Water supply

Westlands uses ‘voodoo math’ to seek more water

Letter
From Sacramento Bee – Saturday, May 12, 2012
Westlands Water District General Manager Thomas W. Birmingham claims his 600 irrigators “are being allocated only 40 percent of their water supply.” This is misleading.

Coalition response…Lloyd Carter continues the use of those mythical words—senior and junior—that do not exist in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation contracts with water users of the Central Valley Project. Each water contractor has an individual contract with the federal agency that is not dependent on the water supply of any other contractor. The US holds the water rights granted by the state of California for the construction and operation of the CVP. It is these very old rights that provide the basis for all of the contracts for the delivery of project water. The rights are uniform among all contractors regardless of location or date of initial delivery.

Read the Reclamation press release announcing the current 40% delivery at  http://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/newsrelease/detail.cfm?RecordID=39804. Those mythical words are not a part of the press release because they do not exist in the contracts, only in the minds of Carter and others who oppose the production of a reliable and healthy supply of food from the farmers of Westlands Water District.

Westlands’ farm practices harm Delta

Viewpoint
By Deirdre Des Jardins/Jane Wagner-Tyack
From Sacramento Bee – Saturday, May 12, 2012
That column, written by Thomas W. Birmingham of the Westlands Water District, stated that “Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley do not want to steal anyone’s water. They merely want to regain access to the water in a full Shasta Reservoir that they are paying for.”

Coalition response…If the land in Westlands Water District is so poor as these authors claim, then why are the crop yields so high? A combination of factors—weather, climate, water, management practices and soil—have resulted in crop yields that lead the nation year after year. The drop in cotton acreage during the past decade has been the result of dropping prices in the market, not soil conditions as the authors suggest. A recent rebound in market prices has seen cotton acreage creep upward.

Family farmers and partnerships represent the vast majority of farms in the district. People keep citing “absentee farmers” as they try to hide the fact of how many family farmers are on the land. Families and partnerships make the decisions on 91% of the 81,000 farms in California. Westlands is no different.

WATER SUPPLY

Filling to a safe level

Story
From Visalia Times-Delta – Sunday, May 13, 2012

Over the past few years, Lake Success near Porterville hasn’t been the lake it used to be. That’s because in 2004, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set restrictions on the maximum amount of water the lake could hold, lowering the water level 30 feet.

Congress plots local projects despite ban on earmarks

Story
From Sacramento Bee – Sunday, May 13, 2012
The loaded word “Natomas” appears nowhere in the latest flood-control bill authored by Sacramento Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui. So, too, with Sites Reservoir. The proposed Sacramento Valley project’s name cannot be found in an energy and water package pushed by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In water wars, don’t forget consumers and workers

Letter
From Sacramento Bee – Saturday, May 12, 2012
In the arcane water wars revolving around the Delta, water agencies, litigants and federal legislation, let’s remember the bystanders: California consumers, who need access to safe, quality, reasonably priced food from local growers.

Modesto Irrigation District water sale should start small

Editorial
From Modesto Bee – Saturday, May 12, 2012
We’ve had a crash course in Water 101 over the past seven months, ever since Modesto Irrigation District leaders revealed that they were considering something that was unthinkable just five years ago: selling water outside the district.

Osias, DuMars both to present to Imperial Irrigation District board

Story
From Imperial Valley Press – Saturday, May 12, 2012
It’s set to be lawyer vs. lawyer, one side vs. the other at the Imperial Irrigation District, as both the consulting and contracted lawyers discuss the controversial transfer of water from the Imperial Valley to coastal urban areas.

The fight for water: Here’s why the West’s oldest battle could hit you at the tap

Story
From Deseret News – Saturday, May 12, 2012
The West is running out of water. Its lifeblood, the Colorado River, is being hemorrhaged by cities, by farms and ranches, by power plants and by the more than 30 million people who depend on its water in the United States and another 6 million people in Mexico.

The fight for water: Can the mighty Mississippi save the West?

Story
From Deseret News – Sunday, May 13, 2012
Towing icebergs to California, diverting Mississippi River water to the Colorado Front Range or building massive plants to desalinize water from the Sea of Cortez are among the options to counter future water shortages in the two basins of the Colorado River.

DELTA

Water contractors need to get real

Editorial
From Sacramento Bee – Sunday, May 13, 2012
Managing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta means managing expectations. So far, Gov. Jerry Brown and his water team are struggling spectacularly in that task.

It’s time to compromise on Delta water projects

Viewpoint
By M. David Sterling
From Sacramento Bee – Sunday, May 13, 2012
Driving home along the Sacramento River one recent afternoon, I was vividly reminded why the Delta is among Northern California’s most scenic resources. As the levee road twisted and turned along the river, the golden glow of the setting sun cast the river, levees and agricultural fields as a living scene from an early California painting.

What’s more fragile – the Delta or the BDCP process?

Blog
By John Bass
From Delta National Park – Sunday, May 13, 2012

An editorial in the May 13th Sacramento Bee titled “Water contractors need to get real” raises a question about what the real is. My sense is that the Bee’s and the SJV water contractors’ versions are not the same.

FISHERIES

Rep. Herger critical of Englebright Dam removal report

Story

From Marysville Appeal-Democrat – Saturday, May 12, 2012

U.S. Rep. Wally Herger is taking a dive into the discussion about the fate of Englebright Dam with a letter sent last week to a federal agency criticizing the agency’s approach in determining the dam should be removed.