At yesterday’s press conference, Department of Water Resources Mark Cowin announced the rollout of the documents, speaking about the need for the project and gave some details about how the project would be operated, including the potential range of exports that the proposed project might be able to deliver, and Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Chuck Bonham spoke extensively about the benefits that the project will have for covered species. Here are their statements, unedited:
MARK COWIN, DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES:
“We’re here today to mark an important milestone. After 7 years of intensive planning and collaboration, we are now ready to begin the roll out of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and begin to engage the public on the details of that plan. Our goal is to continue to be as transparent as we can while we continue to refine and finalize the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. The Plan is lengthy and complicated, and we want to provide enough time for the interested public to review it.
With that in mind, we intend to roll out the chapters of the plan in three stages. We’re releasing the first set of chapters today. Keep in mind this is a preliminary draft. We are offering this now so the public can begin to digest the information and the details of the plan while we continue to evaluate and refine the plan, working with the state and federal agencies that are engaged with us.
Today we are releasing the first four chapters of the Plan. Those chapters give an overview of what the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is. It describes the current ecological conditions in the Delta; it describes the Plans 22 separate Conservation Measures which are really the guts of the Plan itself, including the construction, operation and maintenance of a new water diversion facility in the Delta, and the creation of extensive new wildlife habitat in the Delta.
We have scheduled public meetings in West Sacramento next week on March 20th so people can start to ask questions and start to get answers about the chapters we’ve released today. And in the coming weeks we’ll release more chapters of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and hold more public meetings. On March 27th, we plan to release three more chapters, including one that describes the effects of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan on various listed species. We’ll follow that with a public meeting, and then the five final chapters, including one that reports on costs and funding sources that is scheduled for release in late April and will also be followed by a public meeting.
A lot of details are in the press packet and also on the BDCP website. As I mentioned earlier, this is an administrative draft of the BDCP and a preliminary opportunity for public review. We intend to continue to work with state and federal wildlife agencies to refine some of the details of the plan, leading to a final draft this summer when the official public comment period will begin. That final plan will also be subject to comprehensive analysis and review by the federal and state wildlife agencies under the U.S. endangered species act and under CA’s NCCPA as well as NEPA and CEQA.
Before I pass this on, let me close with this and offer a personal perspective on what we have here. Based upon some of the previous reports on this topic, I suspect that many of you will describe what we are rolling out here today as a new chapter in California’s historic water wars. I think that is a very unfortunate narrative. California has struggled with how to deal with the Delta for decades, and meanwhile the health of the Delta continues to decline, and with it the water supply reliability that fuels so much of California’s economy. After seven years of very intensive effort, we’re now in a position to put forward a responsible, comprehensive plan to reverse those trends. Our plan isn’t without controversy; no plan of this magnitude could be. But because of the effort we’ve put into working through tough issues, this Plan enjoys an unprecedented amount of consensus between the federal and state agencies that manage fish and wildlife, and the agencies that manage water. This plan isn’t about waging war; it’s about resolving some of the most critical resource management conflicts in California. And with that, I’ll ask Commissioner Connor to make some comments.
MIKE CONNOR, COMMISSIONER OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
I am participating today as a representative of the federal government because we want to make it clear that the federal government has been working closely with the state of California on the BDCP because we agree that the status quo, with respect to California’s Bay Delta, is unsustainable from both an environmental and economic perspective. The elements of the Plan being released today are the results of substantial interaction with federal agencies, and we are very much encouraged by the progress that’s been made to date. As Mark indicated though, collectively we are all evaluating and refining the Plan. the federal agencies are going to continue our partnership with the state with the goal of achieving an overall Plan that is legally sufficient, grounded in sound science, appropriately integrated with the federal Central Valley project, and which overall helps meet the coequal goals of environmental restoration of the Delta and increased water supply reliability for California. So once again I appreciate the opportunity to participate to continue this partnership with the state of California, and I’ll turn it over to Chuck Bonham of the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
CHUCK BONHAM, DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME
I thank you for your continued coverage of this important topic. The news today is that a plan is out. Many have said it would never come out. Some have suggested it couldn’t come out. It’s out. So our department will be reviewing this plan and ultimately considering whether to permit it and will continue to be a regulator around the conservation content in the Plan. So I owe a thank you to the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation for substantial changes to the Plan that you saw at an outline level about a year ago in February, 2012. The Plan now includes a project that’s about 40% smaller: from 15,000 cfs to 9,000 cfs and from a proposed 5 intakes on the Sacramento River down to 3. Over the last year, we’ve had a long responsive dialog between us in the wildlife community and those in the water supply community at the agency level about our original red flags almost a year ago on that first outline of the project. Don’t kid yourself; we have way more work ahead of us than is now behind us, and we will quickly move as a department into the role of reviewing this application, but at a framework level, the Plan has some solid components.
We’re not talking about one species; we’re talking about how to better manage 57 species. And it’s only 11 of those 57 are fish, so sadly we don’t see much coverage about the 46 non-fish species in this plan, but let me tell you about a few. The sandhill crane: the Plan proposes to restore, protect and manage almost 16,000 acres of sandhill habitat. Swanson’s hawk: the Plan proposes to protect and manage about 50,000 acres for the benefit of that species. Giant garter snake: the Plan proposes to protect and manage 16,000 acres for the benefit of that species.
Next component that makes sense: higher standards. We’re not talking about incremental change; we’re talking about legal standards designed to conserve species and ensure healthy populations across a broad geographic range. I like that standard. You see that standard expressed in the NCCP. I encourage you to look at Table 1.2 in the first chapter; it’s a checklist of the very precise findings we’ll be making against those higher legal standards.
Habitat – we’re talking about restoration potentially observable from space. Perhaps 100,000 acres of restoration. It once was the most amazing complex of tidal, floodplain and river habitat potentially in the world; only three percent of that exists today. We’re talking about 100,000 acres of habitat restoration over 50 years; and in the first 15 years, we want to pursue 30,000 acres of restoration.
We’re also talking about getting off the south Delta. You have all heard me say before that 2 of every 3 fish that gets stuck in the south Delta dies by being sucked into the south Delta pumps. It doesn’t get better when you think about migration for salmon through the system. About 95% of our San Joaquin River juvenile Chinook don’t make it through the Delta on their migration. That figure on the Sacramento side for Chinook is about 60% mortality rate.
We’re talking about more modern screening, so when you move the diversion from the south Delta up to the Sacramento River, you will have the first chance to screen a diversion based on current technology. Screening alone doesn’t fix this problem, though you may hear some folks tell you, ‘keep the pumps where they are and just screen them.’ Well the fundamental problem is the presence and absence of the fish in the south Delta, not the actual screens of any diversions. This change of diversion point fixes that problem.
We’re talking about water year types. Five water year types, monthly, and management of water based on those water year types. That’s just good common sense.
We’re talking about 20-something conservation measures, many of which aren’t about water. I’d ask you to read Conservation Measure 6, channel margin enhancement; CM12, methylmercury management, CM 21, non project diversion strategies; CM15, localized reduction of predator fishes, and it goes on and on. And on top of that content, we’re going to overlay a science program and an adaptive management regime.
So we’re going have to, at our department, look through a lot of information, and reserve our ability to make these permitting decisions, but the framework is one to be welcomed. As the ninth circuit famously once wrote, “Water litigation is a weed that flowers in the arid West.” That’s been the truth in the Delta.
We can do better. It’s not going to be easy. People will make this ad hominem and they may come after me personally or Mr. Cowin or any of us individually; they could still come after the state collectively. But doing nothing is no longer an option. This is the native home of hope, according to Wallace Stegner. We’ve got to do this. And I just encourage you to ask all of your readers to give us the space to engage in the public debate about fixing the problems in the Delta. Thanks.
MARK COWIN, on how much water will be exported through the BDCP:
First of all, this plan does not include any guarantees for water deliveries. Second of all, whatever deliveries take place will be consistent with progress towards over 200 biological goals and objectives for the Plan and consistent with water rights of all other water right holders in the Central Valley system.
As far as the plan goes itself and what it means to water supply deliveries, one of the great points of new flexibility that this plan provides is by adding those north Delta diversion points, we get a lot more opportunity to opportunistically operate the system such that we can move water when fish are not in danger.
Great example of that this year, you’re probably all familiar with the circumstance that played out in December and January of this year. Our existing biological opinions that control the operations of the state and federal projects include criteria that requires us to limit reverse flows in the Delta. We have a chart over here that describes what those reverse flows are. Essentially we have pumps in the south Delta now, and when we operate them at high capacity, we tend to pull water towards the southern part of the Delta, and as Director Bonham points out, that’s not good for fish. So our existing biological opinions require us to limit the amount of those reverse flows.
Because of the presence of Delta smelt this year and also of migrating salmon, we had to reduce deliveries or exports from the Delta in the order of magnitude of 700,000 acre-feet of water. That’s water that if we had those north Delta diversions in place, we could have moved safely and without harm to fish.
As you all know, we’ve had beautiful weather since February; unfortunately that’s not good for California’s hydrology. The storm systems have dried up and it looks like we’re headed toward a relatively dry year and low deliveries from both the state and federal projects. We could have avoided a lot of that if this plan was in place. So that inherent flexibility of being able to pull water from the north when it’s available follows up on this big gulp, small sip sort of philosophy that you’ll hear about. It adds inherent flexibility to whatever else happens in the system.
… The north Delta diversions will be controlled by specific criteria that will be included in the permit terms. We won’t be able to operate those just as we please but rather the amount that can be moved through those facilities will be based on flow in the river at different times of the year and different types of wetness of years.
Same with the south Delta facilities. Just as they are controlled now by environmental regulations that are in the biological opinions that control operations, we will continue to have limitations on when we can pull water; in fact, we’ll have more conservative limitations so that we do not incur the reverse flows that we’ve seen under the existing system.
… When the Governor and the Secretary spoke last summer, they spoke about a range of deliveries. What this really gets to is a third set of criteria for operating the projects and that is how much Delta outflow is going to be required. Now just let me say this. Regardless of whether or not we move forward on the BDCP, we’re going to have to address how much outflow is needed for the survival of fish. Under the current approach, that will be based upon what is needed to avoid extinction of species. Under our plan, we’ll be trying to develop outflows that are necessary to allow recovery of species – a much more progressive standard.
What we’ve done, because of the existing scientific uncertainty about the amount of outflow necessary in order to achieve those biological goals and objectives in light of the new habitat we’ll be creating, and in light of all of the other conservation measures we’ll be implementing to protect species, it’s unclear at this point exactly how much outflow will be necessary. So we’ve structured a collaborative applied science process that will allow us to experiment basically over the next decade, to determine just what those requirements ought to be.
It comes down to this. If you look at what average deliveries from the state and federal projects have been, over the last 20 years, it amounts to about 5.3 million acre-feet per year. If we end up on the high outflow end of our decision tree process, total annual deliveries could be decreased compared to that 20 year average by about 10%, roughly. If we end up on the lower outflow version of that decision tree, we could end up with deliveries that are about 5% higher than that 20 year average. Ultimately, the fish and wildlife agencies will make the determination about what outflow requirements are necessary based upon the outcomes of that applied science process that we’re going to conduct.
Let me just say this, though … what’s really important here in terms of deliveries that the BDCP might provide is that it shores up our water supply reliability. We are seeing a continual decline of covered species in the Delta, and that translates directly into a decline in water supply reliability. We know that if we continue on this track, we’ll end up with something much less than 5.3 million acre-feet of annual deliveries over the next 20 years. So shoring up that foundational amount of water that we receive from those state and federal projects is really fundamental to CA water supply reliability.
CHUCK BONHAM (follows up Mr. Cowin’s answer):
One word, your question is trust. Look, I come to this great opportunity of serving as director of a fantastic department under this Governor having spent about a decade in conservation community as a water lawyer, struggling sometimes with the essence of your question. How do you know? And one of the things I like that I see in the plan we’re releasing today is the commitment to biological goals and objectives, and I want to emphasize this for a moment. There are about 214 biological goals and objectives, and some of our next work will be determining how you weave those goals and objectives into a permit regime, so that all future performance and activity is referenced back to success or failure at achieving those goals and objectives.
At a landscape level, we’ve got four goals – those are like chemical constituents, physical processes, habitat connectivity goals, and 28 objectives. At the ecological health level, think abundance, distribution, life cycle history, we have 18 goals and 47 objectives. And then narrowing down at each of the 57 species, we have 45 goals and 90 objectives.
And not to put you to sleep, but I really encourage you to take a look at some of them. Some of them are so specific; we’re talking about a Chinook survival goal and through Delta survival increasing by 52% by year 19, or increasing the Delta smelt recovery index by a defined percentage. These goals and objectives are specific at a level I don’t think we’ve been talking about in the Delta before. They are measurable, so we’ll be able to track failure or success in achieving them. They are actionable – they aren’t, ‘oh let’s do something good’; they are ‘let’s improve the recovery standard by this percent.’ They are time bounded, they are put on a schedule, and going forward, that is what our department will be using as our guidepost for success or failure, and a way in which we’re going to ensure meeting our dual goals.
MARK COWIN on the water bond:
We will need some form of state and federal funding to complement the majority of funding that will come from the water users that receive the benefits from the project. We haven’t determined exactly what that number is. The water users have committed that they will pay the approximately $14 billion capital costs to construct the facilities. I believe we have the number of something under $4 billion for the other components of the plan. Some of that – probably the majority of that – will be paid by state and federal funding sources. So we’ll need to identify where those sources come from. A water bond would be a great start.
MORE:
To review the first four chapters of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, as well as all the fact sheets and other documents, click here.
