yolo
01-31-2009, 05:56 PM
For those interested, the local paper had an article about the water issues and fish protection that will significantly impact water flow. Looks like there is a new smelt to worry about for this year added to the Delta smelt. It is a longfin smelt. Here's the link and the article http://www.avpress.com/n/29/0129_s1.hts
Water supplies at record lows
State faces third straight drought year
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Thursday, January 29, 2009.
By ALISHA SEMCHUCK
Valley Press Staff Writer
PALMDALE - Water supplies in California have not yet hit rock bottom, but at some of the reservoirs in the State Water Project, they're coming darn close - dipping to record low levels.
The situation threatens to reduce 2009 California Aqueduct allocations to between 5% and 10% of the entitlement for state water contractors such as the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, Littlerock Creek Irrigation District and Palmdale Water District.
That's the potential doomsday message coming out of the California Department of Water Resources as California faces a potentially third consecutive dry year.
Russ Fuller, general manager at the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, said two years of drought caused the DWR in 2008 to allocate 35% of its entitlement to the 29 state water contractors. For AVEK, that meant 49,490 acre-feet at most. Each acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, the amount used by the average Antelope Valley household in a year.
Annual water demand from AVEK customers - water retailers such as Quartz Hill Water District and Los Angeles County Waterworks District 40, plus agricultural users - reaches on average 55,000 acre-feet, according to Mike Flood, agency engineer for AVEK.
"In some years, we get orders for 70,000 acre-feet," he said.
AVEK delivered in excess of 48,000 acre-feet in 2008.
"People have cut back, conserving from the very beginning," Flood said.
For 2009, Flood added, "we have orders for 60,000 acre-feet."
As if the 2008 allocations didn't worry water suppliers enough, Fuller said the outlook for 2009 is even more grim. In December, DWR projected a 15% allocation for state water contractors.
At 15%, AVEK could draw a maximum of 21,210 acre-feet from the 444-mile California Aqueduct, which is fed by the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Since that projection, another snag surfaced involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - a situation which threatens to reduce 2009 allocations to between 5% and 10%, Fuller said.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials issued a biological opinion suggesting extra measures for protecting the Delta smelt, a 2-inch fish whose population was declining due to being sucked into the pumps that send water into the aqueduct. Federal District Court Judge Oliver Wanger last spring ordered a slowdown of the pumps. Wanger's decision resulted in less water coming through the aqueduct, which reduced the allocation for state water contractors. The federal government and environmentalists also have emphasized a need to restore salmon runs.
Aside from Delta smelt and salmon concerns, the California Fish and Game Commission, in November 2008, sought to protect longfin smelt by further limiting pumping in the Delta.
"If the biological opinion (by Fish and Wildlife) stands," Fuller said, "the decision will be more severe than Wanger's decision."
"This litigation is going to start soon," Fuller said. The state water contractors' Joint Powers Authority will fight back in court, he said.
Kern County Water Agency and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will hire their own counsel, in addition to the State Water Project contractors, Fuller said. "The idea is to block this biological opinion and get it thrown out."
The Fish and Wildlife Service opinion is not as severe on the federal Central Valley Project, a delivery system that uses water from the Sacramento River basin to supply the San Francisco Bay area and farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley, he said. Environmentalists backing a save-the-fish campaign further complicated the climate change issues that plagued water agencies.
California went through its driest spring and summer on record in 2008, according to a presentation by Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, and Mike Chrisman, secretary of the California Resources Agency, on Dec. 4 at an Association of California Water Agencies conference.
That presentation, titled "Managing Drought in the Golden State," also noted that Southern California in 2007 recorded the driest year on record. The two-year stream flow of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers measured in the lowest 10% of the historical range.
Reservoirs at Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and San Luis marked the lowest carryover storage since 1977, during California's worst recent drought. The San Luis Reservoir, on which AVEK banks, was at 16% of capacity as of August.
Under wet conditions, the California Aqueduct's delivery capacity for 2009 would be 7.02 million acre-feet - the baseline amount released in a year that meets water quality standards set by the State Water Resources Control Board. During a wet year, if the Delta smelt decision by Wanger is factored in, the amount decreases to 4.93 million acre-feet, and adding in restrictions to protect longfin smelt further reduces the amount to 3.93 million acre-feet.
Those numbers reflect the maximum amount for a year when rainfall and snow packs produce a bounty of water, officials say.
Dry conditions - record low precipitation - drastically lower those numbers. During those times the baseline delivery would be 2.71 million acre-feet. Taking the Delta smelt issue into consideration would lower the delivery to 2.29 million acre-feet. Adding in protection measures for longfin smelt drops that number to 1.68 million acre-feet. That's the amount of water that would be available for all 29 state water contractors to share for the year.
Fuller said state water contractors expect DWR to inform them of the 2009 allocation in mid-February.
The presentation from Snow and Chrisman reminded Californians of the need to conserve water to make it through the drought. That presentation ended with the motto: "Hope is not a strategy."
Water supplies at record lows
State faces third straight drought year
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Thursday, January 29, 2009.
By ALISHA SEMCHUCK
Valley Press Staff Writer
PALMDALE - Water supplies in California have not yet hit rock bottom, but at some of the reservoirs in the State Water Project, they're coming darn close - dipping to record low levels.
The situation threatens to reduce 2009 California Aqueduct allocations to between 5% and 10% of the entitlement for state water contractors such as the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, Littlerock Creek Irrigation District and Palmdale Water District.
That's the potential doomsday message coming out of the California Department of Water Resources as California faces a potentially third consecutive dry year.
Russ Fuller, general manager at the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, said two years of drought caused the DWR in 2008 to allocate 35% of its entitlement to the 29 state water contractors. For AVEK, that meant 49,490 acre-feet at most. Each acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, the amount used by the average Antelope Valley household in a year.
Annual water demand from AVEK customers - water retailers such as Quartz Hill Water District and Los Angeles County Waterworks District 40, plus agricultural users - reaches on average 55,000 acre-feet, according to Mike Flood, agency engineer for AVEK.
"In some years, we get orders for 70,000 acre-feet," he said.
AVEK delivered in excess of 48,000 acre-feet in 2008.
"People have cut back, conserving from the very beginning," Flood said.
For 2009, Flood added, "we have orders for 60,000 acre-feet."
As if the 2008 allocations didn't worry water suppliers enough, Fuller said the outlook for 2009 is even more grim. In December, DWR projected a 15% allocation for state water contractors.
At 15%, AVEK could draw a maximum of 21,210 acre-feet from the 444-mile California Aqueduct, which is fed by the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Since that projection, another snag surfaced involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - a situation which threatens to reduce 2009 allocations to between 5% and 10%, Fuller said.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials issued a biological opinion suggesting extra measures for protecting the Delta smelt, a 2-inch fish whose population was declining due to being sucked into the pumps that send water into the aqueduct. Federal District Court Judge Oliver Wanger last spring ordered a slowdown of the pumps. Wanger's decision resulted in less water coming through the aqueduct, which reduced the allocation for state water contractors. The federal government and environmentalists also have emphasized a need to restore salmon runs.
Aside from Delta smelt and salmon concerns, the California Fish and Game Commission, in November 2008, sought to protect longfin smelt by further limiting pumping in the Delta.
"If the biological opinion (by Fish and Wildlife) stands," Fuller said, "the decision will be more severe than Wanger's decision."
"This litigation is going to start soon," Fuller said. The state water contractors' Joint Powers Authority will fight back in court, he said.
Kern County Water Agency and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will hire their own counsel, in addition to the State Water Project contractors, Fuller said. "The idea is to block this biological opinion and get it thrown out."
The Fish and Wildlife Service opinion is not as severe on the federal Central Valley Project, a delivery system that uses water from the Sacramento River basin to supply the San Francisco Bay area and farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley, he said. Environmentalists backing a save-the-fish campaign further complicated the climate change issues that plagued water agencies.
California went through its driest spring and summer on record in 2008, according to a presentation by Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, and Mike Chrisman, secretary of the California Resources Agency, on Dec. 4 at an Association of California Water Agencies conference.
That presentation, titled "Managing Drought in the Golden State," also noted that Southern California in 2007 recorded the driest year on record. The two-year stream flow of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers measured in the lowest 10% of the historical range.
Reservoirs at Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and San Luis marked the lowest carryover storage since 1977, during California's worst recent drought. The San Luis Reservoir, on which AVEK banks, was at 16% of capacity as of August.
Under wet conditions, the California Aqueduct's delivery capacity for 2009 would be 7.02 million acre-feet - the baseline amount released in a year that meets water quality standards set by the State Water Resources Control Board. During a wet year, if the Delta smelt decision by Wanger is factored in, the amount decreases to 4.93 million acre-feet, and adding in restrictions to protect longfin smelt further reduces the amount to 3.93 million acre-feet.
Those numbers reflect the maximum amount for a year when rainfall and snow packs produce a bounty of water, officials say.
Dry conditions - record low precipitation - drastically lower those numbers. During those times the baseline delivery would be 2.71 million acre-feet. Taking the Delta smelt issue into consideration would lower the delivery to 2.29 million acre-feet. Adding in protection measures for longfin smelt drops that number to 1.68 million acre-feet. That's the amount of water that would be available for all 29 state water contractors to share for the year.
Fuller said state water contractors expect DWR to inform them of the 2009 allocation in mid-February.
The presentation from Snow and Chrisman reminded Californians of the need to conserve water to make it through the drought. That presentation ended with the motto: "Hope is not a strategy."