California
Water Politics - the Water Buffaloes
are back!
Felice
Pace
May 13, 2008
California
Governor Schwarzenegger wants to build two new dams - Sites and
Temperance Flat. They are being sold as necessary to cope with the
reduction in
Sierra Nevada
, Cascade and
Klamath
Mountains
snowpack expected as a
result of climate change. New and “enhanced” storage are being
marketed by Lester Snow, director of California’s Department of Water
Resources (DWR) as part of a "portfolio approach" which, in
addition to “enhanced" storage, calls for urban water
conservation, better groundwater facilities, improved wastewater
processing and research into lowering the cost of desalination. The dams
are to provide increased capacity in order to catch earlier runoff that
– according to climate change data and predictions - will no longer be
held in mountain snowpack.
Schwarzenegger
and Snow are counting on the climate change predictions to be fairly
accurate. If the actual climate does not follow the predictions, the new
and “enhanced’ reservoirs might never fill. Furthermore, increasing
surface storage would result in more extensive water loss through
evaporation. In 1998 the measured evaporation from Californiareservoirs
was about a million acre feet - that's enough water to cover a million
acres of land with a foot of water. That’s a lot of water but the
amount will rise if new and “enhanced’ reservoirs are developed.
Furthermore, if climate change results in higher summer temperatures
evaporation from all reservoirs will increase. <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
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The
Schwarzenegger/Snow “portfolio approach” ignores the states largest
“reservoir” – upland forest soils - and its biggest water user –
irrigated agriculture. Let’s look at the forests first.
Upland
forest soils in the
Sierra Nevada
, Cascade and
Klamath
Mountains
are the states largest
reservoir. Healthy forest soils are on average about 1/3 empty spaces.
In the winter wet season these spaces fill up with water which is
released slowly to springs, streams and groundwater during the
summer/fall dry season. Road building and logging are known to compact
forest soils – reducing their ability to store water.
Increases
in flood flows in streams and rivers and a corresponding decreases in
base flow as a result of intensive logging are well documented in
research and by experience on the ground. But apparently no one in the
California
state establishment is
looking at how upland
California
forests should be managed
to restore the ability of
California
’s forest soil reservoirs to store water. The state is not
even looking at hard research that tells us we can maximize snowpack
retention by limiting clearcuts to no more than an acre. The failure to
address upland management in the “portfolio approach” may have
something to do with the fact that the vast majority of Sierra Forests
are owned by Sierra Pacific Industries – a private forest products
company that is
California
’s largest landowner.
The
other big
California
forest “owner” – the
Forest Service – has a research focus on climate change that also
ignores the forest soil reservoir. Instead Forest Service climate change
scientists prefer to look at how climate change may impact fire
behavior. Few who know Forest Service’s history and culture are
surprised that the agency’s preferred response to climate change is
more logging to “fire proof” our forests.
California
officials are also ignoring
the state’s #1 water consumer – irrigated agriculture. Irrigation
engineers tell us that – depending on current irrigation methods used
– agricultural operations in Californiacan reduce consumptive water
use by 20% to 70% by installing modern irrigation methods and adopting
modern irrigation management . This leads one to suspect that
California
’s water supply “crisis” has been created or
exaggerated in order to convince
California
taxpayers to build new dams and reservoirs. Since
California
irrigation interests are
already leasing water to urban water agencies, they stand to gain
billions if new reservoirs are built.
Thus
it comes as no surprise that one of the most vocal backers of the
Schwarzenegger/Snow “portfolio approach” is the California Farm
Bureau (CFB) – an organization that has never seen a dam it did not
like. The proposed Sites dam/reservoirs is very near the site of the
Paskenta-Newville dam proposed back in the early 70’s when Ronald
Reagan was California’s governor. That reservoir was intended as the
terminus of a tunnel to transfer Northcoast
California
water to the
Central Valley
where it could be used to
expand corporate agriculture. Conspiracy theorists will be tempted to
see the Sites dam/reservoir proposal as part of a long-term CFB strategy
to get a hold of more Northcoast water. If the new reservoir is built
but there is not enough water to fill it calls to transfer more
Northcoast water south may gain new impetus. And if that happens calls
to tap into
Klamath
River Basin
water are likely to be
renewed.
In
the 1970s Northcoast
California
leaders rebuffed efforts to
send more Northcoast/Klamath water south. In 1982
California
voters also defeated an
initiative to build the “
Peripheral
Canal
” which was designed to
send more water from the
Sacramento River
south. Voters correctly saw
the reservoirs and canal as water grabs by irrigation and other
Southern California
interests.
One
lesson in this history is that corporate agriculture and its operatives
in the Farm Bureau Federation and
California
state government can be
beaten back but never defeated. I guess that’s why they call them
“water buffaloes”. The water buffaloes are back now riding the
climate change wave. It remains to be seen whether
California
citizens will once again
see through the propaganda and defeat the latest effort to move more
Northern California
water south.
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Source:
http://klamblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/california-water-politics-water.html
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