Western Water May/June 2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

CALFED officials, board members and the administration "appear to be more a matter of opinion than fact." "One lesson from the CALFED experiment is that process and struc- ture cannot substitute for leadership or authority," the report says. In light of the Delta's crisis conditions, environmentalists are concerned about the ability to protect fish from the effects of water project operations. In a December 2005 report "Finding the Water," Environmental Defense explains that the commit- ments made by CALFED to provide water to protect fish during periods when they are most vulnerable to being caught in the export pumps have not been upheld. The report says that the environmental water, a combina- tion of supplies made available by the Central Valley Project (CVP) Im- provement Act and the publicly - funded Environmental Water Account (EWA), has been short by 420,000 to 460,000 acre -feet annually the past few years. "As a result, fishery agencies have been significantly constrained in their ability to dedicate water at key times of the year to protecting fisheries — particularly endangered species — as promised in the CALFED plan," the report says. Spreck Rosekrans, one of the report's authors, told the BDPAC that increased EWA allocations have not been helpful to the struggling Delta smelt. "I can't say if we had the water the Delta smelt would be doing great, but it's hard to think they wouldn't be doing somewhat better," he said. The report identifies several options to acquire water for the EWA, such as increasing usable storage in San Luis Reservoir, integration of the state and federal projects and retiring drainage- impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley. MWD's Quinn said it is "far from clear" that exports from the Delta are the "dominant factor" in the decline of smelt and other species and that it is frustrating to see exports continually hammered as the sole source of the Delta's woes. MAY/JUNE 2006 Developing a Delta Vision Part of the "vision" of the Delta Vision Process is looking toward the future, an exercise that has its work cut out in coming up with dependable and accurate predictions because of the ever - changing nature of the Delta. Nonetheless, the exercise is warranted because of the vital interests at stake: the hub of the state's water supply apparatus, an imperiled ecosystem, a major transportation corridor for goods, services and fuel and a place that more and more Californians call home. "We think it's important for people to agree on what the Delta might look like in 2100," said Kamyar Guivetchi, DWR's manager of State- wide Water Planning and updating of the California Water Plan, adding that the Delta Vision Process "will shine the light on how we want to leverage our dollars in the near future." A March 27 "white paper" on Delta investments by the California Urban Water Agencies (CUWA) makes it clear that "the continued rise of sea level, subsidence of the Delta islands, and the enormous technical challenges of converting peat -based levees into reliable structures have caused many to conclude that the current configuration of the Delta cannot be sustained ... without major investment — `major' being in the billions of dollars." As outlined in preliminary discussions, the Delta Vision Process will serve as a clearinghouse of sorts for the extensive amount of planning efforts currently underway, including the activities of the Delta Protection Commission, CALFED, and various local governments. An initial discus- sion draft for the proposal notes that a "key principle" is to build the Delta Vision Process around existing efforts and to avoid creating "redundant" entities. "What we have to do to succeed is not let the Delta Vision Process create another process but to be the glue that brings different groups together," Guivetchi said.