The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is asking for a decades-long extension of state water permits on the Trinity River to give it more time to find uses for the water -- a move river advocates say could threaten the water available for salmon and steelhead.
The petition to the State Water Resources Control Board was first filed in 1985, but the bureau never acted further on it. Reclamation has revived the application for an extension of its water rights on the Trinity and other Central Valley rivers until 2030, but didn't identify in the application what water projects are on tap that would allow it to use the water.
The request also does not include the 2000 U.S. Interior Department's decision to reduce diversions to the Sacramento River from the Trinity River to aid salmon. It has led some conservationists to voice concern that Reclamation might continue to divert large amounts of water from Trinity Lake reservoir and risk the availability of cold water for fish.
”I think what it shows is the bureau is not really serious about protecting the Trinity River fishery,” said Tom Stokely with the California Water Impact Network.
The network and Trinity County are among the parties protesting the petition.
The Trinity River, like most rivers in California, has more water rights attached to it than it has water. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation holds rights to some 16 million acre feet of Trinity water -- enough to cover 16 million acres to the depth of one foot -- even though the annual runoff into the river averages less than 1.4 million acre feet.
Applying the full allocation of Reclamation's water rights, wrote Trinity County in its protests, could deplete cold water needed for fish and prevent development of local water projects. The watershed would suffer “grave harm” if Trinity River water is used to fill in the huge deficit of water in the Central Valley Project, into which Trinity River water is diverted.
Reclamation's Deputy Regional Resources Manager Richard Stevenson said that the larger project is declared “integrated” by Congress, and that the Trinity permits and their proposed extensions can't be separated from the permits and extensions of the other elements of the project. The extensions are being requested because the extent of the larger project hasn't yet been realized, Stevenson said, and can't yet be put forward for licensing.
”We're not ready because we don't think the usage of the Central Valley Project as a whole has been developed and defined,” Stevenson said.
State water law is based on the use-it-or-lose it concept. In Reclamation's request, it holds that construction of projects to put the full amount of water to use is complete, but also said that it's unable to determine what the ultimate diversions from the Central Valley Project will be. Permitting, conservation plans and requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act all make such a prediction uncertain, Reclamation said.
State Water Resources Control Board spokesman Dave Clegern said that extensions are granted if the applicant has been diligent in trying to find uses for the water, if progress has been delayed due to circumstances beyond its control and whether it can provide a detailed road map of how it intends to use the water in the near future.
Diversions from Trinity Lake last fall and winter lowered the amount of water to about half the reservoir's capacity. Spring rains improved the situation slightly. Reclamation has begun diverting water to the Sacramento River, lowering an already low reservoir, with the expectation that the past three dry years will be the last of a drought and that winter rains will replenish the reservoir.
That same strategy last year was in part what pushed the reservoir so low this summer. The bureau must make sure that the water it releases down the river is around 50 degrees to protect salmon and steelhead. But when the lake level drops, water at the surface is too warm to send downstream, and it must look to the diversion's lowermost outlet to tap cold water, bypassing the project's power plant. Trinity River water is also used to keep temperatures down in the Sacramento River.
While Reclamation has to confer with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when the lake gets that low, there is no strict procedure in place to handle the issue. That's led critics to claim there is no plan to deal with extended drought, and question whether water for salmon could be sacrificed in extreme circumstances.
Mike Orcutt, senior fisheries biologist with the Hoopa Valley Tribe, said that Reclamation is betting on a good water year to refill the reservoir.
”Nobody has a crystal ball to predict that,” Orcutt said.
Because of that, the California Water Impact Network and Trinity County want to see the interior secretary's 2000 decision included in Reclamation's water rights extension. Trinity County holds that Reclamation also shouldn't be allowed to continue to hold onto water rights for water it cannot prove it will use in the future.
John Driscoll covers natural resources/industry. He can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com