San Joaquin Valley - The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will take up Senate Bill 27, the now amended settlement agreement over the restoration of the San Joaquin River, this week where it is expected to pass.
The news comes after all parties agreed in recent days to amend language over the water management portion of the settlement in this two-decade-old struggle. The focus now shifts to Washington where federal funding will implement the agreement that dates from 2006.
For the past several years, farmers and local officials have debated the wisdom of the settlement with key leaders fearing the supply loss will mean farms and towns that depend on it will suffer. One critical issue has been how to provide some certainty that some of the water used for salmon could be put to double duty – recirculated with the proper plumbing to green up orchards and vines in the south Valley.
Friant Water Users Authority General Manager Ron Jacobsma says “mark up” – the changes to be made to the existing agreement – will occur in the committee and the bill will then likely be bundled with other water bills on the Senate floor. The bill's language would be changed in the House version as well.
“We believe the changes agreed to will be significant and beneficial,” says Jacobsma on two fronts – the financing of the package and more clarity on how water lost to the re-operation of the salmon fishery will be recaptured. Regarding the latter, Jacobsma says the bill will have language requiring the Friant Kern Canal and the Madera Canal each be rebuilt to increase their water-holding capacity for delivery in wet years. The Friant Kern Canal capacity could be increased as much as 800 acre feet a day, restoring the concrete canal to its operational capacity after years of subsidence. That would allow more reservoir release in wet years that the district could send down the canal for ground water banking.
Previous language required the Secretary of the Interior to act to implement the program, but now the funding is earmarked in the bill.
Similarly, the agreement calls for funding several reverse pumping stations on the south end of the Friant Kern Canal that could send water back up the canal as far as Delano when needed. That would allow water to be delivered down the state-owned California Aqueduct and pumped across the Cross Valley Canal that already connects to the Friant Kern below Bakersfield. The water could now be sent north through these reverse flow pumps.
“We hope to recapture of some of that water sent down the San Joaquin for river restoration and deliver it to farmers in the south Valley,” says Jacobsma.
Farmers and local officials in Tulare County, including Devin Nunes and Allen Ishida, have been worried about the settlement agreement and the possibility that farmers could go dry because of the river restoration effort.
The Friant board has been working to prove more certainly that infrastructure would be in place to allow the recapture of at least some of that water, along with keeping more wet year water that otherwise goes out to sea.
Jacobsma says construction of the project could happen in as little as one to two years, putting the facilities in place before full water release is required by 2012, when Friant could “lose” perhaps 15 to 25% of its allocated water supply, depending on whether it's a wet year or not.
Critical of the plan, at least so far, Ishida of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors congratulated Friant on its effort to provide more certainty to the process but was less than overwhelmed adding that “it's better than nothing.”
Jacobsma says the language in the bill has Congress appropriating $50 million at a later date to build new ground water banking facilities up and down the Friant system with the understanding that locals would match the money.
The return of water flows to the San Joaquin will end 18 years of litigation brought by environmental groups against the U.S. government and Friant Water Users Authority. They argue that because of the dam a 60-mile stretch of the river typically goes dry, thwarting the return of the Chinook salmon that were plentiful at one time.
That fishery is on the edge of collapse this year all over the West Coast. Restoration of the flow will begin in 2009 with salmon to be reintroduced in late 2012. In a dry year, the salmon will be trucked in.
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Heads to U.S. Senate