Opponents of California’s Delta Tunnels Project Push Alternative Strategies.
The state’s proposal to build twin tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta cleared another hurdle last month, but opponents still believe that better options exist.
The existing pumps that export Delta water have drastically upset the balance of the estuary’s ecosystem, causing fish declines and the intrusion of saltwater from San Francisco Bay.
But if not WaterFix, then what?
“If you oppose the tunnels, you need to propose an alternative,” Moyle said.
Some of its opponents have called for changes to cropping systems to reduce California agriculture’s heavy demand for water.
The single tunnel proposed in the plan would take one-third of the river water that WaterFix would take, but still provide a reliable emergency system in the case of a failure at the south Delta pumps.
Some policy analysts have suggested that farmers could use less water by growing less.
However, California’s almond growers have almost tripled their acreage over the same period, with farmers still planting more almond trees in what advocates of sustainable agriculture consider a reckless strategy.
Rosenfield would rather see farmers growing annual row crops, like grains, vegetables and melons, than trees.

Endangered Species Act.
From the Department of Water Resources: “Federal agencies responsible for the protection of species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) today provided biological opinions on the proposed construction and operation of California WaterFix.
Under the ESA, other federal agencies must consult with the Service and NOAA when their activities have the potential to impact federally endangered or threatened species.
The Service biological opinion is available here, and the biological opinion from NOAA Fisheries is here.
“The wisest thing to do in the face of uncertainty is to monitor constantly, test hypotheses regularly, adjust operations accordingly, and reassess,” said California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Acting Director Bill Croyle.
“In the Delta, we always will be adjusting to improve resiliency and protect the environment.
The biological opinions are important components of the analysis of the environmental effects of WaterFix.
These biological opinions will also be considered by permitting agencies, including the State Water Resources Control Board in its hearing now underway on a petition by DWR and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to allow for the change in points of diversion to add three new intakes on the Sacramento River as part of WaterFix.
WaterFix would not change the volume of water to which the SWP and CVP are entitled to divert, but would add additional diversion points in a more environmentally protective place that also is easier to safeguard against natural disaster such as earthquake and sea-level rise due to climate change.” Stay tuned to Maven’s Notebook for coverage later today from the media call; Reactions to be posted tomorrow … ——————————————– Sign up for daily email service and you’ll always be one of the first to know!
Sign up for daily emails and get all the Notebook’s aggregated and original water news content delivered to your email box by 9AM.

Ms. Grenier presented a map showing the change in flooding on the landscape between the historical and the modern Delta.
Almost at any time of the year, something was flooding; certainly the tidal areas, but a lot of the basin flooding actually happened for many months because of the complex timing.
“With the riparian habitat that’s left, there are actually a lot of bits of riparian all over the place, but they’re not in a pattern that makes sense.
But looking overall at how much shallow water habitat there is now compared to historically, there’s about 2 times as much now as historically, so I think that’s really interesting that there’s been a lot of the focus in the last 10-20 years on the need to restore shallow water habitat to make food for fish.
I think that thinking about the changes in the types of shallow water habitat and what are they adjacent to and how much do they flood – those processed based landscape based approaches are going to help us answer this question.” She then turned to discuss how the channels have changed, presenting a map of the historical channel network with the historical network shown in blue and the yellow-gray lines depicting the channels as they are today.
“Time scale – we can’t expect restoration to happen in five years … we need to allow habitats to evolve and we need to allow plant succession to happen, so trying to let that be okay that these natural processes are going to take more space and more time than we might like.” People: “People are the crux of this whole ecosystem that we’re talking about in the Delta … there are a lot of stakeholders in the Delta that don’t live here as well, and so involving those people in the process so they can appreciate why these things are important and how they should be done most efficiently.” From this landscape resilience framework, they developed a simple conceptual model to try and help people think about the expectations of what can be restored.
“We’ve changed the flows, we’ve changed the setting, we’ve changed the sediment supply, and the way things are connected.
We’ve created novel habitats and types of land uses and so we’re not getting all of the ecological functions any more.
Some of them are all the way gone, some of them are sort of stuttering along.” “The idea with restoration is we can restore some of the physical processes – not all the way to the historical level, but enough that that can then interact with the landscape where we’ve restored habitat, we’ve created redundant patches, large patches, connectivity, all the things and that can help us bring back the functions that we want,” she said.
“We’re still thinking about restoring marshes for wildlife, so one of our guidelines for restoring marsh based processes is marshes should be as big as possible.

Water Deeply: Why was this carbon methodology developed?
Basically, if you flood the islands and grow wetland vegetation, these islands could accrete carbon.
It seemed like an opportune time because, in the early ’90s, the state had purchased a couple western Delta islands and wanted to move forward with subsidence reversal.
So we might work with the Department of Water Resources and take that land they already have in wetland production, run it through the methodology and actually get contracts to be able to have emissions reduction credits.
So a farmer could then look at that area and think, “I can actually put this land into a managed wetland and get revenue that isn’t from agricultural production.” Water Deeply: Who would benefit from the greenhouse gas credits produced under this program?
Ingram: It’s whoever actually holds the land and is managing the land.
We would work with landowners to develop the agreements, and market those credits.
Water Deeply: How much carbon can Delta wetlands sequester?
Water Deeply: How does this process work?
So over time, you accreted 1 to 2 millimeters a year during that 6,500 years.

“150 years of human intervention in and around the Delta has significantly changed the Delta; changes such as reclamation of land, where approximately 1100 miles of levee construction developed over 400,000 acres of farmland and increased Delta residents to approximately 500,000 in population, has reshaped what the Delta is now.
The Delta Plan is a comprehensive management plan for the Delta; it is not a project plan.
“Benefits related to reduced fish entrainment losses, operational flexibility related to limiting reverse flow conditions and fish entrainment, to create more variable flow patterns, support Delta water quality management, address climate change and future uncertainty, and adaptively manage the system to achieve the coequal goals.
But we did make some organizational changes to be able to better tie the problems that we’re trying to address to solutions and opportunities that we’re presenting in the amendment.” “Councilmembers suggested that the draft amendment should improve its description on how the options were evaluated and selected for promotion, so we’ve made revisions to the problem statement to tie them more directly to those characteristics that we’ve presented in the recommendations for new conveyance, storage, and operations, and we heard that we should be relying more on the substantial time and effort and work that has been done over the last two decades in particular, on the development analysis for options for conveyance, storage, and operations, so you’ll see a lot more references in the upfront sections of the amendment to that historical background and work that’s already been performed by others.” They received a number of suggestions related to specific text and language that’s included in the draft that we revised, as well as suggestions for a lot of new recommendations, she said.
So in response to these comments, we have expanded the introduction and problem statements, we’ve made a lot of changes to the recommendations and added a number of new recommendations for your consideration today.” The Council and staff then spent about the next two hours going line by line through the draft amendment language, discussing many issues, including science the science behind the amendment and construction and other impacts to the community.
… Stockton is being set up to take all of the risk with all the Delta tunnels project which has only been 10% designed.” BARBARA BARRIGAN-PARILLA, RESTORE THE DELTA: “Last month, hundreds of informed Delta residents made comments to this Council expressing their robust opposition to the proposed Delta Plan amendment for conveyance and storage that would make Cal Water Fix tunnels the preferred conveyance alternative.
I have lived in the Delta for 20 years and in Discovery Bay for 11 of those years.
How is taking a habitat conservation plan out of this system and dual conveyance making things better?” “I’m confused that the Delta Stewardship Council doesn’t seem to be concerned about the Delta, and everything associated with it.
You say conveyance doesn’t mean the Delta tunnels or the Water Fix, but it’s the only thing out there that anyone is looking at, so to me, I think that you’re really saying the Delta tunnels.” “The opening remarks from the Brentwood meeting said, ‘the current system of exporting water is clearly not working, and that the Water Fix is needed to fix it.’ That was the statement.
However, the proposed changes to this water conveyance storage and operations amendment appear to endorse approval of the only major water conveyance project being discussed today, California Water Fix.

BLOG ROUND-UP: Bloggers weigh in on Delta tunnels and science; Flawed California water economics; outdated water rights; drought emergency ends; late fall-run Chinook status; in other words water; and more ….
Independent science review panel finds problems with Delta tunnels biological opinion: Restore the Delta writes, “An analysis by an Independent Review Panel has been made public by the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC).
During the question-and-answer session (VIDEO) at the end of the meeting, Feinstein tells the crowd… … ” Read more from Restore the Delta here: Feinstein on Delta tunnels at town hall meeting Scientific integrity in DWR’s engineering: sea level rise: “The WaterFix tunnel design assumes 18 inches of sea level rise by Late Long Term (2065.)
… ” Read more from the California Water Research blog here: Scientific integrity in DWR’s engineering: sea level rise Yet another flawed study on California water economics: Doug Obegi writes, “David Sunding prepared yet another flawed analysis of the economics of California water earlier this week.
… ” Read more from the California Water Blog here: GRA’s Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council weighs in on BMPs for groundwater sustainability plans Determining how many fish a long dammed river can sustain: “On a long dammed river in northwestern California, researchers are determining how many Chinook salmon and steelhead trout could live upstream of the dam if given the means to pass.
Historic estimates of salmon and trout populations are upwards of one million fish running the river and its tributaries annually as they migrated from the Pacific Ocean and back to spawn.
They migrate upstream to spawn below Shasta Reservoir in the Sacramento River in the late fall and early winter.
… ” Read more from Medium here: Cadiz needs scrutiny by the USGS Oakdale: Will the water district double down on dumb?
The storm hovered over California for a steady month with small breaks, a little rain, and then more storming into February.
… ” Read more from the … & the West blog here: In other words, water And lastly … “Pretend you are a river.

Drought busted: Bureau of Reclamation boosts water allocation to 100 percent for west-side farmers.
They received a 5 percent allocation last year, causing them to fallow at least 200,000 acres in the Westlands Water District.
With one of the wettest winters in years, “there shouldn’t have been a question mark … this is something we should have seen in February.” What changed the bureau’s mind?
“Following the California Department of Water Resources exceptional March 30 snow survey results, Reclamation is pleased to announce this increase to a 100 percent allocation for our South-of-Delta water contractors,” acting regional director Pablo Arroyave said in a news release.
“However, as Gov.
The Central Valley Project was designed to deliver full supplies in all types of water years with allocations to be made in mid-February so farmers can make planting decisions, Westlands said.
From 2014 to 2015 the allocation was zero.
In 2016, farmers got 5 percent but were told it could not be used during the irrigation season, the water district said.
“For farmers who had to make planting decisions several months ago, (Tuesday’s) announcement of an increase in supply comes too late in the season to aid their operations,” Westlands said in a news release.
We look forward to a timely, adequate allocation for the next growing season.” A pair of Valley congressional leaders applauded the full water allocation but also recognized the need to improve the water system.