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Waiting for the Tooth Fairy?

By David Keller, Bay Area Director, Friends of the Eel River

We dont have the water. Its not just this year.

We dont have the water. Its not just the third year of drought, either.

Ģ The Russian River is over-appropriated, pumped down, mined, and abused.

Ģ The Eel River is overdrawn and her fisheries decimated through the PG&E Potter Valley Project dams and diversions that mask the Russian Rivers mismanagement.

Ģ Sonoma Countys major groundwater basins are being drained to supplement the Russian Rivers dwindling supplies.

Ģ More releases from Lake Sonomas water supply pool to augment new water for Sonoma County Water Agencys (SCWA) contractors cannot happen for at least ten years. The Biological Opinion issued last fall by the National Marine Fisheries Service ordered SCWA to stop putting endangered salmon and steelhead in Dry Creek in jeopardy with the current overly high water-flow levels and velocities. SCWA is required to rebuild six miles of Dry Creek over a ten-year period to accommodate higher flows before any decision can be made regarding whether or not higher discharges can be released from Lake Sonoma withor withouta pipeline. The reconstruction of Dry Creek and other required work to help restore these fisheries will cost at least $110 million. If a pipeline is required to avoid new damages with higher flows, that could cost an additional $300 to 500 million. Ratepayers are already experiencing the shock of the recent rate increases.

Ģ After receiving comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Water Supply, Transmission and Reliability Project (WSTRP), which is the expansion plan for SCWAs pipelines, pumps, and storage, SCWA announced that there would be no budget next year to respond to comments or complete the EIR, as it is apparently incapable of being funded and passing legal muster. This puts on indefinite hold a 15-year-old process to obtain approvals and funding for expanding the water system and applying for an additional 26,000 acre-feet/year more water from the Russian River. Friends of the Eel River and allies defeated the prior EIR (WSTSP) in Appeals Court in 2003 for its failure to address impacts of continued Potter Valley Project diversions on the Eel River and other issues.

Ģ Uncontrolled pumping from the Russian River by grape growers for frost protection has drained the Russian River without notice, stranding and killing salmon and steelhead. This has forced SCWA to release scarce water from Lake Mendocino to sustain the minimum required streamflows in the river.

Ģ Recycled, treated wastewater is proposed by SCWA to be pumped long distances to support vineyard expansions where theyve already overdrafted local supplies in the Middle Reach of the Russian River and in southern Sonoma and Napa Valleys. SCWA states that the North Sonoma County Agricultural Reuse Project (NSCARP) and the North Bay Water Reuse Project have no obligation or goal to use the recycled water to first offset municipal potable water demands for supplies from the Russian and Eel rivers, instead of sending it off to new agricultural customers. In the face of substantial opposition, SCWA just put the NSCARP on hold.
Ģ The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reduced the flows through the Potter Valley Project in 2007 to avoid jeopardy takes of endangered salmon and steelhead in the Eel River. This triggered recalculations for releases from Lake Mendocino and opened the door for reconsideration of the State Water Resources Control Boards Decision 1610, a 1986 requirement that established minimum river flows to support fisheries in the Russian River and upper Eel River. In concert with the Russian River Biological Opinion from NMFS, the next few years will see new modeling, extensive research, and public hearings on the part of the State Water Resources Control Board to recalculate and revise D.1610.

Ģ Facing a third drought year, water releases from Lake Mendocino are drastically reduced, in order to preserve enough water in the reservoir to support fall-run Chinook salmon returns and spawning in the Russian River. This year the State Water Resources Control Board has mandated a 25% reduction in Sonoma Countys withdrawals from the Russian River, and a 50% reduction in Mendocino Countys usage, without using groundwater to backfill the reduced pumping.

Ģ The Sonoma County Water Agencys 2005 Urban Water Management Plan was ruled significantly deficient and inconsistent in court last fall, undercutting all current county and city General Plan assumptions about the adequacy of future water supplies for existing and new development. No one dares yet mention the M wordmoratorium.
Do we still have water? Is there enough for existing customers and water users? Is there enough for future development and expansion?

Approximately 92% of the Sonoma County Water Agencys supply is drawn from the Russian River wells and collectors. The balance is pumped from SCWAs groundwater wells.
SCWA continues to lead the public and decision-makers to believe that theres plenty of water for us and for the next generations of development, as if we dont have to do anything seriously different. For years they proclaimed, Its a regulatory drought: those fickle state and federal agencies have prevented us from getting more water from Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma. The cities are protesting mandatory reductions, while SCWA is encouraging cutbacks. And now the State Water Resources Control Board is requiring steep cuts.

Over the past 60 years, SCWA has encouraged every city and water contractor to ask for more water, to support SCWAs requests to the state for increased water rights. Theyve re-written the water supply agreements multiple times, insisting that each city take part in the overall expansion of the water supply, water distribution, and storage projects, and that cities get their ratepayers to pay large rate increases to finance new infrastructure. When Petalumas City Council opposed these expansions during contract negotiations in 1998-2000, SCWA and the other cities, abetted by local newspapers, roundly condemned the City Council for asking questions and withholding approvals. Petaluma wanted consideration of impacts to the Eel River, expanded conservation practices, true project costs, and true future water needs. SCWA and the Board of Supervisors exercised their full political might to make that city back down.
This year, the water contractors (through their Water Advisory Committee) are still complaining that the State Water Resources Control Board is demanding too much, and the contractors should just be allowed to figure it out on their own.They want voluntary not mandatory cutbacks this year, just like grape growers want frost protection water, and illegal diverters of water from the Russian River have been demanding the same from the state for the past few years. No enforcement! they all cry, while our rivers, watersheds, fish, wildlife, soils, groundwater, recreation, tourism, and local economies are decimated.

Yet SCWA, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, local cities, and grape growers have all known for years about permanent shortages, illegal withdrawals and diversions, the loss of water storage and quality resulting from gravel mining, the loss of topsoils and permeability of soils in recharge zones, the impacts of downcutting on recharging adjacent groundwater and flooding, cutbacks in the Potter Valley Project diversions, destruction of riparian corridors and wetlands, and other serious problems.

But they still promise plenty of paper water to keep the development machinery going.The numbers are promised contractually in the Restructured Agreement for Water Supply, as if that water actually exists to be sold and delivered, but theres still no talk about redoing that Agreement and the cities General Plan assumptions.
While SCWA says they want water customers to save water for the rivers and fish, it actually looks like they want water saved for more development.

Its time to seriously change our practices, and not just for this year. If not now, when? Wheres our waterand fishcoming from after this next round of choices is made?
Where are the adults in the room? Or is the tooth fairy still coming??