Authority has been able to negotiate an historic water purchase from IID. But environmental concerns remain to be addressed and between 1995 and 2005 a joint federal and state 50-year program was initiated to enhance and restore habitat for numerous native plants and animal species living within the river’s 100-year flood plain.
As these examples demonstrate, cooperation rather than competition is in everyone’s best interest as we plan optimal ways to responsibly use and appreciate California’s water and natural environment in ways that ensure sustainability for decades to come.