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Revenge of the Forgotten River

Thirty-five years ago, the residents of Trinity County, in the remote northwestern part of California, would have had little interest in State Water Board hearings on Bay-Delta water rights. After all, the Trinity River is a major tributary of the Klamath River, and nature never intended its waters to come anywhere near the Bay and Delta. But that was before federal water engineers dammed the Trinity, drilled a tunnel through the Coast Range and began diverting more than three quarters of the river's flow to the Central Valley Project (CVP).

Now, Trinity County is trying to get some of that water back, and to remind decision-makers that they should consider the Trinity's needs as they plan for protection and restoration of the Bay Delta. "We call the Trinity the forgotten river," says Tom Stokely of the Trinity County Planning Department. "No one even puts us on the map when it comes to water issues." The county is proposing an approach to flow restoration on the Trinity that could radically alter water rights in the Central Valley.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Hoopa Indian Tribe - which has federally protected rights to the river's diversion-devastated fisheries - are completing a 12-year flow evaluation of the Trinity, mandated by Congress in 1984 (and already several years late). The evaluation is expected to recommend that diversions from the Trinity to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley be reduced by an average of 255,000 acre-feet per year to restore the fisheries. The Secretary of the Interior is expected to make a final decision on the flow restorations in late 1999.

Advocates for the Trinity say the State Board - and to some extent CALFED - are ignoring the potential effects of increased Trinity River flows on Central Valley Project operations, and they worry that this failure may affect the restoration plan. "The Trinity is going to get water back," says Byron Leydecker of Friends of the Trinity. "Not to plan for that is an outrage."

The Trinity's defenders don't just want their water back: they want it to come from a specific place. The county claims that damming the Trinity allowed the CVP to expand its "place of use" to irrigate the selenium-laden soils of the Westlands Water District, and helped damage the Bay-Delta ecosystem by creating toxic agricultural runoff. "The water that created the Kesterson disaster was Trinity water," says Stokely, referring to the infamous 1983 discovery of selenium-deformed birds at a Merced County wildlife refuge. The county has asked the State Board to declare that continued water deliveries to Westlands constitute a wasteful and unreasonable use of water in violation of the state constitution, and to remove from the CVP service area all lands with selenium concentration greater than 0.36 micrograms per gram - about half of the 600,000 acres within Westlands.

Attorneys for Westlands say Trinity's position is misinformed. "When the San Luis Drain was closed, Westlands terminated drainage service to landowners within the district," says Thomas Birmingham. "There is no discharge of agricultural drainage outside Westlands' service area."

An Interior Department solicitor sided with the water district in moving to exclude the county's testimony and evidence from the State Board hearings. "We're not siding with Westlands as a matter of policy," says Interior's Alf Brandt, "Our concern was that Trinity was stating as fact their interpretation of the law, particularly area-of-origin laws." Brandt also questions the Trinity representatives' expertise on matters relating to Westlands drainage. "They've never even been to Westlands," he says.

Stokely believes Interior's position reflects bias. "When Interior's solicitor goes to these hearings, he's supposed to represent fish and wildlife and Indian tribal interests as well as the Bureau of Reclamation," says Stokely, "but it's apparent to us that he's in fact only representing the Bureau." On the issue of testimony, Trinity, Interior and Westlands reached an agreement whereby all of Trinity's documentary evidence went into the hearing record, although oral and written opinions were excluded.

Trinity does have some influential allies. "The Trinity basin's needs must be met before you export water," says Dante Nomellini, an attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency. "And it's certainly unreasonable to take water out of the Trinity, send it down the west side of the Valley and use it to degrade the quality of the San Joaquin."

The State Board water rights hearings will continue into early 1999 and litigation is likely to follow any decision. Nevertheless, says Stokely, "At least Trinity County has earned a seat at the table with other California water interests."

Contact Tom Stokely (530)628-5949

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