According to the Biblical book of Leviticus, the ancient Israelites designated a goat to bear the weight of their sins. Nowadays, the scapegoat is not required to be a goat. When it comes to assessing blame for the worsening California drought, a scapefish will suffice. Some media outlets, notably the Wall Street Journal in a recent op-ed piece, point to the hapless Delta smelt as a culprit in the state’s water crisis, as well as a prime example of the iniquities of the federal Endangered Species Act.
As is so often the case, though, it’s not that simple. Day-by-day analysis of water exports from the Delta by Jon Rosenfield and Greg Reis of The Bay Institute shows that smelt protection has had very little to do with water export restrictions during the drought. The bottom line is that water allocations have been cut because of record-low snowpack and reduced runoff. When diversions by the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project have been further curtailed over the last three dry years, it’s usually because water quality regulations that safeguard water for cities and farms against excessive salinity also limit exports in order to ensure that the projects can pump fresh water to urban and agricultural customers. Protection of endangered anadromous fish like salmon and steelhead has played a minor role, but delta smelt regulations have not governed exports since early in 2013. As for the ESA, supporters argue that it’s far from the draconic and inflexible law caricatured by its critics. Its real shortcomings are insufficient commitment to the recovery of imperiled species and a chronic lack of funding for implementation.
Here’s a taste of the Wall Street Journal piece: “To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008….Parched Californians may soon wonder when it’s their turn for such concern.” Similar interpretations have surfaced on Fox News and elsewhere. But Rosenfield and other knowledgeable water-watchers say these viewpoints are misinformed at best, disingenuous at worst. Delta water is not being wasted by being flushed out to sea: it’s working hard to serve multiple purposes for Californians, urban and rural alike.
“Clean Water Act protections have controlled Delta exports on most days by far over the last three years,” says Rosenfield. That was true even after the State Water Resources Control Board weakened or eliminated water quality protections for fish and wildlife in separate actions in 2014 and 2015. The intent of the Water Board regulations is to manage salinity in the Delta by tweaking freshwater flow rates, in the interest of agricultural irrigators and urban customers. From 2013 through March of this year, water quality regulations have governed exports on 75 percent of all days, salmon protection on 11 percent, smelt protection on a mere 8 percent. (Army Corps of Engineers permits, voluntary reductions, and system capacity accounted for the remaining 6 percent.) On no day in 2014 or 2015 were ESA smelt protections triggered.
As Rosenfield explains it, the regulatory mechanism for constraining water exports that might impact sensitive species begins with an interagency consultation under Section 7 of the ESA. The water agencies — the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources — are required to present their operational plans for review by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. The fish and wildlife agencies then issue species- specific Biological Opinions. “If the operation plans would cause or increase the jeopardy of extinction, the wildlife agencies need to provide Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives (RPAs) to the plan,” he says. Separate but overlap- ping RPAs govern the delta smelt, under FWS jurisdiction, and salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, and orcas, under NMFS. On any given day, one of the RPAs may trigger a reduction in ex- ports. They operate along with, and as a minor adjunct to, the Clean Water Act regulation. Because of the prolonged and severe drought conditions, the water quality protections are triggered more frequently. Rosenfield says The Bay Institute’s analysis shows that the smelt RPA has had no effect for most of the current drought. “The salmon RPA limits exports on some days,” he adds. “And even when the RPAs are limiting exports, they don’t get shut off; they just get turned down.”
Rosenfield and Reis mined their data from public annual and daily reports by the multiagency Delta Operations for Salmonids and Sturgeon group of water and wildlife agencies documenting water project (SWP and CVP) exports; in-Delta diversions are not included. He notes that some interpolation was needed: “There are times of year, mainly summer and fall, when no one provides updates on what’s controlling exports. This preliminary analysis requires an educated guess. But that wouldn’t change the story in terms of the proportion of days when the RPAs are controlling.”
Others have stressed the state’s multiple goals in regulating Delta exports. “Delta outflow is also essential to maintain water quality for farmers and cities in the Delta, and ultimately for the CVP and SWP itself: freshwater flowing out of Delta pushes against the tides bringing saltwater upstream, creating a barrier that enables the CVP and SWP to pump fresh water instead of salt water,” writes Doug Obegi of the National Resources Defense Council in his blog. In fact, the Water Board’s analysis of 2014 Delta outflows shows that 72 percent of the water that was not exported last year was needed simply to control salinity intrusion into the Delta.
Beyond smelt and salmon, the Endangered Species Act is the real target of media critics like Finley and their political allies. “The ESA is doing what we asked it to do, preventing species from going extinct,” Rosen- field notes. “Although it’s one of the best-written pieces of legislation we have, it could be better in making sure listed species recover. There’s no legal enforcement of recovery at all.” He adds that if the Clean Water Act and other environmental legislation had been properly enforced, “the ESA would be far less relevant.”
Cache Slough smelt habitat. Photo Matthew Young.
Rather than revising the federal act, Obegi advocates giving wildlife agencies adequate resources to implement it. “There’s a huge backlog of species awaiting listing, including California’s longfin smelt,” for which protection was determined to be warranted but precluded by lack of funds. Recovery plans for a number of non-pelagic species needs to be updated. Obegi also says more grants for habitat restoration and even simple devices like fish screens could reduce the conflict between water supply and environ- mental protection.
Mark Rockwell’s Endangered Species Coalition has its plate full defending the ESA from Congressional attempts to weaken it (at press time, eight such bills were pending in the US Senate). The problem with reauthorizing the act, he says, is that it can’t be done selectively: “When you open up the law, you open it up for everything.” If a changed political climate allowed constructive revision, Rockwell would like to see a stronger emphasis on species recovery in Section 10 of the Act, which governs Habitat Conservation Plans, and a way of insulating the critical habitat designation process from political arm-twisting.
Rockwell and Obegi agree that major changes in the way California uses water can defuse the fish-versus-farms controversy. That would include realistic pricing for irrigators, meaningful penalties for residential water wasters, tackling the antiquated and baroque water rights system, and conservation strategies like recycling, conjunctive use, and groundwater storage enhancement. Rockwell’s group has identified 55 actions the state can take to ride out the drought. “We don’t use water efficiently everywhere in this state,” he sums up. “It’s time we learned how to do that. The drought creates an opportunity for a come-to-Jesus meeting on this.” Finally, we may be able to move beyond scapefishing.
Joe Eaton writes about endangered and invasive species, climate and ecosystem science, environmental history, and water issues for ESTUARY. He is also "a semi-obsessive birder" whose pursuit of rarities has taken him to many of California's shores, wetlands, and sewage plants.
Our magazine’s media motto for many years has been “Where there’s an estuary, there’s a crowd.” The San Francisco Estuary is a place where people, wildlife, and commerce congregate, and where watersheds, rivers and the ocean meet and mix, creating a place of unusual diversity. In choosing to tell the...
Ever since the state and federal water projects were built in the 1930s and 1940s, California has captured snowmelt in foothill reservoirs, and moved the fresh water from dam releases and river outflows to parched parts of the state via aqueducts hundreds of miles long. A convoluted system of ancient...
Though the Clean Water Act did an amazing job of reducing wastewater and stormwater pollution of the San Francisco Estuary, some contaminants remain thorny problems. Legacy pollutants like mercury washed into the watershed from upstream gold mining, PCBs from old industrial sites, and selenium from agricultural drainage in the San...
Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
As is so often the case, though, it’s not that simple. Day-by-day analysis of water exports from the Delta by Jon Rosenfield and Greg Reis of The Bay Institute shows that smelt protection has had very little to do with water export restrictions during the drought. The bottom line is that water allocations have been cut because of record-low snowpack and reduced runoff. When diversions by the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project have been further curtailed over the last three dry years, it’s usually because water quality regulations that safeguard water for cities and farms against excessive salinity also limit exports in order to ensure that the projects can pump fresh water to urban and agricultural customers. Protection of endangered anadromous fish like salmon and steelhead has played a minor role, but delta smelt regulations have not governed exports since early in 2013. As for the ESA, supporters argue that it’s far from the draconic and inflexible law caricatured by its critics. Its real shortcomings are insufficient commitment to the recovery of imperiled species and a chronic lack of funding for implementation.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.