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What Radanovich and his friends won't admit

The Limitations of Water

By Bill Jennings, Executive Director, CSPA
February 11, 2009 -- The writer William Burroughs wrote that a paranoid schizophrenic is simply someone who’s discovered what’s going on.  He must have been referring to California water politics.

As waters on the Eastside, Westside and Delta are inextricably related: I’d like to discuss the elephant in the room – something fundamental to understanding the present crisis; availability of water vs. rights to water.

1. According to the State Water Board, the mean annual unimpaired or full natural flow (without dams or diversions) in the Delta watershed (waters gathered from north of Redding to south of Fresno) between 1921 and 2003 was 29 MAF (max of 73 MAF in 83).  Note: an AF is about a football field one-foot deep)

2. Yet, the State Water Board has granted some 245 MAF of water rights in the Delta – or almost 8.5 times the annual mean unimpaired flow in the entire watershed.

a. The Central Valley and State Water Projects hold 53% of these Delta water rights totaling about 130 MAF or about 4.5 times the annual mean flow.

b. However, these Project water rights are junior to most of the other water rights – meaning they’re available only after more senior rights are satisfied.

3. But, this is only the tip of the iceberg because the State Water Board doesn’t control pre-1914 and riparian water rights.

a. Water rights that existed prior 1914 are senior and superior to post-14 appropriative rights.

b. Owners of property alongside waterways have riparian water rights that are senior and superior to all appropriative rights.

c. Incredibly, the State Water Board doesn’t even know the full amount of these pre-14 and riparian rights.

4. It gets even more absurd, when one considers that (Continued)... riparian and appropriative water rights do not include water that is necessary to support the Public Trust: i.e., the fisheries and  ecosystem integrity of the Delta and its tributary rivers and streams.

5. The Public Trust is the “common property right” to healthy rivers and fish belonging to all of the people of California.

6. The State has promised far, far more water than actually exists.  It has passed out water rights like Wall Street passes out bonuses.  But, the State can’t print water.  Instead, they’ve created a giant ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff look like a piker.  Delivery contracts for Delta water are variable and predicated on surplus water.  Perhaps, best compared to sub-prime or variable-rate mortgages.

7. The tragedy is that people in the south Valley have built their lives and mortgaged their futures around the promises of “paper water” or water that is embezzled from the Public Trust, senior holders and “Counties of Origin: (i.e., senior rights reserved for the future growth of N. California).

8. We knew better.  From the 1930s and in every subsequent decade, state and federal water and regulatory agencies, in Congressional hearings, reports and formal proceedings told us the blunt truth:

a. Valley rivers are overcommitted, water has been over appropriated and adjudication is necessary.  Adjudication is a proceeding to correlate water rights to actual water.

b. Indeed, a Congressional hearing in 1951 found that failure to adjudicate would create a “legal Frankenstein.”

c. The SWP was predicated upon receiving 5 MAF of water from North Coast streams that never materialized.

d. The State Board found in 1978 that protection all fishery species in the Delta would require the “virtual shutting down of the project export pumps.”

e. And, in 1992, when the State Water Board finally, after hundreds of days of evidentiary hearings, issued a draft order drastically reducing exports and severely restricting reverse flows in the Delta, the governor ordered it withdrawn and proceeded down a CalFed path predicated on the guarantee of business-as-usual.  Exports actually increased under CalFed.

9. And when CalFed collapsed after the Little Hoover Commission declared it a dysfunctional failure, the governor was so impressed that he re-birthed it as Delta Vision and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (essentially a massive water project masquerading as an HCP to circumvent the Endangered Species Act) – again promising unsustainable water delivery.

10. But reckoning and hard decisions are at hand.  Recent court decisions and the new Delta smelt and draft salmon biological opinions are the overture of a new era.

11. We live in an arid state.  Common sense dictates that we:

a. Reduce diversions of water around Eastside Rivers, thus ensuring that water can meet multiple beneficial uses.

b. Prevent salt loading into the San Joaquin so that limited eastside water isn’t needed to dilute wastes to meet standards.

c. Recognize that conservation and reclamation are the least expensive and most available new water.

d. Understand that using precious water to irrigate cotton and other non-food crops in the desert isn’t necessarily the best and highest use of water.

e. Appreciate that healthy and safe rivers are of benefit to all Californians, and

f. Learn to live within our water budget.