The Water Report: Water Rights, Water Quality and Water Solutions in the West Issue 17

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Issue #17 The Water Report Fish & Farms Mendota Dam Factors of Decline Water Crisis Central Valley Project FRIANT DAM July, but in some years as early as February) leaving a dry river bed until it washed away in late fall. About 60 miles downstream from Friant, a thirty-foot high, 200 -foot long concrete dam known as the "Mendota Dam" was operated for many years without a fish ladder and took much of the flow of the river for Miller & Lux lands downstream from Friant. (Fish Bulletin No. 17, NOAA at 1725.) Long before Friant Dam was built, diversions of water for irrigation on the Valley floor, the droughts of the 1920s and 1930s, and extensive overfishing, all took their toll on the salmon runs in the San Joaquin River. Contemporaneously with the decline of salmon, agriculture on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley faced ruin. Almost no eastside farmers had ever drawn from the San Joaquin River for their water supplies. Instead, they relied upon local groundwater to augment inadequate surface water. Those local water supplies were nearing exhaustion, however. In the 1920s, the California Legislature responded to California's water crisis by directing the Division of Water Resources to formulate a plan to develop additional water resources. In 1931, as a result of the rapid development of irrigated agriculture in the San Joaquin River Basin, local water supplies had become insufficient for irrigation "particularly in the southern or upper portion of the valley south of the Chowchilla River" — i.e., the present Friant Division Service Area (State Division of Water Resources Bulletin 29 (1931), at 33.) Although reservoirs had not been built, the streams of the upper San Joaquin River Basin had "long since" been fully used for irrigation. Id. The State Water Plan (SWP) proposed Friant Dam as one of the original major features of the Central Valley Project. SWP contemplated that, after completion of the Madera and Friant -Kern canals and the initial buildup of agricultural water use, practically the entire flow of the San Joaquin River would be diverted at Friant Dam. No provision was made in SWP for the release of water from Friant Dam to provide flows to maintain salmon runs or other fish. In 1933, the Legislature acted on the SWP by passing the Central Valley Project Act of 1933 (1933 Stats., Ch. 1042), later adopted by the people of California as a referendum measure. California, suffering from the Great Depression, was unable to fund its own CVP so the state turned to the federal government. In 1935, President Roosevelt approved a Feasibility Report calling for federal construction of the CVP and Congress subsequently made appropriations of hundreds of millions of dollars for the Friant Division's development. The Bureau obtained assignment of pending applications to the predecessor of California's State Water Resources Control Board to appropriate San Joaquin water at Friant. By 1939, a Purchase Contract and an Exchange Contract were executed to make water from the Friant Division available for appropriation. Construction on Friant Dam began in 1939. By the late 1930's and early 1940's, salmon counts at the Mendota fish ladder were down to 3,000 -5,000 salmon per year. 16 Copyright© 2005 Envirotech Publications; Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited.