(In this article, replace "CalFED" with "Delta Plan" and we have a keeper!)
CalFED Designs Decimating Delta Farming
Decimating Delta Farming
By Tim Stroshane
CalFED, the joint state-federal water planning program,
completed its comprehensive, $9 billion Bay-Delta plan for
California’s water future last August 28th.1 The plan affects
California water users from Mount Shasta clear to San
Diego, promising to restore “ecological health” to the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta estuary at the same
time it would improve “water supply reliability” for the rest
of the state.2
Despite its promises, CalFED’s plan is plagued by
controversy over proposals that are seen as a thinly disguised
land and water grab. Moreover, CalFED’s plan begins at a
time when the U.S. farm economy faces harrowing conditions,
magnifying CalFED’s impacts on Delta agriculture.
Most troubling among its 600-plus proposals are the
CalFED ecosystem restoration program (ERPP), and a
strategy for determining when to build the peripheral canal
that is reminiscent of the sword of Damocles.3 These
proposals will convert or consume nearly a fifth of the
Delta’s agricultural land to aqueduct, wetlands, or wider
river channel, reducing the supply of agricultural land and
increasing competition among California farmers for
cultivable land. The peripheral canal will also end Delta
farmers’ ready access to water of sufficient quality to irrigate
crops.
Ironically, the Delta is the region whose complex aquatic
environments CalFED professes to save; but while other
farming areas of California would be affected by CalFED’s
actions, its environmental impact report says its program’s
adverse effects on farming “would be most concentrated and
most substantial in the Delta Region.”4
To be sure, key CalFED programs aim to improve Delta
drinking water quality, levee stability, watershed management,
farm and urban water conservation, and Delta fish and
freshwater habitats to comply with state and federal mandates.
But a legitimate question never confronted in CalFED’s
deliberations is whether depopulating the Delta’s farm
communities for ecosystem restoration is equitable.
Now, as Delta farmers and rural “area of origin” counties
sue CalFED over its flawed “framework for action,” statewide
and Bay Area professional environmental groups find
themselves defenders of an increasingly indefensible plan,
clutching to a narrowly-conceived ecosystem restoration
program in post-CalFED water politics.
Here’s how CalFED’s August “record of decision” sells
out the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Why the Delta?
Why is the Delta important to the state’s water systems,
its major industries, to CalFED, the governor, and the Bush
Administration?
Located about 40 miles east of San Francisco, the Delta
is a 738,000 acre farming region through which drain waters
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers from more than
61,000 square miles of the Central Valley watershed, about
37 percent of the state.5 The Delta is the largest coastal
estuary in the American west and doubly unique because it is
an inland estuary (the outlet of California’s mountain-rimmed
bathtub topography).
Over 7,000 individuals, agricultural and industrial
corporations, and big and small cities divert fresh water from
streams there, including some 1,800 diverters (mostly
farmers) in the Delta proper.6 CalFED estimates the farm
economy of the Delta averages about $500 million in gross
value of farm output per year; it is a small part of the state’s
multi-billion dollar agricultural industry.7
Nonetheless, some of the state’s best agricultural (peat) soils are found here, and
smaller family-run farms are common, many tracing their
histories back to the original 19th century reclamation of
swamp land. The average Delta farm size is smaller than the
state’s.8
Most farmers’ water rights here date from the 19th
century and run with the land.
Suction and Destruction
Decades ago, state and federal engineers viewing
California’s virgin waterscape made the Delta the “switching
yard” for the state’s major developed water projects, including
the Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water
Project (SWP). The engineers came up with two methods of
moving pure northern California water to their pumps for
export to the south. One way is to suck the water through the
Delta’s sinuous and languid channels using huge pumps.
This is what the SWP and CVP do now. These systems
hoist Sacramento River water from the Delta uphill to the
federal Delta-Mendota Canal and the state’s California
Aqueduct, south of the Delta. (State Water Project water is
also pumped over the Tehachapis for southern California.)
Water from the Delta irrigates 5 million acres of farm land
(mostly in the San Joaquin Valley), and reaches 22 million
residents (mostly in southern California, but also in the East
and South Bay areas).
To pull in fresh Sacramento River water for export, the
suction of CVP and SWP pumps near Tracy must compete
with the gravitational force of the Delta’s rivers draining to
San Francisco Bay. (These facilities help make waterpumping
the largest use of electricity production in Califoria.)
This suction makes Delta river channels flow back wards at times, confusing anadromous (migratory) fish
reliant on an aquatic sense of smell as they migrate between
the Pacific Ocean and their upstream spawning grounds.
Other times of year, eggs, fingerlings, and young fry get
sucked into the pumps, resulting in massive fish kills.
Delta smelt, Sacramento splittail, and various stocks of
chinook salmon are now listed as either endangered or
threatened species by the state and federal governments.
Operation of these vast water projects are largely responsible
for their decline, and the projects thereby run afoul of the
state and federal Endangered Species acts.
Pollution remains an important cause of food chain
collapse in the Delta too. “The United States Geological
Survey has characterized the San Joaquin River and its
tributaries as one of the most degraded basins in the entire
nation,” reports Bill Jennings of DeltaKeeper. Yet, the
Delta’s water quality “has all too often been treated like the
crazy aunt locked in the closet at home.”9
The Delta’s aging levees hold back salt water tides from
San Francisco Bay by containing relatively fresh waters in
their channels from the Sierras and southern Cascade
mountains.
But they are vulnerable. As rich peat soils of central
Delta islands compacted, lands behind the levees sank as
much as 25 feet below water levels in Delta channels. A
Noachian flood or catastrophic earthquake today could
undermine Delta levees and destroy many of these farming
islands, threatening to create an inland salt-water sea that
would disrupt the export of fresh water stored at the CVP and
SWP’s huge Shasta and Oroville reservoirs. (We have updated science that proves this to be an exaggeration of facts and now considered 'fear mongering' to earthquake-prone areas of California.)
As God promised Noah a great flood, CalFED geologists
assure us that relatively moderate earthquakes could cause “3
to 10 levee failures in the Delta, on one or more islands.”10
Just imagine what the Big One tomorrow could do.
Peripheral Canal Politics
The engineers’ other idea is to build a canal around the
eastern periphery of the Delta (about where Interstate 5 runs
now) that would carry Sacramento River water directly to the
export pumps. This “Peripheral Canal” would avoid mixing
the Sacramento’s pure fresh water with salty waters entering
the Delta from Carquinez Strait, and salt and pesticide-laden
waters from the San Joaquin River.
Many water observers predicted that “the peripheral
canal is dead” after it was overwhelmingly defeated by
California voters in a June 1982 referendum. But Delta
residents never believed it was dead. CalFED’s proposals
revive its spectre, and introduce an ecosystem restoration
program that removes farms and people from the region,
easing the canal’s return.
With a canal in place, the Delta and San Francisco Bay
become expendable to the state’s “peripheral” water system.
“I don’t think the environmental consequences [of a
peripheral canal] would be that great, but the bigger issue
here is motivation,” says Tom Graff, an attorney and longtime
water politico for Oakland-based Environmental
Defense. “It may improve export water, but it will significantly
degrade water quality in the Bay and Delta. The more
water you export, the more the Bay and Delta suffer.”11
Dante Nomellini, a Stockton water lawyer who is chief
counsel for the Central Delta Water Agency, has pleaded the
Delta’s case for over 30 years, and says the peripheral canal
“would destroy the Delta ecologically and economically.”12
He also cites as threats to Delta farming communities not
only the canal taking 4,500 acres of important farmland out
of production, but CalFED ecosystem restoration projects
that may take up to an additional 112,000 acres of farm land
out of production, and a CalFED proposal to flood Delta
islands to create a freshwater reservoir there.
Acquiring Delta farm land now to restore 30,000 to
45,000 acres of tidal wetlands, Nomellini adds, makes it
easier for CalFED to let more tidal salt into Delta channels,
simultaneously harming Delta cultivators and making the
“need” for a peripheral canal a self-fulfilling prophecy.13
If Sacramento River water is diverted to a peripheral
canal, or its CalFED euphemism, the “isolated conveyance
facility,” the cost of peripheral canal water will come dear, ruining the bottom line for most Delta farmers.
A CalFED report on water management options analyzes “isolated
facility” costs, allocating them to each major urban region in
the state, strongly implying that CalFED does not think that
Delta farmers will want water from the peripheral canal,
though thirsty cities will.14
Is that perhaps because there
would be no Delta farmers to buy it from the peripheral
canal?
“CalFED says, ‘oh we don’t expect to solve everybody’s
problem,’” says frustrated Manteca (south Delta) corn farmer
Alex Hildebrand, who was a member of CalFED’s citizen
advisory council (see “Hold CalFED To Its Word!” this
issue). “But they are very politically motivated about what
they say is within their prerogative and what they say isn’t. It
depends on how many votes are involved and how much the
public understands the problem.”15
The CalFED environmental impact report backs up
Nomellini’s claims:
• The ERPP would use more fresh water than does land
currently cultivated in farms. Creating 28,000 acres of
seasonal wetland could require 28,000 to 56,000 acre-feet of
water per year of additional water. Restoring 58,000 to 74,000 acres of aquatic and riparian habitat would require an
additional 175,000 to 222,000 acre-feet a year in the Delta.
No crops would be grown with this water.16
• Up to 15,000 acres of Delta farm islands would be
converted to a reservoir by Delta Wetlands, a development
partnership headed by John Winther, an Orinda civil engineer.
This project received a permit from the State Water
Resources Control Board in February. Delta Wetlands hopes
to complete the project and sell it either to the California
Department of Water Resources or the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation.17
• Channel widening of Old River in the southwestern
Delta region would accommodate increased SWP export
pumping and would convert another 4,500 acres of Delta
farmland, the equivalent of about 20 average-size Delta
region farms.18
• Construction of the peripheral canal would dig up and
convert another 4,500 to 6,000 acres of farmland as well.19
• The regional economic impacts of CalFED’s “preferred
program alternative” (no peripheral canal, but with a
diversion at Hood) includes up to $225 million in lost farm
revenues (about 20 percent of the Delta region total), loss of
up to 11,000 farming jobs (about half the Delta’s ag employment
base), and those are just the direct effects. Indirectly, all
economic sectors may experience losses approaching $500
million in output, and up to 20,000 jobs foregoing $400
million in lost personal income.20
“These effects,” the CalFED environmental impact report
concludes, “could substantially affect the region, especially
small communities that depend on agriculture for their
income. Some adverse effects also could be expected in the
urbanized areas that surround the Delta: Sacramento,
Stockton, and Pittsburg/Antioch. The form of these effects
would be reduced employment and income, a reduction in
property tax base through land conversion and reduced
residential property values, and increased costs for social
services and other local services — especially in the short
run.”21
Sword of Damocles
CalFED’s 30-year plan does not propose to build a
peripheral canal — at least not yet. Its plan calls for an
intensive “through-Delta” approach that constructs a short
canal from the village of Hood on the Sacramento River to
the Mokelumne River beginning as early as 2006 so that
fresher Sacramento River water pulses into the central Delta
on its way to the Tracy pumps to the southwest.22
CalFED hopes this pulse will boost central Delta water quality to
enable the SWP and CVP to comply with 1995 state water
quality standards.
A peripheral canal is not a self-fulfilling prophecy with
the Hood diversion, insist CalFED officials. Still, wags refer
to it as an “on-ramp” for the canal.
CalFED also hopes to fine-tune the Delta by widening
river channels, strengthening levees, and providing tidal
barriers for key south Delta channels to protect water depths
for adjacent farmers and keep anadromous fish fry away
from the big CVP and SWP export pumps, making the Delta
more reliable as a source of fresh water.
But if these actions fail to improve Delta water quality,
sustain restored sensitive aquatic habitat, and replenish the
battered populations of endangered fish and other aquatic
species that rely on the Delta — and many skeptics think
they will fail — then CalFED says the Peripheral Canal, er,
the isolated conveyance facility would be all but necessary.
CalFED’s “strategy” for getting water to the pumps
dangles the peripheral canal like a sword of Damocles over
the planned shrinkage of the Delta farm economy.
It should not be necessary, as CalFED claims, to depopulate
a large proportion of the Delta region to achieve ESA
goals, because most Delta farmland was reclaimed and
cultivated there long before the CVP and SWP pumps were
installed to export Delta water south. This means that water
rights held by Delta farmers have first priority over the more
recently granted CVP and SWP rights.
Yet CalFED plans ignore these rights in a fashion
reminiscent of a case recently decided by the California
Supreme Court that gave older farm water rights holders
more priority to water than latecomer urban interests in the
Mojave River basin.23
CalFED’s plan proposes, Hildebrand wrote to CalFED in
June 2000, “that existing impacts of the [SWP and CVP]
projects on fishery [sic] should be mitigated to the extent
feasible with ‘no net loss to exports.’ It does not propose to
mitigate existing impacts of the projects on the Delta’s inchannel
water supply and water quality and does not provide
for ‘no net loss’ of water to water users in the Delta and area
of origin water users. This reverses the priority of water
rights.”24
In other words, CalFED’s plan ignores existing higher
priority water rights in the Delta region. In doing so, large
chunks of CalFED’s whole program become vulnerable to
litigation — after six difficult years of work — and to the
charge of being a huge waste of taxpayer money.
Hildebrand, the South Delta Water Agency, and a
coalition of Delta and Feather River water rights holders,
sued CalFED over its Record of Decision in September.
They were followed by the California Farm Bureau Federation a few days later (see “Will Suits Bring CalFED to Heel?” this issue)
NOTES
1. CalFED Bay-Delta Program, Programmatic Record of
Decision, 28 August 2000. Hereafter CalFED ROD.
2. Ibid., p. 9, where CalFED’s Mission Statement is “to
develop a long-term comprehensive plan that will restore
ecological health and improve water management for
beneficial uses of the Bay-Delta system.”
3. CalFED Bay-Delta Program, Ecosystem Restoration
Program Plan, 2 Volumes, (hereafter ERPP); and Phase II
Report, pp. 81-86. These documents are both technical
appendices for CalFED’s Final Programmatic Environmental
Impact Statement/Report, July 2000. Hereafter, CalFED Final
EIS/R.
4. CalFED Final EIS/R, July 2000, p. 7.2-27.
5. Phase II Report, op. cit., note 3, p. 10.
6. Ibid.
7. CalFED Final EIS/R, p. 7.2-5.
8. Ibid., Table 7.2-1, p. 7.2-4.
9. Bill Jennings, DeltaKeeper, remarks before the Commonwealth
Club of California, Oakland, 2 March 1999. Available
at the Peace and Justice Connections web site,
www.sonnet.com/usr/pjc/04-99/
10. CalFED Bay-Delta Program, Levee Improvements
Program, Technical Appendix of CalFED Final EIS/R, July
2000, Appendix G: Seismic Vulnerability of the Sacramento-
San Joaquin Delta Levees, p. iv., 23, and Figure 5-2.
11. Graff quoted in Glen Martin, “Peripheral Canal foes see
another try,” San Francisco Chronicle 4 August 1999, A15.
12. Dante Nomellini, counsel for Central Delta Water Agency,
personal communication, Stockton, California, 3 March 2000.
13. Ibid. See also ERPP, Volume II, July 2000, Table 6,
p. 114.
14. At $15 to $75 more per acre-foot than they currently pay
for treated irrigation water, most Delta farmers would not be
able to afford peripheral canal water. See CalFED Bay-Delta
Program, Economic Evaluation of Water Management
Alternatives: Screening Analysis and Scenario Development,
October 1999, Table 6-6, p. 6-10.
15. Alex Hildebrand, personal communication, Manteca,
California, 10 December 1999.
16. CalFED Final EIS/R, op. cit., p. 7.1-16.
17. Ibid., p. 7.1-18; see also Table 4-3, p. 4-13. See also Bill
Lindelof, “Visionary engineer’s dream of Delta reservoirs gets
closer,” Sacramento Bee 27 February 2001. The Delta
Wetlands project is actually larger than CalFED revealed,
though the total “lake” storage may be the same. According to
Lindelof, the islands targeted as reservoirs are Webb Tract
and Bouldin Island, totaling 11,000 acres. Holland Tract and
Bouldin Island, totaling 9,000 acres would be transformed
into “a mosaic of wetlands, lakes, and riparian forest.”
18. CalFED Final EIS/R, p. 7.1-24.
19. Ibid., Table 4-3, p. 4-13. See specifically, Alternative 3,
Delta Region conveyance land use impacts.
20. Ibid., p. 7.10-12.
21. Ibid., 7.10-24.
22. Phase II Report, op. cit., note 3, p. 84. CalFED blandly
states, “Study and evaluate a screened diversion structure on
the Sacramento River of up to 4,000 cfs. This evaluation
would consider how to operate the Delta Cross Channel [a
Central Valley Project structure] to improve drinking water
quality, while maintaining fish recovery. If the evaluation
demonstrates that the diversion facility is needed to improve
water quality in the Delta and at the export facilities, and can
be constructed and operated without adverse effects to
anadromous and estuarine fish, construction will begin late in
Stage 1 [about 2006]. This facility would likely include a fish
screen, pumps and a channel between the Sacramento and
Mokelumne Rivers. The design, size, and operating rules for
this facility would allow for analyses of impacts to upstream
and downstream migrating fish as well as impacts from
habitat shifts resulting from increased flows in the eastern
Delta on Delta species.” The CalFED ROD, p. 49, contains
more specifics, and places the start of construction into 2007.
23. City of Barstow v. Mojave Water Agency, S071728, 2000.
See “Don’t Tread on Mojave,” SPILLWAY v1n1, Fall 2000,
p. 2.
24. South Delta Water Agency, Assessment of CalFED’s
“Framework for Action,” prepared by Alex Hildebrand, 16
June 2000, point 8, p. 3.
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