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Dry Year Taxes Commitments
The New Year's soaking led upstream reservoir managers to release lots of freshwater for fish and the Delta, and now, months of sunny skies later, they're coming up short. "From the water managers' perspective, it's unholy hell," says BurRec's Laura King. "The farmers have already planted everything in sight, and pulling their water would have a huge economic impact. It's much worse than having a drought year."
The unusual wet-then-dry year - on the heels of several years of plentiful supplies for man and nature alike - has forced water managers out of their easy chairs and into the hot seat. Suddenly, meeting environmental protections established by the hard-won Bay-Delta Accord and Central Valley Water Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) isn't so easy, but environmentalists aren't going to let them slide. "They want to relax deliveries for the environment, but they're not willing to do the same for water contractors - who've been promised 90-100% of deliveries," says the Bay Institute's Gary Bobker. "It shows the bankruptcy of their current management approach." King's agency is taking the brunt of Bobker's criticism. "For years, BurRec has attempted to rely on hydrology rather than policy to meet its environmental obligations," says Bobker.
At the center of the controversy at press time was how much of the 800,000 acre feet of water mandated under the CVPIA to help anadromous fish every year had already or would-be released this year. The Department of Interior - representing both BurRec and U.S. Fish & Wildlife - has decided that early-in-the-year upstream releases to help anadromous fish and to meet Bay-Delta Accord standards, as well as various actions planned for the fall which could affect 1998 supplies, may use all of the 800,000 acre-feet this year. As a result, no additional amounts of this so-called "B2" water will be released this spring for the Delta, says King.
Enviros point out that by Interior's own accounting, a large portion of the 800,000 is still available for environmental use, yet Interior has chosen not to use it but to make up any additional water released this spring for fish by increasing pumping later in the year. In Bobker's eyes this means the environment is being treated as if it were a dry year and the urban and agricultural users as if it were a wet one. "It's blatantly inequitable," he says. He's also worried about signs that in order to make-up any water used this spring BurRec will fall short of fulfilling a number of other environmental obligations under a variety of laws - among them summer water quality standards for the Delta, minimum flows for the Feather River, agricultural salinity standards for the San Joaquin, and Delta smelt protections under the Endangered Species Act.
But the environmental heat has already produced some results. At press time, state and federal operators were backing off proposals to relax some of the Accord's standards this year, and Interior had committed to speeding up efforts to finalize its guidelines for exactly how the 800,000 acre feet will be managed in the future - policies that have been five years coming but that promise to minimize supply conflicts in the years ahead.
Interior Deputy John Garamendi is promising final guidelines by June 20 - too late, according to Bobker, to offset biological impacts this year. "If it doesn't rain soon, 1997 may convince everybody that year-type is a poor tool to use to set flow requirements," adds U.S. EPA biologist Bruce Herbold. Bobker agrees that an approach more "sensitive" to hydrological conditions might be appropriate for both water users and the environment in the long term, and suggests more widespread use of a sliding scale adjusted to conditions in the previous month. "We shouldn't be making decisions about what happens in May solely based on what happened in November," he says.
Contact: Gary Bobker (415)721-7680 or Laura King (916)979-2209
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