Last week, a segment of KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny featured Mark Cowin, Tim Quinn, Gary Bobker, and Barbara Barrigan-Parilla discussing the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Here’s a transcript of the show:
Michael Krasny: The Brown Administration released an environmental study on Monday of its $25 billion that includes two massive tunnels to move water from Northern California to other parts of the state. Governor Brown touts the plan as a conservation strategy to protect fish and wildlife while securing the state’s water supplies. We’ll discuss what’s in the proposal, which will undergo a four-month public comment period before being finalized.
From KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, I’m Michael Krasny. Good morning and welcome to this morning’s Forum program. The latest Delta Plan, which has opened floodgates of controversy, was unveiled yesterday in Sacramento. It’s a $25 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan and it would build two 30-mile tunnels, 40 feet in diameter, to move water from Northern California to other parts of the state, a package of ecosystem restoration and water conveyance improvements.
Supporters argue that the plan, released after seven years of study, represents one of the most ambitious habitat restoration programs ever attempted in California, and maintain that it will improve the environment for some 57 species of fish and wildlife, while those opposed contend that the project will ship more water from the Delta south and create more environmental problems. In this opening forum hour, we take up the debate.
Micheal Krasny then introduced and greeted his guests: Lauren Sommer, science and environmental reporter for KQED Public Radio; Mark Cowin, Director of the Department of Water Resources; Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies; Gary Bobker, director of the Rivers and Delta program at the Bay Institute. Later on in the program, Barbara Barrigan-Parilla from Restore the Delta weighs in.
Michael Krasny: Let me begin, Lauren Sommer, with you and let me begin by mentioning again to listeners that this actually goes back to the broad goals of the legislature that they put forward back in 2009. It’s supposed to make essentially some kind of balance for more reliable water supplies and essentially a healthier Delta ecosystem. How is it doing that by building these tunnels exactly?
Lauren Sommer:
This is a pretty complicated issue, but I always think it’s helpful to go back even further and understand why we are in this situation to begin with. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a key place to California’s water supply. Water from there goes all over the state – it goes to the Silicon Valley, it goes to the Central Valley farms, it goes all the way down to San Diego, and it was plumbed to do that because California is a really dry state. Almost all the precipitation falls in the northern part of the state at the very top, so we’ve had to move water for California to grow.
The problem is the Delta’s ecosystem has crashed; it used to be this kind of network of wetlands that has been dramatically altered, and there’s these aging pumps in the south Delta that moves a lot of that water south. We found that those pumps have had a pretty big impact on the fish species, some endangered fish like Chinook salmon, and Delta smelt, so this plan is decades in the making.
There have been battles over the water, how much water did the fish need in the ecosystem, how much water should be delivered to these water districts that need it. This plan has a lot of different measures, it has conservation, but in essence, it’s new infrastructure, it’s these tunnels that would take water from elsewhere in the Delta to get away from these aging pumps.
Michael Krasny: So we’re talking about over 100,000 acres of habitat restoration and also the addressing presumably the harm that’s done to fish by these water pumps. This is real controversy, isnt’ it?
Lauren Sommer:
The central question is what can we do for these species? And part of the big question that this plan has to answer is by building these tunnels and doing these conservation projects, these two things: does that help these endangered fish or is it actually bad for these endangered fish, or which species win and which lose, and that’s a really complicated question that’s going to have to be answered by the state.
Michael Krasny: Also it gets us into a debate over freshwater that is needed to support the fish population which is in decline anyway.
Lauren Sommer:
What’s happened over the years is that these big pumping facilities – they’ve been slowed down in times when it’s sensitive for these fish species. That’s been a ruling by federal wildlife agencies, so in those years, less water is exported out of the Delta, less water is pumped out to protect the fish. That’s also happened because there’s been droughts, but you can imagine for the water districts that want that water, it’s been very controversial. And that’s the crux that’s led us to this particular point.
Michael Krasny: There are a lot of different stockholders in this, Lauren. A lot of partnerships. You’ve got the feds, the state, public water agencies, and it’s voluntary.
Lauren Sommer:
It’s the whole state we’re talking about here. This is California’s water supply, so certainly we’re going to hear from a lot of those people today, the people who live in the Delta, even in the people in the Bay Area that rely on the water, and certainly the agricultural industry – there’s a lot of constituencies to bring together for a plan this big.
Michael Krasny: Let’s talk generally, we’ll hear from some of the critics of the plan, but Sierra Club, conservation groups, environmental groups have been particular critical. Why?
Lauren Sommer:
I think the question centers around how much water are we going to allow to be taken out of the Delta, and that’s been the sticking point for years and it will continue to be the sticking point for this plan. How much do the fish need? How much can we export out of the Delta? It’s a really tough balancing act and this plan is going to have to make some decisions on that.
Michael Krasny: Let me go to Gary Bobker who directs the Rivers and Delta program at the Bay Institute, and you pointed out that we need a plan, why are you certain that this may not be the plan? Or are you?
Gary Bobker:
Let me start by emphasizing that this conversation isn’t about whether this particular proposal is good or not. We have, as Lauren summarized, a crisis in the Delta. The ecosystem’s collapsing, species are either on the brink of extinction or are in serious decline, and that leads to a situation where every year we get in a fight about how much water we can take out of the Delta and what’s the right long-term future for California’s water system. So we can’t just say, well, we hope this particular proposal works, or we don’t like it, let’s walk away from it. We have to figure out what the long-term solution is. We don’t have the luxury of continuing to fight about this for years and years; we’ve got to resolve the outstanding issues.
So in asking whether the plan that the state has unveiled, which is a draft, is going to be a success or not, there are two overriding issues you have to address. One is, is the plan going to reverse the trend towards extinction and is it going to support a healthy ecosystem? Because what this plan is supposed to be is a 50-year permit to operate these big state and federal water projects in the Delta, and state and federal law requires that you have to have a very degree of confidence that your actually going to support endangered species recovery and that you’re actually going to achieve a healthy ecosystem. The elements of the plan that the state unveiled yesterday, I don’t think do that. I think that there are pretty strong indications they will fail to do that.
There’s also another big concern that drives the evaluation of whether it’s successful or not, and that is, are we making the right investments in California’s water future? As we noted, the plan is estimated to be about a $25 billion investment; some folks think that’s low and with cost estimate mistakes, it might be a lot more than that. Whatever it is, it’s a big investment. Is that the right mix of investments? I think that given the state’s recognition in 2009 Delta Reform Act that we really need to reduce our reliance on the Delta, we need to be thinking about spending a lot more of the money that we’re contemplating spending on managing demand in the areas that export this water from the Delta and creating supplies in those areas so they are less dependent upon moving water from one part of the state to the other to increase the reliance of those local areas on their own supplies. The plan that was unveiled yesterday doesn’t seem to do that; so far I would have to say the Plan’s not really ready for prime time. There are some big problems with what it’s proposing to do.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. We don’t really know at this point exactly how the new projects in the Delta would be operated, it’s very unclear exactly how much water they’d be taking, it’s very unclear exactly what the rules would be, and there’s a lot of uncertainty between now and when the project’s supposed to come online. We don’t know exactly how decisions will be made; remember it’s a 50-year permit, so we have to be very clear about who’s going to be making decisions and how those decisions are made about changes in the project over 50 years. We also have to know who’s going to pay for it, where’s the money going to come from, how certain are we that the money’s going to be there. We have to have a lot of confidence that the funding is there in order to be able to issue a permit for a 50-year term. So for all those reasons …
Michael Krasny: About 2/3rds is going to be from higher water costs, I believe I read.
Gary Bobker:
Well there really isn’t a financing plan in the draft that the state unveiled yesterday. It’s still really unclear who is going to be on the hook. There are some general statements, certainly about what the anticipated allocation of funding sources is going to be …
Michael Krasny: It’s pretty likely they’ll have to float a bond, don’t you think?
Gary Bobker:
Certainly, a bond would be an element, particularly for the public financing component of that which creates a whole other set of issues and hurdles that you have to deal with, but we anticipate right now, the state is saying that the water users who would benefit from this project would be paying for it, but it’s very unclear, what level of commitment we’re going to get from the water users who supposedly would be paying for it.
Michael Krasny: We also should mention there is a four-month public comment period before this would be finalized. We don’t know how much congressional money could be there and there are additional planning costs that are estimated at $1.2 billion before even getting into construction, but Mark Cowin, let me go to you on some of these unanswered questions that have been brought up by Gary Bobker and particularly get a sense from you about just how specific the plan is. Peter Gleick, for example, who knows more about water than just about anybody I know, says it’s not specific enough, and there’s been a lot of criticism about the lack of science in this plan.
Mark Cowin:
Let me back up and just reinforce some of Lauren’s opening comments as I think they were critically important to setting up this discussion. The most simple truth about the Delta is it is profoundly important to California and by that, I mean California as a whole. Water exported from the Delta supports hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity annually, from San Jose to San Diego. The Delta is of critical ecological importance to dozens of fish, bird and animal species, and the Delta landscape and it’s communities are unique to California. We’ve been struggling as a state for decades on how to balance resources and needs within the Delta, and we’re failing. As you noted Michael, this is a plan that is driven by 2009 legislation that set up a different framework for us. And it’s fundamentally different than the incremental litigation and regulation by regulation approach that has driven us into decline over the past several decades.
This plan sets as its goals the dual goals of recovering the health of the Delta ecosystem and maintaining a reliable, sustainable Delta water supply, and that’s a game changer for California. Now we can continue to argue about the details of the plan. We’ve put over $200 million and seven years of effort into the most comprehensive scientific evaluation of these issues, and that’s embodied in our draft plan.
Let me be the first to mention and reinforce that this is just the first public draft of this plan, so we’ve got work to do. We’re looking forward to 120 days of public comment. I’m sure we will get robust public comment and we’re looking forward to considering that, and refining the plan as we move forward.
Michael Krasny: There has been some criticism about the science. I want to get you on the record in response to the federal agency scientists who skewered this draft and said that it will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River and in particularly the Chinook salmon and the Delta smelt and the longfin smelt, but other species as well. They are also saying, well, the NMFS has come into this and the Bureau of Reclamation also critical of the science here, so there are voices being heard from, even at this point.
Mark Cowin:
We have had the public looking over our shoulder as we’ve done our work for seven years. Obviously you don’t come up with your first draft attempt and get it all right. We’ve worked with regulatory agencies over the past several years to get out the issues that they’ve been critical of. I think we’ve made tremendous progress and this public draft will address most of the scientific issues that have come up and have been raised by the fishery agencies over the last few years.
Michael Krasny: What about seismic risk and climate change? Are they pretty much folded into this as well?
Mark Cowin:
Absolutely; in ways that have never been done in California water planning before. We are definitely looking at the potential risks of climate change – how it will change hydrology, how it will change sea level rise. Again, these are big game changers for California. Without taking action, we know that our water supply reliability throughout the state is going to be at considerable increased risk, so now is the time to take action.
Michael Krasny: Some of the critics are saying that not only is this going to harm fish, but also agriculture, it’s going to be siphoning off more water from the estuary.
Tim Quinn:
It’s a big complicated project, Michael, so there is a lot to pick at if we go down to certain levels of detail. Although ACWA is a very diverse organization – I have members in Northern California, Southern California, in the Delta, below the Delta, above the Delta – I will tell you that amongst the ACWA membership, there are very few that think this is not a problem that needs to be solved.
And like Mark, I want to go back to some of the common sense that Lauren introduced. We’re operating old infrastructure that was designed before fish were really part of the equation in operating California’s water system. Some people react to this like it’s this massive new water supply project. It’s not. We’re not building a new water supply project; we’re trying to fix the old one, which was not designed to take care of what we call the coequal goals and fishery concerns. Those aging big pumps down in the south Delta are in the wrong place and this is fundamentally about making that system right, so you’ve got a chance to balance the kind of things that Gary was rightly talking about. We’re not going to be able to answer all the detail questions today, but as long as we keep those big pumps in the south Delta, we’re never going to be able to answer them to the satisfaction of both our economy and our environment.
From my association’s perspective, the most important thing is that we not get lost in the weeds in the Delta; that this be part of a statewide program where we’re looking at the entire state and the water supply for the state as a whole. That position is not all that different from some of the environmental organizations that Gary Bobker has worked with, who similarly have said we should be looking at Delta conveyance in the context of a broader statewide solution.
Michael Krasny: But can you get everyone on board here? You’ve got so many different fiefdoms, really, almost. Factions, whatever you want to call them.
Tim Quinn:
Within my constituency, which again is highly diverse, the answer is to get the state to focus on this as part of a statewide plan – which the state has been doing, by the way. I think the Brown administration deserves some credit for that. In October, they came out with a California Water Action Plan, similarly not perfect but a big step in the right direction. Amongst the diverse water agencies in the state, as long as we’re looking at the state as a whole, there’s broad agreement that we’ve got a conveyance problem in the Delta that has to be fixed. As Lauren pointed out, it requires a massive investment in infrastructure, so we can get rivers moving in the right direction, we get better water quality and we are better situated when that earthquake finally does come in the Delta. All of those require a major infrastructure project. The state is moving us in that direction and at ACWA we would urge that they do so in the context of a broader framework, but they are doing that as well.
Michael Krasny: Can we really know though – and I don’t want to sound like I’m picking away here, but that we can protect the water supplies in the event of an earthquake or levee failure and protect the levees, for that matter, against seismic risk. It’s kind of an inland sea, really, as many describe it, and it almost seems like no money can really even protect it absolutely.
Tim Quinn:
Sounds like Mark Cowin question.
Mark Cowin:
It’s a matter of risk management. We’ve got Delta levees that are not engineered; they are very susceptible to seismic risk and failure. We can design better engineered systems to reduce risk. We’ll never eliminate risk but this plan will substantially reduce risk from seismic activity that could result in a catastrophic loss in water supplies for California.
Michael Krasny: I want to bring Barbara Barrigan-Parilla into this discussion. She’s executive director of Restore the Delta … I know you have considerable concerns. Right off the top, what are they, most profoundly?
Barbara Barrigan-Parilla:
First, this plan will not include the needed levee upgrades in the Delta. The Delta is not in the severe shape that was just described. It’s not crumbling; in fact we have fewer levee failures in the Delta than we’ve had historically, but we still need levee upgrades because we have 4 million people who live behind those levees and if a catastrophic event were to occur, the Delta would experience 80% of the economic loss. It’s not the export areas that would really be impacted; it’s within the Delta. We would have the greatest economic loss, and we would also have 100% of the loss of life, so there’s really a moral imperative for upgrading Delta levees.
In addition to that, this is a plan by the same architects who have brought the Delta to its knees by exporting water in excessive amounts for 40 years. We have populations of fish that have declined by 97%, and now they want us to trust them while they go ahead and build a project, figure out how to operate it later, and ship even more water out of the area under the name of supply reliability. The truth is, there’s a 5 million acre-foot deficit in the system, the water isn’t there.
Nobody is looking at the impact on San Francisco Bay. Friends of SF Bay Estuary released a letter 2 weeks ago, talking about that. Our associates and colleagues with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations have real concerns that this project will not only wipe out salmon, but it will have an impact on Dungeness crab. There are real impacts for the Delta, and real impacts for people living in the San Francisco Bay area.
Michael Krasny: In fact, those of you who are opposed to the tunnels have said not only is it going to be higher water rates for everybody, but also devastate the ecosystem of the whole San Francisco Bay Delta estuary.
Barbara Barrigan-Parilla:
That’s true. When you look at the project, there isn’t a finance plan included in the paperwork that was released yesterday. The big agri-business giants on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Westlands Water District and Kern County receive more water every year than Metropolitan Water District and the Santa Clara Valley Water District combined with their millions of water users, and they are not going to be able to farm on that water. You’re looking at a cost of over $1000 per acre-foot to farm – where are those costs going to get shifted? They are going to get shifted back on urban water rate payers in California, and they are going to be shifted to tax payers in California to pay for the habitat to clean up for the mess that was made from exporting too much water all these years.
Michael Krasny: … It will be a pleasure to hear from you our listeners on this ongoing controversy. In fact, Lauren Sommer, there’s probably some major political and regional battles up ahead, and lawsuits, no?
Lauren Sommer:
I don’t think that’s anything new in California; we’re used to fighting about water. But one thing that I am hearing from a lot of different folks is that people really see a need to make some sort of effort to fix the Delta. I think the urgency has only increased over the decades. We’re looking at climate change and sea level rise. You certainly do have an agreement from most sides that something has to be done.
Michael Krasny: Let me read some listener comments. We’re getting a whole range of them. A listener asked, ‘Why doesn’t’ LA look more like Tucson? I kind of doubt they need so much water. Is this just another peripheral canal redux?’ Craig from San Jose writes, ‘Why not use the money tentatively targeted for these tunnels for desalination plants along the Southern California coastline instead? These plants can run on a combination of solar, wind and wave energy technologies and they can make even more money selling salt, too.’ And Dan writes, ‘This monstrosity should be a last resort after many other things are tried, from conservation and recycling to local catchment; no peripheral drain pipes.’ Patricia says, ‘Before giving Southern California any more water, a regulation needs to be in force for Southern California to start capturing water and to be on a water conservation program. What happens to the environment and wildlife? Looks what has happened to our salmon depletion in our rivers where they redirecting water. Enough is enough; we need to live within our means.’ Mark Cowin, those kind of responses are coming in and adding up here, and in fact, Bill writes, ‘Why is the state exempted large farms from water conservation while mandating it on residents.’ Can you address these? It’s a lot there, but essentially a lot of concern about the regionality of this and redoing the peripheral canal in a different way.
Mark Cowin:
I would like to make a couple of points. One of the fundamental misunderstandings about this proposal is that it’s portrayed as a ‘water grab.’ As we’ve tried to describe, this plan is about exporting a sustainable amount of water from the Delta – not more water, but a similar amount of water that we’ve exported over the last twenty years, but in a way that provides greater protection for fish species and can be part of a more comprehensive plan to restore the ecosystem health of the Delta.
That said, even a wildly successful Bay Delta Conservation Plan is not the singular solution to California’s water problems. We’re going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decades in broader water management solutions, including better conservation across the state, more recycling, desal will be a part of it as well. Fixing the way we export water through the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project is but one part of that broader solution.
We’ve outlined this in a California Water Action Plan that’s now in draft form and is circulating around the state; we’re getting a lot of good response to that plan. I’ve got to emphasize that we are all about pursuing a portfolio approach to solving our water management issues, there’s no single silver bullet, and I’m in complete agreement that we need greater investment in all of those different tools.
Michael Krasny: Let me go to your calls and a caller from Sacramento. Max, you’re on.
Max (caller): My understanding is that all of the environmental restoration is not actually part of the guaranteed funding for the plan; that would have to be passed separately by another bill. Is that true?
Gary Bobker:
There’s a major component – $7 billion or more – which would require public financing. There’s supposed to be a water user contribution to some of that habitat restoration, although the bulk of would be public financing. There’s a question of are you going to be able to get bond revenues for that; can you really nail down state or federal appropriations of money for that? So there are some real questions on whether you can really deliver on 100,000 acres of habitat restoration.
But there’s sort of a bigger problem with that habitat restoration beyond the funding, and that is, is that really the right thing to do? Now that might sound strange coming from an environmentalist, because certainly my group and many other groups work to expand and restore the amount of wetland and floodplain habitat that we have in California. We’ve wiped out most of it throughout the state and so the prospect of getting a lot more is exciting. The problem here is that habitat, while it’s great, isn’t the cure-all for everything.
Habitat is really good for the creatures that use it, so the 100,000 acres of habitat that are proposed to be created in the plan are going to be good for a lot of different fish and wildlife species, but the species that we’re most concerned about, the species that are at the brink of extinction and a lot of the creatures in the food web that support the Bay Delta ecosystem and that exist in the open waters and channels of the Delta are not really going to benefit from this habitat restoration. Just about every major independent science review of the plan to date has called into question those benefits that are supposed to come from habitat restoration, and really have expressed very great skepticism about that.
Michael Krasny: So Gary, are you advocating just more water conservation and recycling, that that would be more environmentally friendly for California in other words?
Gary Bobker:
There are two things that are not in this plan that need to occur. One is that if there’s one thing that the science tells us, is that this system is flow deficient. We are diverting so much water; we take about 50% of the total runoff in the entire watershed out of the system. Not all of that is exported by these pumps in the Delta, but a major chunk is, so we really need to reverse that. And unfortunately, what this plan does in looking at the operations of the new facilities, as Tim pointed out, we’re already have projects, we’re taking water out, so what would this new project do? Well, pretty much it says we’re going to have a range of operations and it’s going to be somewhere between 4.7 MAF and 5.6 MAF that we divert from the Delta.
What that means is that the best case scenario is about what we’re doing today, so it’s the status quo or worse. So instead of actually putting significantly more flow back into the system, we’re either going to maintain the status quo or going to make it worse, which means for the whole suite of species that depend on flow, things are not going to get better.
Michael Krasny: Can I get Tim Quinn to respond to that, Tim?
Tim Quinn:
For the species to get better, we’re going to have to do a whole lot of things. I agree with a number of the comments coming from your callers. We have to do all of that stuff, we have to do desalination, we have to do cleaning up our groundwater basins, we have to do more efficient water use and we’re doing all of those things. Those pieces of the puzzle are in place and are moving forward. I don’t disagree with Gary that we need to do more of those things.
None of that changes the hard fact of life that Lauren started us off with. We have this aging infrastructure that was not designed to take care of the environment and we have to fix that core problem.
There’s just no doubt in my mind that we need to invest in habitat. I don’t disagree with Gary, it’ll help the species that use it, but there’s a lot of species out there that use habitat and need to restore some of that habitat. I’ve actually been personally associated with a number of habitat restoration projects in this state, and seen the power of investing in habitat in places like Butte Creek, Clear Creek and Battle Creek. Those are places where Californians have worked together to improve habitat and in some cases, with remarkable results in terms of improved populations and ecosystem results. So we have to do all of that stuff; we’re doing all of that stuff, but a key critical piece is that we have to fix the infrastructure in the Delta.
Michael Krasny: A lot of the listeners have been bringing up desalination and I think …
Mark Cowin:
Can I jump in on the last question? I want to address something that I think that is very important that Gary raised. We’ve learned a lot about the science that controls the estuary in the Delta over the last decades; there’s a whole lot more to learn. And we know that we need to adaptively manage this plan over the life of it, so we’re going to learn more and we’re going to adjust the plan as we move forward. Our plan calls for the fish agencies to make decisions on how much flow will be required to provide for recovery of these fish species. However much is left for export, I think there’s broad agreement that we can export that water from the Delta with these new facilities in place in a much more protective sustainable way than we can with existing facilities.
Michael Krasny: Let me get Gerald on here, who is a developer for desalination. Gerald, welcome.
Gerald (caller): First and foremost the idea that you can take more water out of the Delta is a farce. You cannot. You must stop taking water out of the Delta if you are going to restore the Delta and restore the habitat. Desalination has not been given a chance in California. No one has put any large scale plants in California so you don’t have the data on it, and the data shows that if you build a large scale desalination plant, you can successfully divert water from the ocean into the metropolitan areas where it’s needed. We are developers. We are ready to build a large scale desalination plant on the coast of California. There are permitting issues, but it can be done. It just has not been looked at seriously and this whole discussion of the idea of taking more water out of the Delta is not the answer. You’re just creating more problems by doing that.
Michael Krasny: Gerald, I appreciate your call. Let me actually defer here to Lauren Sommer. Certainly desalination always comes up in any water discussion and what to do about water, but has it not, as the caller said, been looked at seriously enough?
Lauren Sommer:
I think that Tim can also speak to this. Any water district has to look at what’s the cost of the water and historically, desalination has been very expensive. We are moving into a time when water is getting more expensive so certainly you see more water districts starting to seriously consider it.
Michael Krasny: And Tim, you want to remark here?
Tim Quinn:
I have dozens of agencies on the coast that are very interested in desalination. In Southern California, they are moving forward in north San Diego County, and in Northern California, there are groups in the Bay Area that are interested in looking at desalination, so that is one of the tools that the water community is prepared to invest in. I don’t disagree with Lauren; it’s very expensive, but it’s wet water, it’s in your backyard.
With that said, the environmental opposition to desalination is everywhere fierce, so I’m a little bit skeptical when people say, don’t fix the Delta, we’ll just turn to the Pacific Ocean, because you’re not getting rid of a lot of opposition going from one supply source to another.
As I said earlier, we have to check the box next to “all-of-the-above”. Desalination is a part of, but only a part; I don’t think it will ever be a huge part of California’s water supply picture, but it will be a part. For some coastal parts of California, we will find ways to safely tap into that salty water and protect the ocean environment.
On a large scale, we’ve got a thing called the Coastal Commission and I don’t think you’re ever going to see millions of acre-feet being harvested from the ocean because it’s not at all clear that that would be a better environmental solution that what we’re trying to do to fix the Delta today.
Michael Krasny: Well what we’re trying to do in this draft plan may need a little more specificity. Lauren Sommer, a listener wants to know where are the tunnels being built, how long and how wide, and who will be disrupted and please be a little more specific about the nature of this tunnel.
Lauren Sommer:
What we know is that the tunnels would be about 30 – 35 miles long; they are 40 feet in diameter. There are two of them. They would be underneath the Delta running north to south, because the existing pumping facilities which tap into the canals and aqueducts that deliver water, that’s at the south end, so these pumps would take water from further north in the Delta, Sacramento River water, and bring it down to where the infrastructure is in the south Delta. That’s kind of what we know at this point. The state, in August, released more details, specifically; they actually reduced the size of the tunnel a little bit and reduced the number of intakes on the Sacramento River as there were concerns about the footprint of the project, so it has changed a little bit this year.
Michael Krasny: There’s also a question from a listener named Jennifer who says evaporation and leakage; ‘it’s my understanding,’ she writes, ‘that the current system loses a significant amount of water through evaporation and leakage; maybe between 20 and 50%; would there no be a net gain to the system through a piping plan, and if so, what would that be and where would that be enjoyed, at the fish end or the farmers, or split the difference?”
Mark Cowin:
Evaporation isn’t really a significant part of the equation here. Obviously, we want to reduce evaporation losses and leakage in all of our water supply systems to the extent we can, but that’s not really an issue with the Delta conveyance solution that’s on the table right now. I want to reinforce what Lauren said – we have made substantial changes to the specifics of the Delta conveyance feature of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan over the past years and months. In the last couple of months, we’ve changed the alignment of the tunnel so that we have less impact on Delta communities and private land holders in the Delta, so we’re doing what we can to reduce those impacts to Delta residents.
Michael Krasny: Let me go to some more emails here. Megan writes, ‘I am no scientist, but when we heard minutes before Forum started that Foster City will soon be under water, it seems that the problem is not that we don’t have enough water, but that it’s in the wrong place. If we’re threatened with sea level rise, shouldn’t we be focusing on desalination instead of moving our freshwater hundreds of miles?’ Another listener writes ‘Southern California uses so much water, why can’t Southern California get more of its water from the Colorado River and Lake Havasu?’ Problem is that Southern California doesn’t have reliable sources of water … “
Gary Bobker:
As Tim said, we’ve got a pretty bad system of infrastructure in the Delta, and so the environmental community is not saying that we shouldn’t make any changes in the Delta. There may be changes, different kinds of pumps or different systems that are part of a solution. The question is are we solving the problem with what is being proposed today and what are the alternatives to it? One of the main parts of the draft plan, and it is a draft, is to move a lot of the pumping to the north Delta, to build pumps in the north Delta and the tunnels to move it to the south Delta. Right now, the south Delta, the amount of water that we pump is extremely damaging. We take millions of fish each year, we probably take in some dry years, we take almost half of all the Delta smelt that exist on earth, for every Chinook salmon that shows up at the pumps, there are probably 20 that are lost because of exposure to poor habitat conditions, disruption of migration …
Michael Krasny: You’re talking about all that spread of fish carnage down there in the Southern Delta, aren’t you … ?
Gary Bobker:
Right, so is moving the pumps, is doing more pumping in the north going to solve that problem? The analysis that the state has done, as well as the analysis done by others like us, have shown that the degree of change is going to be fairly modest. In other words, you get single digit percentage changes in how fewer fish are going to be taken by pumping in the north instead of pumping in the south, under the best conditions, so you’re making a huge investment in infrastructure and you’re not really solving the problem.
At the same time, in drier years, you’re going to still continue to pump a lot of water from the south Delta, and so you still have the same problems with the vulnerability to sea level rise, salinity, potential levee collapse, so you’re still going to have to invest money in the levees, which leads me to say why aren’t we focusing a little bit more on the parts of the overall approach where we’re drought-proofing these areas and doing more to create local supplies?
We talked earlier about the 2009 Delta Reform Act. The legislature specifically included in that it was the policy of the state of California to reduce reliance on the Delta. The problem that a lot of us are having with the plan, the draft plan, is that it’s not doing that.
It’s true, as Mark and Tim are saying, that there are a lot of things going on to create greater water use efficiency and to invest in alternative supplies, but it’s not enough. We really need to be stepping up the investment that we’re making, we need to be thinking about using a lot more if the money we’re contemplating for this kind of project on recycling, on conservation in areas that currently withdraw water from the Delta …
Michael Krasny: I want to go to more of our callers … we have a farmer waiting to join us from Rio Vista. Albert, you’re on …
Caller (Albert): My question and comment is that there has been absolutely no mention of the horrible impacts of this thing on the important farming that goes on in the region. The Delta produces at least a billion dollars a year in agricultural products with multipliers of making that probably five or six billion, and the farmers here are going to suffer a great deal, and some of the water will go to the western water districts, some of whom who are already selling off their water to places like Mojave. This is a really serious problem and it hasn’t been commented on.
Michael Krasny: Can you address it, Mark Cowin?
Mark Cowin:
This plan does nothing to impact the water rights or water availability for Delta residents. I want to respond to something that Barbara raised earlier. The state is invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Delta levee improvements over the past decade or so and will continue to. We need to. We want to maintain those levees.
The real question I think the caller is getting at, do we need to restore significant amounts of Delta farmland back to the original habitat that it provided 150 years ago? As Gary mentioned earlier, the facts aren’t all in about the benefits of additional habitat so that will be something that will need to be adaptively managed over time, but this is a question about what’s required for ecological recovery, not about a water grab.
Michael Krasny: I want to read a comment from a listener who wrote on Facebook. Gail writes, “This water plan is poorly conceived in many ways. After reading much of the original drafts, attending hearings, speaking directly with water resources personnel, I’ve learned that the habitat portion has not gotten the funding mechanism; that state experts can’t agree what actual effects shipping water around the Delta would have on the Delta and San Francisco Bay, and according to one deputy director, this will not create more water for the southland nor save the Delta. Conservation is needed but sustainable farming, using regional not statewide sources. This is a fight over water between the farmers in the Delta and San Joaquin.” Tim Quinn, want to comment?
Tim Quinn:
Well, I’m not sure what to make of that comment. Again, back to some of the common themes. California needs to invest in a comprehensive set of solutions so we can all live with each other. We’re always going to fight about water; I’ve learned that in this job. People like to fight about California water, but what we need to move forward on is a strategy in which we’re investing to improve conveyance in the Delta, store more water when the system is in surplus, and reduce our demands on the system.
I want to assure your listeners in the Bay Area that Southern California is spending billions of dollars to keep the Colorado River Aqueduct full. They can only take so much water out of the Colorado River Aqueduct, but Southern California is committed to keeping it full to keep demands down on the Delta. They are investing in all the technologies that have been mentioned here, but along with that, they need a stable Delta so they can continue to rely on lessened amounts of Delta water in the future, at least compared to what they signed contracts for 50 years ago, so we need to do all of those things to move forward.
As much as we like to argue, I think we should be encouraged. We are seeing a plan move forward under the last two administrations, but we’ve got a governor dedicated to a comprehensive plan, and so in some sense, all of these arguments are about how do we get it right and how do we move a comprehensive program forward, and for that reason, I’m more encouraged than I might have been ten years ago.
Michael Krasny: Well that’s encouraging to hear. I also want to mention that since we heard from the caller who was a farmer by the name of Albert, we have an email from a listener named Kevin who writes, “Why do we continue to give Central Valley farmers subsidized water? They make up only 20% of the economy of California but consume 80% of the water. Cut their subsidies and force them to grow crops more suitable for California’s dry climate. As I understand it, a worst case scenario would be a massive earthquake that would cause multiple levee failures resulting in the below sea level Delta islands to gulp up salt water from the Bay, closing down the canals, leading to billions of dollars of damage to the California economy, not to mention loss of lives for people living behind the levees.” And Tina from Sacramento writes, “I remember reading in the Sacramento Bee a few years back that there’s was no more opportunity for public voting on the plan and that the entire plan could be implemented without the public saying yes or no.” Is this true, Lauren?
Lauren Sommer:
Yes, and Mark can speak to this. In 1982, this was the peripheral canal. Some voters may remember and it was defeated. This particular plan is being pushed forward by the Brown Administration and their plans are to implement it without actually going to California voters, yes.
Michael Krasny: We’ll bring another caller on and that’s you, Jerry …
Jerry (caller): I have a question for Mark Cowin on the money aspect of this thing. How many dollars have been firmly committed, either by the state and federal water contractors, by the federal government, or by the taxpayers of California, and secondly, what’s going to happen if one of the major water contractors, for example Westlands or Kern Water Agency, decides ultimately they don’t want to participate financially?
Mark Cowin:
The draft plan has a finance plan, despite comments to the contrary. There’s more work to do on that finance plan. In summary, it provides for water users to pay for about 70% of the costs of the complete $25 billion price tag. The state and federal governments would share the remaining 30% and the details of where that funding comes from, either through bonds or other types of appropriations is something that we’ll have to work out. I want to be clear. This is a plan for all of California. We are going to have to decide as a state whether it’s a good investment or not. We’re making the case that it’s a needed investment, its part of a comprehensive plan, but we’re not going to do this in spite of the will of the Californians.
Michael Krasny: Can you maybe, Tim Quinn, break things down for us? A lot of listeners are saying that Southern California is really taking the majority of the water in the state, and the fact of the matter is that it’s often heard on this program, but they’ve made some pretty extraordinary strides in conservation. What percentage? Can you break it down for us, maybe? Go to farmers versus households?
Tim Quinn:
In all western states, farmers use the majority of water. Water is the necessary input to our agricultural economy. By the way, the subsidies are grossly exaggerated. The vast majority of farmers pay for the water that they get, even the ones who have the ‘subsidized water’ are paying maybe 10x as much as the guy who doesn’t have subsidized water, so the farm economy pays it way for the water supply it does get. Our problem is the rules have changed dramatically on them. Their supplies are drying up and their economy is drying up. So rather than talk about getting rid of their subsidized water, we need to focus ourselves on how do we solve these environmental problems and still have a healthy agricultural economy in the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere.
Shifting down to Southern California, they’ve spent tens of billions of dollars and they get a lot of credit for it and should, because while population in Southern California has grown by millions in the last 20+ years, they are using less imported water than they did before because of their massive investments in local resources development. Those investments will continue; they will grow because they have to as part of a comprehensive solution, but none of that means that we should not be taking care of the problems that have been identified in this program up in the Delta.
Michael Krasny: I want to get John on here as we come toward the end of this hour. John, you talk about a plan over in Holland, in the Netherlands?
John (caller): In the Netherlands, they have put together a 200 year plan to deal with the effects of climate change and like the Netherlands – well, the Netherlands is mostly below sea level, but the central part of the big valley is pretty much at sea level. I’m just wondering, maybe we should just take a step back and put together a 200 year plan for California and then see how this plan might fit into that or not.
Michael Krasny: Well, we’ve just got seconds left here, but Gary Bobker, you’d like to see another plan. What about the paradigm across the Atlantic?
Gary Bobker:
Well, I think we can do better than the kind of engineered system they have in the Netherlands. One important point, following up on the point that you were making: agriculture using the majority of water in this state. We expect urban water users, residents and cities to conserve water. We set targets at 20% conservation for the urban sector. Agriculture is the major user; the state does not hold to the same standard. If we had a 10% conservation standard for agriculture, we could solve a lot of these problems. …
Michael Krasny: We’re going to have to leave it there … I want to thank you Gary Bobker from Rivers and Delta program at the Bay Institute, Tim Quinn from Association of California Water Agencies, Mark Cowin, Department of Water Resources and Lauren Sommer, from here at KQED Public Radio and thanks also to Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, and thank you, our listeners …
For more information:
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