We may from time to time forget that SB 7X 1 has teeth, and includes “protecting and restoring the health of the Delta estuary, and its native fisheries” language as a co-equal goal of the legislation. The implications of those teeth are starting to come into focus.
Via Aquafornia, this thought from the Met’s “Review of Delta Stewardship Council’s Delta Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Report.”
Additionally, the draft EIR states that the “no project” alternative, which is meant to analyze what will happen if no plan moves forward - in other words, the status quo - will result in greater water deliveries to export areas than will result from some of the Delta Plan alternatives the EIR is analyzing. It is troubling that the Council is analyzing Delta Plan alternatives that would reduce deliveries to export areas compared to the status quo, particularly given proposed BDCP investments and that such an approach will not meet the statutory goal of a more reliable water supply for the state.
Consider that last sentence for a moment. The key phrases, “reduce deliveries to export areas” and “more reliable water supply for the state” are negatively linked, misleadingly suggesting that increasing water supply is consonant with increasing its reliability, therefore trumping that other and equal goal.
That’s revisionist, if understandably partisan, framing. Increasing water export quantity from the Delta is not the objective of DSC/BDCP process - increasing water supply reliability is. Quite possibly there is a difference between the two, thinking that is well described here.
Of course it’s troubling to export areas that the DSC/BDCP is considering alternatives that would reduce water delivered to them. But given the primacy of the co-equal goals mandate (and not just its water supply side), it makes sense to consider such alternatives, and those doing the considering have no choice but to do so.
I have written elsewhere that it may be possible for the DSC/BDCP to demonstrate that a peripheral canal (but not a tunnel) could assure greater water supply reliability and benefit the Delta’s ecosystem by distributing higher quality fresh water from the north to the southern Delta.
But in my opinion, it is possible and possibly likely that the costs of “protecting and restoring” the health of the Delta estuary etc. will be so costly as to trigger one of two things:
1/ The status quo wins out. The Delta’s ecosystem continues to evolve at the mercy of judges and Sierra snowpack. That giant earthquake either does or doesn’t destroy the Delta’s levees, and/or sea level rise either does or doesn’t outpace the ability of public and private agency to bulk Delta levees up.
2/ Scarcity implodes environmental ethos. State and federal endangered species and other environmental protection laws are gutted, eliminating the legal requirement for costly habitat mitigation, and removing that pesky leg of the co-equal goals. A canal/tunnel is built like a railroad on the High Plains in 1870.
I’ve been trying to get a simple answer to the Why isn’t the “fortress Delta” solution the most cost effective way of pursuing the co-equal goals question.
You know, the Delta ecosystem stabilization/improvement goal and the south of Delta water supply stabilization/reliability goal.
Nothing like a three-hour layover in O’Hare to find the time to respond to an interesting take on this question.
I recently posted this query at Jeff’s blog due to Jeff’s own number-crunching on the issue. Jeff received an interesting response from “Greg.” From the comment string:
John [that’s me] said…
Have you received any response from any appropriate expert regarding your cost/benefit conclusions re canal/tunnel/levee upgrade? Based on your notes on Mr Gilbert’s testimony, it seems like he may be a good person to start with.
December 19, 2011 11:48 PM
Jeff said…
I have heard (indirectly) that the Resources Agency has said that it does not intend to do benefit-cost analysis on conveyance or habitat because it is not required by law.
December 20, 2011 9:16 AM
Greg said…
Come on Jeff, tell the whole story. As you even acknowledged at the Delta Protection Commission meeting regarding these same numbers, the risk assessment was only addressing (arguably) the structural risk to continuing to move water through the Delta, it does not at all include the “supply reliability” issue that is at risk from sea-level rise/salinity increases and most particularly the Endangered Species Act conflicts of the present system. Those are the real drivers that will affect water supplies into the future.
December 20, 2011 11:14 AM
Jeff said…
Greg,
Very correct, and I thought I noted that in the post as well as the context that I pulled it from [quite possibly, he did - but I haven’t checked]. The context of the criticism of us is that seismicity is a relatively minor aspect of reliability compared to the ESA conflicts and water quality. Thus, even if it is earthquake proof you haven’t fixed water supply concerns. I don’t dispute that.
The point of the post is that when asked about the Delta, most politicians respond like Brown did: there could be a disaster so we need conveyance.
Earthquake and floods are a risk for so much more than water export. Thus, the appropriate response is there could be a disaster so we need flood protection investment, emergency response/preparation, etc. not conveyance.
Jeff
That was an informative exchange. If I understand Jeff’s reply to Greg, then the answer goes something like this:
1/ Despite claims of the threat of earthquakes, the fortress Delta would likely mitigate seismic risk every bit as much as a peripheral canal or tunnel would. It would also cost significantly less money. So that argument for a canal/tunnel is difficult to make.
2/ Any version of a fortress Delta would necessarily involve raising levee crests approximately two metres to compensate for the most extreme scenarios for sea level rise over the course of the next century. That mitigates against the inundation/overtopping - Delta levees collapse, islands flood, whole place becomes brackish sea - argument.
What is left to examine in Greg’s comments are the problem of salinity incursion (which he attributes to sea level rise) and an Endangered Species Act mitigation processes.
Salinity incursions are historical events as well as natural ones. The Delta Atlas (see “water quality” section for .pdf) has a great map showing salinity incursions (one thousand parts chloride per one million parts water) from 1921-1943. That’s a Delta liquid 1/1000/th salt. Not a pretty picture:
Once the dams, reservoirs and pumps were built, California learned how to control salinity intrusion (as an aside, the confluence islands were likely damaged for ag beyond repair back then, though), and eventually, how to control flows to maximize water export and ecosystem needs.
As for salinity:
1/ As sea level rises, so will the pressure of water from the Bay to push itself into the Delta, making the integrity of the Delta’s levees, especially those at the confluence, all the more critical if a fortress Delta is to function. The DWR can only do so much, and in a dry year, it can’t do enough as it is.
2/ But while it’s likely true that a fortress Delta will aid in repulsing brackish water that is a metre or two higher, but it is inarguably true that a Delta stewardship regimen in change of a landscape circumnavigated by a taxpayer-financed canal/tunnel solution will have no incentive or political agency to repulse this new salinity push.
Finally, there is the ESA argument.
This past year everyone was more or less satisfied with their water deliveries. Smelt rebounded. Ag posted banner years.
But this past year was a very wet year.
Greg’s argument that a fortress Delta solution doesn’t physically change Delta hydrology and by extension how the ESA limits water export - and therefore doesn’t address the co-equal goal of water supply reliability - is probably a legitimate one.
But I have yet to see the policy written that says that Californians will be willing to financially tend to the health of the Delta as anything more than as a no-maintenance habitat mitigation land and water bank. This is turning the ESA on its head.
But more than that, what would it say about the health of American democracy if “conflicts” between development and environmental legislation approved by most of its citizens can be circumvented and trumped by the interests of capital?
With the present policy, everyone is in it together, winning, losing, or drawing. Including the Delta smelt.
With a canal/tunnel, it is very possible that whenever there is a water crunch, the Sacramento River will deliver its 3,000 to 15,000 cfs to the head of the canal/tunnel. From there it will be delivered to the pumps having entirely bypassed the recharging effects it otherwise would have had on the Delta’s ecosystem.
The Delta, recipient of the SJV drainage water and whatever water’s left over from the Sacto, will lose, and south of the Delta will carry on with little interference, and certainly less than the ESA provides.
What we have in terms of public advocacy for the canal/tunnel is a reactionary terrorizing claim of earthquakes, floods, salt water in your taps unless 22 billion dollars of action is taken. In fact, the argument is actually about the “conflicts” between the Endangered Species Act and 1/ Property development and 2/ Increasing opportunities for those invested in and the flexibility of water markets. I wish that those in favor of the canal/tunnel would just come clean on this.
Absent a better policy, it is clear to me that the ESA a reasonably good tool for water policy-making. As someone once said, democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all of the other ones. And the ESA is a tool that casts democratic government in its most generous, hopeful and progressively conservative light.
...the following probably belabors thoughts begun in the previous post…edited 11:30PM 12/8…
I began the blog with the intention of staying focused on the Delta. But in my discipline, understanding the limits of a problem depends on knowing its extents. Staying focused requires good peripheral vision.
This is the only way to begin to understand interrelationships in a complex natural and cultural ecology. And to imagine possible solutions. That is why the Grasslands Bypass Project was so intriguing, since it seemed a promising hybrid of remediation and production, at least it did in my imagination.
Legal issues and facts are part of this ecology. Mike Wade provided a record that pretty convincingly answers the legal question of whose responsibility it is to “provide drainage services” to the owners of the salt-laden land he represents. It seems that responsibility falls to the alternately despised and depended upon government.
It falls to the technical and spatial apparatuses and budgetary capacity of government to find ways to implement this charge. But in this context (as in many others in these anti-tax days) its agencies are in a most difficult bind, well-expressed by USBR Commissioner Keys in 2005:
Seven action alternatives are evaluated in the Draft EIS. The alternatives can be grouped by their final discharge location - Delta, ocean and in-valley evaporation. Four alternatives - Delta discharge at one of two potential locations, ocean discharge, and in-valley evaporation, provide drainage service to all 379,000 acres of land that require it. Three additional alternatives combine in-valley evaporation with varying levels of land retirement. Land retirement, defined as removal of lands from irrigated agricultural production, would reduce drainwater production and thus reduce the size of the in-valley treatment and disposal facilities. The alternatives would cease irrigation on 92,600, 194,000 and 308,000 acres respectively, reducing drainage production from 70,000 acre-feet per year to 61,000, 45,000 and 27,000 acre-feet respectively.
and
The estimated construction costs identified in the draft EIS of the alternatives range from $589 million to $918 million. On a present worth basis, which is the combined construction and annual operation, maintenance and rehabilitation costs presented as a one time cost, three full-service alternatives - Ocean Disposal, Delta - Chipps Island, and In-Valley Disposal are nearly identical at about $562 million. The In-Valley Disposal with Land Retirement alternatives range from $626 million up to $857 million on a present worth basis. All of the alternatives exceed the spending limit authorized under the San Luis Act.
That last sentence is worth reading twice, in a post-2008 economy. Thanks to Chris Gulick for sending the link.
The extents of the Delta’s ecology applied here means that it is inevitable that the water and toxicity issues of the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Basin must be understood as they impact policy making for the Delta. These extents eventually scope back to the limits of the Delta, and to a less public rationale for why a peripheral canal or tunnel is inevitable.
The Grasslands Bypass Project is extolled as an example of a successful experiment at controlling selenium in Salt Slough and managed wetlands in the area just downstream from the Westlands Water District. An EPA article, titled Grasslands Bypass Project Reduced Selenium in San Joaquin Basin may be technically true, but is highly misleading.
Yes, the drainage infrastructure reroutes toxic water around Salt Slough and the managed wetlands, but it does this by concentrating it in Mud Slough. It is a useful and to a degree successful experiment that foreshadows what a rerouting infrastructure writ large might be in the Delta.
The Grasslands Bypass Project in the western San Joaquin Valley of California was conceived as a means of diverting selenium-contaminated agricultural drainage water from fresh water channels serving Grassland wetlands.
and
Sediment selenium concentrations are anticipated to increase in Mud Slough as a result of increased selenium concentration and loading, and to decrease in Salt Slough, which no longer conveys selenium-contaminated agricultural drainage.
So, the question remains: okay, you created a way to isolate it, but what do you do with the stuff you’ve collected?
Microcosmically (I know, but it should be a word), is Salt Slough the canal/tunnel, and Mud Slough the Delta?
I increasingly have the sense that the (unspoken, but perhaps equally important) function of the tunnel/canal would be no more about ensuring water security for CVP and SWP clients than it would be about bypassing the selenium-, boron-, and mercury-laced waste water to be deposited in the (South?) Delta.
The government must “provide drainage services,” and dumping back into the Delta from the South Valley is definitely the cheapest option if one doesn’t include the cost of the Delta’s bypass infrastructure, which is say $15-30 billion dollars.
It’s a win-win for everyone but Delta folks, and they know it.
Treating the Delta as a drain was the original plan, after all. It remains arguably the least expensive one, just to let the San Luis Drain do what it was intended to do in the first place, which was to dump west side drain water into the “Contra Costa Delta.”
Three types of bypassing function are in play in or near the Delta.
1/ The Yolo Bypass is a time-based function related to flood control. It has the happy side benefit of providing lots of seasonal marsh habitat.
2/ The Grasslands Bypass Project separates and collects toxic water and allows the perception of improvement elsewhere in the form of measurable reduction of selenium’s presence. I like happy side benefits, and wanted so much to like this project, but it is very possibly a smokescreen. Allowing postponement of inevitable solutions that don’t involve taking hundreds of thousands of acres of ag land on the westside out of production benefits everyone scrambling to find a final solution when all of the choices suck.
3/ Bypassing in the Delta via a canal or tunnel would depend on a three-dimensional system of siphons, where two entirely separate systems of water, one headed around and out, one headed in, are allowed to move independently of each other.
Bypassing is usually a form of reactive problem-solving. That seems to be so for these three case studies.
As for judging the extent of costs involved with draining selenium into the Delta (or any of the other alternatives) and creating a bypass to avoid its reintroduction into the export water supply, I await the cost-benefit analysis Jeff Michael has repeatedly asked for.
As we know from Judge Wanger’s last rulings, lots of science is, like a Jackson Pollock painting, open to too much interpretation.
Attorney Wanger will be representing WWD in a case against Westlands that asserts the district should be treated as a polluter, and therefore be required to obtain a state waste water discharge permit.
That Westlands’ soil leeches toxic salts that kill living things is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether (ethically, ideologically, fiscally) the government should provide a “service” to deal with this privately produced pollution or - depending on your point of view - simply whether it is a matter of legal record that the government agreed to do this.
I suppose a secondary (perhaps even primary) question is whether the government can require the polluter to pay (through toxic discharge permitting fees) for the right to access this service.
Here are a string of comments exchanged between Mike Wade and others at Mr Carter’s blog - that gives a pretty clear sense of the chicken or the egg argumentation likely to be heard at the trail.
Which gets me back to Judge Wanger. And the likely logic of his WWD defense. This is not a question of overly speculative science about the degree of environmental harm Westlands toxic runoff produces. Stipulated - Westlands is toxic - but that’s not the issue.
What is at issue is what Mr Wade refers to in the comments string - the history of a promise made during the negotiation of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) - that the government, that generally evil regulatory body of lying scientists and overzealous treehuggers, agreed to “provide drainage services” (aka: build a drainage infrastructure) to capture toxic drainage water discharged from the lands of a small group of private landowners.
Gotta love a euphemism that can make agreeing to create a very large and expensive government-built infrastructure sound like hiring a plumber to clear a clogged pipe.
But as anonymous asked at Mr Carter’s blog: A drain to where? The answer to that simple question lies in the legal geography where navigating facts becomes confusing, ideological, baseless and finally, Not My Problem.
I have a few basic public policy and engineering questions about this infrastructure:
Will this system be the agricultural (that is, the very horizontally extensive) equivalent of a mine’s tailings pond or dairy farm’s manure basin? If so, what are the precedents for things like mine tailing ponds or dairy farm manure capture basins, the products of private industry, being paid for by the government? Is it anticipated that the system will include water purification to remove the toxic salts before sending the water on its way north to the Delta or migrating birds die on its surface? If not, will the toxic water be stored and separated from the ecosystem indefinitely, like a Yucca Mountain for toxic drainage water?
From what I can infer from Mike Wade’s position, ex-Judge Wanger will likely argue that Yes, the government is contractually obligated to build this infrastructure, and therefore they are the appropriate body to answer these sorts of questions, and besides, are irrelevant to this case, and not the obligation of my client to answer.
Because they agreed to “provide drainage services” to Westlands in a legally binding contract. That’s all that matters.
What it costs and how to engineer it is the government’s problem, not the landowners’. As Kevin Bacon, aka Capt. Jack Ross, once said, “[t]hese are the facts of the case, and they are not in dispute.” What is, perhaps, is whether WWD will have to pay to use a government service, and if so, how much.
And once that’s determined, determining whether it makes more sense to buy out the WWD landowners than it does to indefinitely pay for lawyers to haggle, engineers to design, and remediation infrastructures to (possibly) correct an error in judgment made decades ago.
How does a group of water agencies, representing many interests but very few agendas, get made into a public funding entity?
Why is it okay that that group is allowed to underwrite an enormously challenging and important process of defining public policy? I use the word “allowed” instead of “required” purposefully.
Is it really any surprise that those water agencies will take as much advantage of this arrangement as they can?
He points out that the proposed BDCP memorandum of agreement
Provides export water agencies with a privileged role in selecting the BDCP consultant team and in providing direction to them.
Allows export water agencies a role in preparing responses to comments about the BDCP received by state and federal agencies from other stakeholders.
Gives the export water agencies the ability to stop work on the BDCP for any reason.
Commits state and federal agency support for listing the export water agencies as “permittees” under the ESA.
Why shouldn’t the water agencies get this kind of access, spin capability, veto power, etc.? They are paying for the BDCP, after all - as the California Farm Water Coalition’s tireless Mike Wade reminds us all.
And that is the problem. This is a public issue, and should be paid for by the public, not by a (nearly) single-interest constituency. This is a fundamental flaw with the process.
I have no reason to doubt the findings of the eighty-page report, which seem to carefully made, at least to a layperson like me.
The findings are based on a thorough review of published research and technical data as well as state of California publications to assess the overall potential for agricultural water-use efficiency to provide new water supplies. The report found that little potential exists for new water unless large swaths of agricultural land are taken out of production, which technically is not water-use efficiency.
“Unless large swaths are taken out of production.” That’s really the issue that the study implicitly directs our attention to. Or mine, anyway.
As a way of freeing up water supply, fallowing is one option. That would of course be contentious, especially so for one of the underwriters of the CIT report, the California Farm Water Coalition. Cheap food, after all, is a persuasive argument.
There are more and less likely regions of the Central Valley that might be taken out of production. Many if not all of them are in the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Basin.
Speaking of which, Patricia McBroom at the California Spigot recently argued for restoring Tulare Lake:
If the lake were recovered - representing about 200,000 acres of farmland - it could hold the liquid equivalent of about three new reservoirs, and could charge the depleted underlying aquifer as well. It’s a grand idea, supported not only by Zuckerman, but by the 200 organizations that make up the Environmental Water Caucus.
Even the CIT report identifies the unsustainable scale of overdrafting on the aquifer as a major issue, if not one within the scope of their study. It is not their obligation to draw conclusions about that fact. But it should be a major concern for someone, shouldn’t it? McBroom’s piece at least synthesizes into a solution several interests - including groundwater repletion - that bring into greater balance available water supply with demand.
Not that that is likely to happen anytime soon. It seems that the CIT/CFWC argument is that “we are doing nearly everything we can to conserve water and we are still forced to overdraw groundwater because we don’t have enough available supply to meet our needs so that we can supply cheap food with cheap water and cheap labor.”
Clearly, one must conclude from the CIT report one of two things:
1/ Ag land must be taken out of production
2/ Additional water supply must be found to support existing ag demand.
Since current “alternative conveyance” studies are based not on increasing export of water but only ensuring its dependability (see this NRDC piece on the so-called “co-equal goals” principle for a refresher), we know where the hard line of pro-ag reasoning must eventually lead: to the unrestrained export of Delta water south, and a destroyed Delta ecosystem.
It’s not possible to comment directly at the CA WaterBlog, so I’ll do it here, always happy to trot out the blind men touching the elephant image.
Professor Jay Lund’s recent post there is titled “Multiple stressors - funding the Delta like a public sewer”. The title and imagery in itself is interesting—more in-your-face rhetorically than usual for the people who write at CWB - but as analogies go, it doesn’t test so well against a few key measures.
Professor Lund’s thoughts are related to “stressor fees” suggested in the Delta Stewardship Council’s draft EIR. On the one hand, his thoughts as usual are founded on knowledgeable contextual assessments that lead to reasonable conclusions—but on the other, are politically tone-deaf and culturally reductive - even if these conclusions are only about funding, not valuing, change in the Delta.
Consider any normal well-run urban wastewater system. Thousands of communities, large and small, build and pay for urban wastewater systems, including many miles of sewers and pumping plants to collect wastewater, regional wastewater treatment plants, and treated wastewater discharges.
Leaving aside his view that the “multiple stressors” ambiguities are opportunistically played by the various Delta interests, which seems to me to be an accurate assessment, “stressors” don’t account for significant qualitative factors of the Delta as a landscape. I don’t think it’s trite to say that landscapes are cultural things, not (simply) natural things, not (simply) technical, engineering things. This makes his sewer analogy a heuristic fail.
1/ Generations of families haven’t lived in and on urban wastewater systems.
2/ Urban wastewater systems do not contain historical landmarks. Though I’ve long thought that the American Society of Civil Engineers should pursue making the Delta a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
3/ Urban wastewater systems are not beautiful.
Contentiousness exists on the quantitative front as well:
4/ Urban wastewater systems are not the habitat of endangered species whose future is dependent on the health of complex, stressed ecosystems that are poorly understood by scientists.
5/ Since the USACE cannot produce inarguable evidence that vegetation on levees increases flood risk, people who enjoy the scenic aspects of flood-prone landscapes will resist. So will the DFG.
None of the above five aspects of the Delta can be accounted for by Prof. Lund’s analogy. They are slippery but persistent facts that frustrate those who seek strategies for straight-line thinking. They are all intrinsic parts of a more complete picture of a Delta’s ecosystem that cannot be reduced to numbers.
Nevertheless, Prof. Lund’s proposals, if not his analogy, seem to be headed in a plausible direction that will help define future policy. Hopefully, he and others who have influence will be able to expand their definition of the Delta’s ecology, finding a way to value (and game) its qualitative elements, too.
The rebuff marks the sixth time the nation’s highest court has refused to question the Endangered Species Act. The latest challenge to the law had the backing of property-rights advocates, a group of California water districts and trade organizations representing farms and small businesses.
“The Delta smelt regulations are far from the only example of federal officials issuing regulations for local species without constitutional authority. We will litigate this issue until the Supreme Court ultimately agrees to take it up. This is a long-term battle to stop federal intrusion that robs people of their livelihoods and liberties, and undermines the basic framework of the Constitution.”
I am sure that it is making the Strict Constructionalist crowd crazy that the conservative, Roberts-led court agreed with the 9th circuit that the “Endangered Species Act ‘bears a substantial relation’ to interstate commerce and therefore fit within the constitutionally granted authority of Congress.”
Stopping federal intrusion may a long-term battle, but so is getting people to understand that Ayn Rand is a teenager’s treatise. Even Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito get that.
Is the Delta Protection Commission trying draw an analogy between the Endangered Species Act and the Canal/Tunnel? I support the conclusions of their recent work, but I’m not sure that’s an analogy they should be making.
Via Aquafornia, I read the piece in the Manteca Bulletin about the Delta Protection Commission’s recently released draft Economic Sustainability Plan.
Cited in the Bulletin’s article is a quote from page 269*, from which one might infer that people in the Delta don’t give a damn about Delta smelt:
Just as a species by species approach is an inefficient and ineffective way to protect ecosystems, a system by system approach is an inefficient and ineffective way to protect the state’s infrastructure.
I don’t get it. As I commented at John Fleck’s blog, it is surprising to me that the DPC folks chose to emphasize the problems of a piecemeal ESA process. And as an analogy no less!
It is arguable that the Endangered Species Act’s processes, wrong or right, have aligned quite nicely with Delta interests more than pretty much any other CA water constituency. Right or wrong, effective or not, the provisions of the ESA have provided a way to legally limit the amount of water exported from the Delta. **
So, this strikes me as being just a bit of untidy language. The argument here cannot be that nature was created for men’s purposes, as many extremists believe. It’s difficult to imagine the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Delta Protection Commission finding common ground, but stranger bedfellows have been found.
What I think the authors of the ESP are trying to say here is that the Fortress Delta solution will oblige the state to think about the entirety of the Delta as an ecology. An ecology that includes economic and cultural processes. I couldn’t agree more with them.
Unfortunately, the ESA is about the best tool that science has for making what in the end are legal arguments. And fortunately, the DSC report makes another argument that is likely to have legs, the one about the cost-effectiveness of spending many billions of dollars. And we await a well-deserved reply to this argument.
The threat of a catastrophic earthquake event turning the Delta into an inland brackish sea is one of the top rationales of the “isolated conveyance” position.
Wouldn’t any rational person staring at these numbers wonder why that risk reduction strategies are so focused on 20% of the cost, and virtually ignore the other 80%. If it makes sense to spend $13 billion protecting 1/5 of the cost, doesn’t it make sense to at least consider what benefit might result from spending $13 billion (or even $2-4 billion) on seismically-resistant levee upgrades that would protect 100% of the costs, not to mention all the potential loss of lives from the big earthquake flood scenario.
What Dr Michael does here is clever. He first accepts the premise that a Delta earthquake of catastrophic effect is inevitable. And that enormous sums of money must be invested to minimize the disruptions to water supply of that event.
In a nutshell, okay - earthquake, stipulated, $13B, stipulated - but why would you spend that money only to see 80% of it washed away in the earthquake it was supposed to protect the state against?
I hope Dr Michael receives his answer. His question raised another:
- Can someone fill me in on the logic of why this presumed earthquake, so catastrophic in scale, somehow not does not wreak havoc on the system of canals/tunnels and siphons it spawned?
I also would like to contribute my own rather long-winded answer to Dr Michael’s question. the short answer is that the numbers forecast the larger strategic uses of a future Delta.
People and their communities are not an intrinsic component of the future technocratically managed Delta.
Anyway, in a future that doesn’t repair Delta-based things or worry too much about “potential loss of lives,” you see, the Delta’s implosion is necessary. How else is it to be reinvented as a resource-rich agricultural geography where agriculture is no longer the primary export? The PPIC’s interactive map scenarios for the future Delta provide some insight into that larger strategic future. One such map is called “A Multi-Purpose, Eco-Friendly Delta.”
Compare the land uses in the PPIC map to those in the Delta today. (I especially like the term “wildlife-friendly” agriculture.) I believe even Delta residents would agree that all land uses exist in both the actual and PPIC-imagined Delta. The difference is in the proportional mix of the uses.
So my answer to Dr Michael’s question is that In the future the Delta will be reprogrammed as a habitat mitigation land bank. The Delta’s highly malleable landscape is the perfect geography for providing a necessary resource for developers everywhere.
Just look at what the Delta Wetlands Project has been spending tens of millions of dollars trying to create on four Delta islands.
The Delta is evolving into an engineered and managed supermarket of habitat types, traded up and down the state, mitigating lost habitat in places wherever exported Delta water underpins new development. That water may emerge out of a hydrant or a sprinkler in Palmdale, a fountain adorning a gateway interchange or high-rise plaza in Orange County, or a faucet slaking the thirst of a farmworker in Mendota as he works in the shadow of a new state prison.
It is amazing how much spin a “three-inch bait fish” can induce in human beings. (Judges, too - but that’s another issue.) Poor fish has a decent season, and the water export lobby uses it as evidence that the little fellas are getting too much water. That they aren’t confused enough.
If they don’t get emulsified at the pumps, here’s what happens to Delta smelt when water is dear:
Posted at Aquafornia, here’s a portion of the statement made by Terry Erlewine, general manager of the State Water Contractors, regarding the uptick of Delta smelt collected in this fall’s smelt sampling.
“The Delta smelt’s population has been impacted over the years by a number of factors, such as pollutants that impact the Delta food web and invasive species. Although the state’s water operations have also been listed as a factor, no Delta smelt were found at the State Water Project entrainment facilities this year. At the same time, water agencies were able to export high levels of water for storage and reservoir replenishment given the extremely wet year.
“While three additional surveys will take place later in the fall, the September numbers for Delta smelt are an encouraging sign. The State Water Project was able to deliver healthy levels of water this year to farms and communities throughout the state without detecting any smelt in the entrainment facilities. It is further evidence that pumping levels are not the primary driver of the health of key fish species, and that a comprehensive approach addressing all stressors via the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is necessary for a long-term solution.”
There is no disagreement with much of Mr Erlewine’s statement - that there are lots of stressors on the Delta’s ecosystem - and that this was an exceptionally wet winter and spring, leading to an exceptionally large volume of water flowing through the Delta, to farms and cities in the south, and out to San Francisco Bay.
But I’ve added italics to the first clause in the concluding sentence because unlike the rest of the sentences, that clause is spin. Spin that is coordinated, deflective, and pervasive in social media as much as it is in the rhetoric of politicians and spokespersons.
The uptick in smelt numbers collected in the Delta combined with the absence of any collected at the pumps is not “further evidence that pumping levels are not the primary driver of the health” of the smelt.
Here’s a different take: It could easily be argued that the smelt uptick is exactly evidence that the pumping levels are the primary reason, and here’s why.
1/ This season there is a lot of water flowing in the direction nature intended it to flow;
2/ that means the smelt do not get confused about which direction downstream (and importantly, their spawning ground) is;
3/ since they are not confused about where to go to spawn, they have no reason to show up at the fish screens in the first place.
The poor little smelt are not fooled by the immense draw of the SWP/CVP pumps that in relatively dry seasons actually change the direction that water in the Delta flows from toward the Bay to toward Altamont Pass.
Isn’t that spin at least as credible as Mr Erlewine’s?
Another take on the smelt uptick, this one from an advocate of “Salmon Water Now,” commenting on Bettina Boxall’s 10/13 LAT piece.
“Under the federal fish-rebuilding plan for the Delta, we changed water management a bit to protect fish starting in 2008 following years of neglect that crashed the ecosystem. Here’s what we got: Fall run chinook rebounding to allow fishermen and fishing businesses to back to work in 2011 after three years of devastaing closures. Record CA farm revenues in 2009 and 2010. Record Delta freshwater exports in 2011. Rebounding Delta smelt in 2011. On top of it all, the nation’s top scientists gave their seal of approval to the science behind the rebuilding plan. Plain and simple: protecting the Delta is good for California.”
Plain, but not so simple I’m afraid. It appears that it has become all too easy to spin evidence and science. Let’s try to keep the spin civil.
Delighted people are a common sight at the Capilano Salmon Hatchery near Vancouver. Especially young people, watching salmon climb a fish ladder:
The hatchery provides evidence that creating public spaces out of public infrastructure isn’t just justifiable because of profits, pleasure and synthesis. Infrastructure has the potential to educate and communicate ideas about water and nature, human management and control to a public that sorely needs it.
As I’ve said in the past, the fish screen facility is a piece of environmental protection infrastructure, created in the 1950s, that reflects the better angels of the Californian (and American) ethos. You know, the one that existed before the effects of Proposition 13 and all of its siblings and offspring started to kick in.
I’ve visited the fish screens. It’s really an eye-opener about the lengths to which people try to protect fish from the effects of human management and control. Every kid should get the chance.
About laudable efforts by the state parks department proposing new and improved Delta parks, the lead paragraph reads
A lack of money isn’t stopping state parks and natural resources officials from dreaming big and coming up with a plan to revitalize Delta economy and tourism.
The problem is, the parks people aren’t dreaming big enough, or more precisely, synthetically enough. It is merely a parks plan, developed by the state parks department, supported by regional political figures, and disconnected from the maze of planning underway.
Why? As conceptual artist Sol Lewitt may have said if he followed California water issues, the Delta parks plan accounts for just four of 122 variations of incomplete open cubes.
More from the CCTimes:
“Contra Costa County Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho, of Discovery Bay, said an outline of how to revitalize the Delta also demonstrates how important it is to plan for the region, and how the Delta can be damaged further if too much water is siphoned to Southern California.”
“Everybody needs to realize the benefit of the Delta as more than a plumbing fixture,” Piepho said.
Leaving aside the question of whether Ms. Piepho’s hometown of Discovery Bay has helped or hurt efforts to revitalize the Delta, focus on the Delta is going to be on its plumbing fixture-ness for the foreseeable future.
The “parks department wants to improve four existing recreation areas and six state parks, and create four new parks.” Please see this proposal for the Large Owner Axis at the DNP.
“The strategy recommended by the state would create tourism and business opportunities in towns that are gateways for recreational activities; offer more historic and nature interpretation, restrooms, picnic and camping sites and other facilities at parks; and create additional activities such as fishing, hunting and bird-watching to entice more visitors.” Please see this proposal for a network of Lodgecamps in the Delta at the DNP.
“These locations would be connected by scenic driving routes, boating trails, or bicycling and hiking trails.” Please see this proposal for a California Delta Transit Authority at the DNP.
I could go on.
Anyway, all of those new and improved parks will be great, but what about integrating that work with at least the acknowledgement that massive amounts of infrastructure improvement (of whatever sort, through, around, or under) are being planned for the Delta? That what you are planning “would take about 50 years to complete” nicely intersects with the time horizon of re-engineering the Delta?
A comment made about the Delta National Park siphon springs proposal referred to the proposal’s both/and thinking, applied to parks and the Peripheral Canal, thus:
Coool, (toke) hey where’s the water slides? If you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.
A Delta resident’s understandable if predictable point of view. I expect more out of state agencies, whose obligations are to the state’s citizens.
Since the money doesn’t exist for executing any of these plans anyway, agencies like the state parks department should be more strategic, and treat their ideas like grafts on the larger surgery being planned for the Delta. Otherwise, their work will be like lipstick on the pig, a few disembodied park spaces that take no advantage of the systemic possibilities of public space in the Delta.
My last post asked how Bill Wells, head of the Delta Chambers and Visitor’s Bureau could possibly support the agenda of the arguably misnamed California Farm Water Coalition.
Well, the answer is that he can’t. And I feel a need to give Executive Director Wells a bit of airtime here. This should help clarify and amend his less-than-successful attempt at sarcasm, or perhaps my tone-deafness to his subtle use of the style.
But before then, Mr Wells comments led me to ask the question How many separate CFWC’s are there in the entire Valley? I count six, but #3 may be split between #‘s 4 and 5. People who really know could probably count dozens.
From the comments at the Oakland Tribune article is Mr Wells’ thoughtful response to my question, quoted in full below:
John - I was being sarcastic, according to their website: “The CFWC has three primary goals in its mission to positively affect the perception of California agriculture’s use of water and provide a common, unifying voice for agricultural water users: 1. To serve as the voice for agricultural water users. 2. To represent irrigated agriculture in the media. 3. To educate the public about the benefits of irrigated agriculture”.
To the best of my knowledge the CFWC has never come to the aid of Delta farmers many whose families have worked the same land since the gold rush era. Delta farmers have been under attack by the Department of Water Resources and the Bay Delta “Conservation” Plan for years now, seeing their property invaded and vandalized. You would think a group calling itself The California Farm Water Coalition might show some concern about these goings on.
The reality is that all farmers are pawns in this game. The Delta Stewardship Council and the Bay Delta Conservation seek to consolidate the control of all of California’s water into the hands of a few powerful individuals and then sell it back to the citizens at exorbitant prices. It is like (the movie) Chinatown on a statewide scale.
Bill
Now that I am aware of Mr Wells’ subtle sarcastic style, I am better able to appreciate and enjoy the rhetorical utility of “you would think that CFWC might show some concern…” Good luck with that, Bill.
Mr Wells’ comments unpack a few important points, but I especially like the implicit point that the CFWC is really a misnomer. For a truer geographical picture of their mission, should they perhaps call themselves the Southern California Farm Water Coalition? An answer might become clearer in the near future as further expression of the diversity of farming self-interest is articulated.
Anyway, to expand on a few of Mr Wells’ points as follows:
1. Farming interests are not monolithic, and tend to adhere with other interests in complex, sometimes issue-specific ways. Like most groups, the various farm groups’ agendas are less about principle and more about self-interest.
2. The issue of property rights for Delta farmers and landowners is as sacrosanct as it is for Rep. Nunes’s (R-Hyperbole) constituents. It’s just that property rights in the Delta align nicely with the fullest interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, whereas they do not in the San Joaquin Valley.
3. Many farmers are pawns in the California’s Big Water Picture. That is the what happens when a place creates an enormous infrastructure of water storage and movement, making the resource a commodity - it’s much more transactional than it is, say, in Iowa.*
4. Chinatown, like the Mark Twain quote about whiskey, fighting and water, needs to be put down. Both have outlived their usefulness, and as kind of soft romantic reflection from the age of abundance, actually do more harm than good.
* 8:43 AM 9/27/11: Revised to emphasize the transactional capacity of water instead of whether/which farmers farm their land vs. trade its water. In all parts of the state, farmers can and do do both.
As a rule Chambers of Commerce are pro-market and anti-regulation. I’ve seen “Hot Coffee.”
But one would think that in the case of debate about water exported from the Delta, the position of the Executive Director of the California Chambers & Visitor’s Bureau would prove to be the exception to that rule.
“80 percent going to agriculture is the figure generally used when discussing ‘developed water’. I am glad that the Farm Water Coalition is on top of this matter.”
Given the mastery of spin that interest advocacy experts have developed, editorial writers would be well-served to not make basic errors if they want to contribute accurate, important and mature points of view.
In an otherwise thoughtful piece, an editorial in the Oakland Tribune made the claim that “agriculture…uses 80 percent of California’s water.”
The editorial was about Delta issues, and the writer(s) made an error when referring to a state-wide water use statistic.
So, in the comments section of the online editorial, Mike Wade, of the California Farm Water Coalition, correctly called the paper on this.
Mr Wade cited DWR statistics that “identifies water use in California during a normal year as environmental, 48%, agriculture, 41% and urban, 11%.” Fair enough.
The problem is that while these numbers may be true, they also deflect from the defensible point of view the Trib’s editorial staff was trying to make.
Which is, that in order to meet the challenges of the Delta Stewardship Council’s “fix the Delta’s ecosystem” mandate, “sacrifices by water users will have to be made, particularly by agriculture.”
It may not be that Ag uses 80% of the state’s water, and Mr Wade’s number of 41% may be close to a reasonably accurate percentage of Delta water use by Ag, but only if calculated as the theoretical/ideological total amount of water available to export.
That last little bit is where all of the debate and rhetoric is, or should be. Rhetoric about property rights and the price of food, “wasted” water and “three-inch bait fish,” and the like.
The debate shouldn’t be reduced to quibbling over which scale of water policy is being referred to and supported by which statistics.
I got involved in the comments string at the bottom of the editorial, and here cite one part of what I wrote there:
[S]tatistics involving Delta “wasted” and exported water, to whom and what it goes is really a key point of debate. At the very least, those numbers need to be made clear and consensually agreed to. And even that is probably is not as simple as it sounds.
The editorialists wished to make a responsible contribution regarding the idea of sacrifice vis-a-vis finding “co-equal” balance. Unfortunately, they got their numbers wrong, but those are the numbers that need to be understood and debated. A sloppy error allowed for that point to be marginalized.
After genetic adjustments, endangered fish coordinate migration
This set of thoughts has little to do directly with Judge Wanger’s X2 decision. I mostly wanted to remind myself that several endangered fish species migrate in and out of the Delta at several different times of the year.
This is very inconvenient for Westside SJV agricultural interests.
Why don’t those special fish just get together, start a Facebook page, hire Dr Frankenstein, and adjust their genetic migration patterns through the Delta to accommodate some westside SJV investors’ bad business decisions?
“It is increasingly clear to me that key biological opinions done by the Department of the Interior are not based on sound science.
“Judge Wanger found that the department’s proposal to release hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water in the hopes of identifying the ideal location for ocean water and fresh water to meet was not scientifically justified. In fact, the judge said ‘there is essentially no biological evidence to support’ the department’s plan.
“In addition, the ruling states that the Department of the Interior ‘completely abdicated [its] responsibility to consider reasonable alternatives to the Fall X2 action…’”
“I strongly urge the department to heed the court’s message, develop a reasonable alternative that protects the smelt and water users and finally settle this matter.”
Love that last paragraph. C’mon folks, how hard can this be? This should be an easy solve for the “department.”
Whether the spring (smelt) or fall (see below), why should it be WSJV ag’s problem that fish evolved in the way that they did? Why do those “three inch bait fish” need to migrate out of the Delta at the time when WSJV ag really wants to push the pumps?
Delta smelt, Hypomesus transpacificus, are an endangered slender-bodied smelt, about 5 to 7 cm (2.0 to 2.8 in) long, of the Osmeridae family. Endemic to the upper Sacramento-San Joaquin estuary of California, they largely inhabit the freshwater-saltwater mixing zone of the estuary, except during their spawning season, which primarily takes place during the early spring months from March until May.
As alluded to above, there are other endangered fish that migrate in and out of the Delta. And if we wish (to use Mr Middleton’s rhetorical technique about wanting to “live in a world where”) to live in the world where WSJV ag wants to live, those species would pretty much cease to exist except as fish meal ground up by the pumps.
Recently, a federal judge blocked ESA protections in the Bay-Delta system for winter-run salmon, spring-run salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon, and orca. Protections for these listed species also helped to protect California’s troubled salmon fishing industry. Three weeks ago, we warned that relaxing Delta pumping limits designed to protect listed species could harm the commercially valuable fall-run Chinook salmon.
The smart, well-informed people at the NRDC disagree with Sen Feinstein about the merits of the science in question, and have decided to continue to pursue with the DOI a stay of Wanger’s ruling. I suspect the NRDC folks know more about the science in question than does the Senator, if for no other reason than she has lots on her plate, including presumably seeking reelection in 2012.
Hard to argue with that. But it is significant that those very same (federal and environmental interests) scientists have enough confidence in their work that they will continue to spar with the (state and property rights interests) scientists. I can only guess that both sides believe that their science is solid.
“...if only we can get the right judge…”
Does this appeal mean that the untrustworthy federal government’s position will prevail this time around? That question will be in large measure be determined, just like it was with Judge Wanger, by the new judge’s values.
And if the feds win this time around, who will win when the property rights folks make their appeal? Who knows?
In the era of increasing scarcity, science is becoming the handmaiden of politics.
——————-
A semantic correction: I used the word “demonize” to describe the anti-government folks’ multi-pronged siege of the federal government. I used that word in reference to the title of this post by Brandon Middleton. I could have chosen a better word, like say, “impugn.”
Finally, a thank you to Brandon Middleton for correcting me, and elaborating on just how much science has become vested with particular interests.
Why not make the title “Trust us, we’re scientists”? Seems to answer itself. The “federal” word has gained much negative authority among Mr Middleton’s audience.
Maybe due to my own clumsiness, I’ve been unable to access Mr Middleton’s blog comment section and therefore can’t comment there. So instead thought I’d ask a couple of questions here.
From Middleton’s post:
Likewise, if “any water lost is too much,” [quoting me] then why exactly did Judge Wanger order X2 to be located such that water users will lose 90,000 acre-feet of water under most circumstances? The court could have enjoined any use of the X2 measure, but despite recognizing that “the record reveals no support for X2 and smelt abundance,” it did not.
Well, why didn’t he “enjoin” the X2 line’s use altogether, since, according to Mr Middleton’s account of the Judge’s decision, “the record reveals no support for X2 and smelt abundance”?
Why accept some unsubstantiated science, but not all or none of it?
I am not looking for an answer to a rhetorical question. But I do wish to reiterate the basic point of my post in question: Wanger’s take is based in ideology and the dynamics of power, political advantage and compromise, but not science.
As I’ve discussed in other posts, the X2 line is an index of those dynamics. There are factors other than smelt’s existence at play in the X2 line’s existence.
It’s possible that Mr Middleton is taking the judge’s decision out of context, but if I understand Middleton’s quote correctly, Judge Wanger makes this case.
There is no science that will satisfy a standard based in politics.
I mean Judge Wanger no harm. His decisions just reflect the world he believes in and the uncertainty of any science in such a complex physical environment.
Which leads me to my other question for Mr Middleton. From his post:
Bass seems to want to live in a world where the feds can do what they want, when they want, and not be expected or required to explain their decisions. Fortunately, as Judge Wanger has recognized, “Trust us is not acceptable.”
From whatever perspective, I cannot understand why any interest would find it productive to demonize those parts of a federal government that created, manage, subsidize, and are charged with finding a sustainable future for your world. “They” are not an enemy. They are you.
This is not about trust, at least about trusting science. This is about finding a “science” that adheres or otherwise is consistent with interests and ideology.
Don’t deflect. I live in this world, Mr Middleton—not in the caricature of the (less-than-ideal) ideal world you place me in. You have every right to fight for a pull back of environmental regulation.
I get that this is about power, ideology and influence.
I promise (and many times have, with scars to prove it, that) I’ll say the same thing when this gets flipped on its head, and instead it’s about trusting or not trusting scientists who say that a canal/tunnel will be good for the Delta.
note: updated this post on 9/7 at 9:13 to clarify that smelt aren’t the only reason for the X2 line’s existence.
Just prior to announcing his resignation, Judge Wanger (R-Fresno) made one last decision regarding water policy in California. In it, he asks of science an impossibly high standard that, science failing to meet it, leads to a default ruling supporting water export interests.
Judge Wanger knows that the X2 line is a product of politics, not science, doesn’t he? That there is no science that is capable of fully solving a political problem as complicated as California water policy?
Wanger’s latest decision uses a logic that climate change deniers also use with some success. Unlike, say, insurance companies, who can’t afford to ignore the facts of a long view, the judge and climate change deniers use a head-in-the-sand logic to support their anti-environmental views.
From the Kern Valley Sun: In yesterday’s injunction, Judge Wanger ruled the 2008 biological opinion still “fail[s] to explain why it is essential to maintain X2 at 74 km and 81km respectively, as opposed to any other specific location.” Judge Wanger instead ordered that the outflow requirement be modified to minimize the amount of Delta water lost to the ocean.
“As opposed to any other specific location?” It is possible to turn the Judge’s reasoning on its head, to interpret the location of the X2 line as doing just what the Judge asked for - “minimizing” water lost to the ocean. It is just that any water lost is too much for the thirsty.
The Impossibly High Scientific Standard argument is emerging as a real favorite of many involved in Calfornia’s water struggles. IHSS has become a very successful tool in conservative policy as it battles against forty-plus years of environmental progress. IHSS is also a tool used by those on both sides of the canal/tunnel debate.
The future of the Delta will be decided politically, supported by the efforts of science. It is this unfortunate truth (and lack of political leadership) that poses the biggest threat to the Delta and its intricate human and natural complexities.
Could I ask that Dan Bacher and those he quotes use the term “canal” when referring to a canal to take water around the Delta, the term “tunnel” for the other option under discussion, and “canal/tunnel” when referring to both?
I ask because there are important differences in the potential effects of a canal or a tunnel on the Delta’s environmental and social health (to keep it tight), and elisions that blur these distinctions make everyone that much less informed.
Mr Bacher, we assume that you are writing for people out there who are not yet decided (and not just for those who already have), and it would therefore be good to provide them with as much information as possible. Even if that is to know that both canal and tunnel are on the table and both are to be opposed. Others can get into finer points distinguishing between the two.
Otherwise, if it is the canal alternative being referred to when really the reference intended is to both canal and tunnel, one could give the reader the mistaken impression that one alternative is preferable to the other, or that there is no other alternative. There are several others.
It may be that one is preferable to the other, when push comes to shove. But upon a survey of all the evidence, it does seem that Mr Bacher and those for whom he advocates despise both with equal fierceness.
Fine, but it does seem useful to explain objections to both, different objections, one assumes, since the canal and tunnel will produce different effects.
Conclusions? The eastern isolated conveyance (the Peripheral Canal), the preferable of the two surface alternatives, is less expensive and less of a technological risk. But the tunnel is more viable politically because building a structure no one will ever see makes it ostensibly less environmentally impactful and greatly reduces necessary land takings, something that will no doubt be bitterly contested.
and
But would the tunnel really be a better alternative from a strictly environmental perspective? Yes, it would certainly bring far less change to the surface of the Delta. But of course, as a development, damaged land would have to be mitigated by “restoration” of an equal amount of habitat, so one might argue that a canal would do no damage to the Delta’s habitats. So does the argument against the canal hold up as an environmental argument? A private property, or a preservation one, yes - but not an environmental argument.
and
The ability to imagine canals, tunnels, dams, levees, and the rest is controlled by the narrow views of technocrats and politicians. To them, imagination is a risk, an unknown best avoided. This is why the tunnel is likely to be the solution. Even the Delta’s tenacious preservationists will have a hard time justifying their opposition to such a perfectly banal, functional, solution.
As I wrote yesterday, the fortress levee solution is looking better and better in a fiscal environment as bad is Calfornia’s. But as you might infer from the above snippets I would still bet that if Gov Brown does find money for the circumnavigational conveyance infrastructure, it will be for a tunnel.
Anyway, please hear this - I am not writing this as a proponent of one or the other alternative. I am writing this because it is important to understand that each brings different consequences and possibilities for the Delta’s landscape and community. Indeed, there are different motivations for preferring one to the other.
Being unclear about what the thing is by just referring to it as a peripheral canal doesn’t help tease out these important distinctions.
Jeff Michael at the Valley Economy blog is disseminating a preliminary executive summary of a Delta Economic Sustainability Plan that is being produced under (I think) his direction.
The ESP (like the acronym) is a thorough counter argument to the pro-Peripheral Canal/Tunnel argument that says it is too risky to continue to use the Delta’s waterways (and the levees that protect them) as the way to move water to the pumps. It is an alternative that deserves testing, and to their credit, they have found a great site to do just that.
More about this below, but first, a few words about why levees interest me so - as artifacts, as works of design, yes - but especially as sites of contention.
It’s an irony of the tensions of scale at the heart of debates over the Delta’s future: for local people, the levees protect land, and the water is a threat; but for the water export constituencies, the levees protect the rivers and sloughs, insuring safe passage of their precious cargo to the pumps. To them, the Delta’s land is the threat, and is to be entirely avoided, literally circumvented. This issue of scale makes people see different things in the same reality.
One person’s land-protecting levee is another’s river-protecting levee. This engineering firm’s is “seismically-repairable”:
Though not as invulnerable to a big seismic event (nothing is completely), upgrading hundreds of miles of levees as studied by the ESP is a far less expensive alternative to the canal or tunnel. Professor Michael shares a link to the thinking behind Dr Robert Pyke’s levee engineering ideas at a well done piece at The California Spigot.
The cross section above is very similar to the one developed by the owners of Lower Jones after the 2004 Upper Jones levee breach.
The state’s fiscal woes are extreme, and its dysfunctional 1/3 majority governance system has only exacerbated the many pressing needs of people who desperately depend on shrinking government services.
So I basically concur with the idea that reinforcing levees is the most practical and cost-effective way to provide a maximum of water supply security, environmental stabilization, and Delta preservation. This premise is at the heart of the Delta-specific development post I wrote a couple of days ago, and to which I will soon return, impractical, blue-sky optimist that I am about change in the Delta.
This levee cross section is only one typology, and probably the least disruptive one of what will likely be many. Because they function in complex ways and support flood control, water supply and habitat creation imperatives, I think setback levees should be used in all areas with no significant disruptive impacts to settlements.
But it is where there are significant impacts that the real test of the Reinforced Delta strategy lies.
According to Professor Michael’s post, his group will be “developing a visual concept of what the recreation strategy could mean for a detailed area in the Delta.” I understand that this concept will test the implications of FEMA’s recent upgrade to 100-year effectiveness to levees in the Locke/Walnut Grove area. This should also provide grist for debate over whether flood control, environmental improvements and historic preservation can coexist in an affordable way. Assuming of course that the levees there do not already meet the FEMA specs, and it’s very possible that they do.
In many historically precious places (which have economic value, too) like Bacon Island’s Farm Camp Number Three, Locke and Walnut Grove, and the towns of the North Delta, settlements are on the crest, on or very near to the inside slope of the levee. It will be interesting to see whether if necessary consideration is given to moving the entire settlement back from the levee’s inside slope. Expensive proposition.
Similar to dealing with the expense of environmental regulation, it will be interesting to see whether there is political will to spend the money necessary to walk the walk when it comes to preserving these delicate places. Especially in the face of Tea Party demagoguery.
At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, an announcement about a change to the writing style used in this blog is necessary.
I have decided to can the Royal We phrasing, and from now on will refer to myself in the first person. The reason I am doing this is because an apology needs to come from me as an individual to Dino Cortopassi and Alex Spanos about the tone and accuracy of the post from a few days ago. The “we” just doesn’t cut it for such a purpose.
To Mr Cortopassi:
It is very clear to me now that when I wrote “immigrant canned goods libertarian” to describe you I crossed the line of civil debate. Rather than edit the post, I will leave it in as a record of my own bad behavior, but please be assured that I do regret having made such a poor decision. Assuming you’ve even read that post, which is not a foregone conclusion, I hope that you will accept my apology.
To Mr Spanos:
I have updated the post in question to reflect the fact that your roots, like Mr Cortopassi’s and Mr Zuckerman’s, are indeed deeply embedded in the Delta. It was an error to make the assumption that since you own a high-profile sports team in San Diego, that you must be from there. Embarrassingly shoddy work on my part. Assuming that you, too, have even read the post, which is not a foregone conclusion, I hope that you too will accept my apology.
There are times when the tone of a blog post needs, in my opinion, to have an edge. In this particular case, though, it was a poor decision on my part to use an edgy style. Neither Mr Cortopassi’s nor Mr Spanos’s actions to raise money for Restore the Delta deserved this treatment.
I decided to post this directly to the blog instead of in the comments section of a previous post as the most effective and public way to respond to questions raised by Delta resident Chris Gulick. Surprisingly to me, that post has been viewed more than any other post I have done here by a long shot, and has elicited some strong reactions, too.
Chris questions the fairness of that post. As I understand it, Chris thinks that it is not enough to criticize Stuart and Lynda Resnick, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Birmingham, Devin Nunes, et al, and their diverse pro-water export efforts as individuals that are Westside landowners and representatives of constituencies. That if I am to call out Mr Cortopassi and Mr Spanos and their pro-Delta work (which is their obvious right, of course - further I believe that I owe them both an apology about the tone, if not the content, of my previous post, which will be forthcoming), then I should also cite (more) individuals involved in Peripheral Canal/Tunnel project crowd.
One of the key problems that differentiates identifying individuals who support pro-Delta, RTD efforts and those who support the water export constituencies is the scale of their coalitions. The latter is vast, in resources, number and geography. Its funding is mostly accumulated through deep-pocketed institutions managed by well-heeled and -connected people. The former is by comparison mostly a regional constituency, with Northern California Native groups, marine fisheries interests, and what CSPA’s Bill Jennings calls “principled environmentalists” like the Sierra Club. Nevertheless, it is a coalition, just like their opponents’ coalition. But not as large or powerful a coalition.
Since I believe that for many reasons the Delta’s and California’s current situation is unsustainable, my work explores how the interests of both powerful and regional coalitions can find common ground and solutions to their common problem, water. I do this as someone sympathetic to the Delta as a place that I believe is worth protecting, but that must change, too.
So, through staying abreast of Dan Bacher’s work, I am familiar with the several foundations and companies that he has referenced as supporting what he believes is PPIC greenwashing. My sense is that the people involved at PPIC are people of integrity. Bacher is particularly exercised about Bechtel funding the PPIC’s work on the peripheral canal. Given their history and global influence, I would agree with him that it is certainly questionable on the part of the PPIC to accept Bechtel’s financial support. He has often written about this connection, as Chris is aware of no doubt.
Mr Bacher covers Bechtel very exhaustively. In my opinion, they, like Nunes, are low-hanging fruit. I don’t want to get into Bechtel’s history since Mr Bacher does such a good job of it. But the others are much less low hanging, and diverse in their agendas.
In an indybay.org article of recent vintage, Mr Bacher also lists the Packard Foundation, Pisces Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, and the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority as funders of what he calls a “PPIC Peripheral Canal Greenwashing Event,” and calls these foundations “some of the worst corporate greenwashers on the planet,” among other things.
So, who are these groups, since they are the funders of some of the PPIC work? Pretty clearly, they are all relatively conservative foundations that direct their resources at big, complicated problems - problems like the future of California water. They are also highly pragmatic, results-oriented ones. It’s very noticeable that many of the people involved in these foundations have significant connections to Stanford. I’ve recently been critical of one such connection to Stanford, including criticism of an individual named Victor Davis Hanson. Draw your own conclusions.
I list some of the particulars of each group below in ascending order of conspiracy theory potential:
The Los Altos-based Packard Foundation is very large, and their website is very accessible. Packard’s values, according to the website, include Integrity, Respect for All People, Belief in Individual Leadership, Commitment to Effectiveness, and Capacity to Think Big. That last one may give pro-Delta folks pause. Their Board is full of smart, accomplished people. Civil litigation lawyer, biologist, energy start up and Silicone Valley entrepreneurs, etc.
Unlike Packard, the San Francisco-based Pisces Foundation has a website that is opaque, but it does list several of its recent grants. They fund a variety of projects and institutions, ranging from public education reform, clean energy, collaboration among environmental groups (a pausable moment), and climate change research.
The Sacramento-based Resources Legacy Fund also has a reasonably accessible website. The Fund’s board chair, “Buzz” Thompson, is a law professor at Stanford, and once clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Chief Justice Rehnquist, but draw your own conclusions. I pause there. RLF funds five major programs: Northern Rockies Loan Fund, Marine Protection Fund, Western Conservation, Sustainable Fisheries Fund, and the California Water Foundation.
The Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority is based in Southern California. Its member agencies include the Eastern Municipal Water District, Inland Empire Utilities Agency, Orange County Water District, San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, and the Western Municipal Water District. Their commission is made up of lots of SoCal water folks. Yes, they probably have an agenda.
So, what to make of this bit of information? Is there a vast conspiracy of Stanford-based influence-makers dead set on turning the Delta into a vast brackish marsh? I don’t think that is their objective. I think their objective is to work through what the best options are for managing a resource with the inevitable specter of scarcity already in play. But draw your own conclusions.
Here in British Columbia, I work with two Native communities in a variety of ways. One of these ways has to do with what are called “specific claims” land repatriation processes. I have produced work that has become part of one community’s litigation efforts to have land illegally converted into private property back in the 1860s given back to that community.
Like the work I’ve done to locate Delta sloughs that were filled in. I use maps and old photos to reconstruct measured drawings of development and settlement from that period. It would be interesting, but of course impossible, to revisit the reclamation era of the Delta, and apply the same methods and questions.
Ultimately, I would have to say that that little story about what I do is what is at the heart of my objection to the name “Restore the Delta.” But we can’t go back, can we? To my way of seeing things, RTD is every bit as rhetorical a name for an interest group as is California Latino Water Coalition. RTD would more accurately be called “Freeze Today’s Delta.” If I am insufficiently pure or “principled” in my affiliations and criticisms, I can live with that.
This will be viewed by some as a post advocating some naive and risky ideas about how to sustain the future of the Delta - by developing recreational and housing zones along the levees of its fragile islands.
I’ve been critical of the Spanos family’s real estate development projects off of Eight Mile Road northwest of Stockton, but I should say that there is nothing egregious about those developments, if the measure is other suburban development.
What draws my criticism is that the Eight Mile Road projects take no advantage of their site at the edge of the Delta, at or near sea level, protected (in part) by levees. There are other options:
I’ve been critical in this regard about other projects, like the proposed River Islands and Discovery Bay, which I’ve written about here and here respectively. Digging around the blog will reveal similar examples.
All of these developments follow conventional and logical, if harmful, techniques of property development. Land is amassed until the amount is sufficient to build enough houses to pay for the land costs and the underlying infrastructure investments and return, for the risk/reward of investors, whatever profit is folded in.
Land is generally available is squarish chunks, and most efficiently developed in similar geometries that minimize the lengths of pipes and curbs and maximize the number of land units that these serve. But in the Delta, a different financial model of development, one that is Delta-specific, may make sense in financial terms.
As I said above, I want to acknowledge from the get-go that many people in public policy and private life will find this idea naive and/or risky. I would suggest, however, that as a model it is worth testing, say at Dead Horse Island, which is doomed (according to what I think was PPIC’s analysis of islands that will fail), this approach could be a way to protect that lovely little island and provide its owners a new way to sustain their fragile bit of the Delta.
The Department of Water Resources’ / Nature Conservancy’s Staten Island would be an even better test site.
Another way to find sites for testing this idea would be to make new cut-off islands, similar to Oxbow Marina, and distribute them along a north-south trail for recreationalists. See this old post from the Peak Water Studio for a diagram of many sites like this.
The Delta is filled with sections of big island levees that sharply turn back on themselves. Indeed, channel islands are the result of a land reclamation company deciding that it wasn’t worth the investment to build around that little bit of swamp, so they instead cut it off from the larger body of the island being reclaimed.
So, back to the argument for an sub-urban alternative to conventional sub-urban housing development - that of Delta-specificity. An alternative would be organized not in the typical squarish geometries of conventional housing development, but by the linear, twisting levees and their roads. This model would couple levee improvements (building flood controlling setback levees), habitat creation (along the bench in the setback levee), and real estate development.
Levee Urbanism was originally developed as a way to possibly bring together South Delta stakeholders - water quality (salt issues), flood concerns (choke points), habitat for fish and property development opportunities (for local landowners) - in a grand bargain of mutual interests. You can see in the diagram below how it would apply in a context where a river or slough with extreme meanders but rich habitat would be left alone, and new setback levees built outside of it would be parcelized and sold as house/camp/b&b lots.
Economically, the idea presumes that state and federal agencies would subsidize the improvements of Delta levees to a new, higher standard and install basic infrastructure (waste water and water, roads etc.) . Landowners would cede a portion of their land for setback levee construction, but would in turn be able to develop and sell properties as shown. Owners of new parcels would be full members of the island’s reclamation district and be obliged to maintain their little slice of habitat.
There are many links to architectural proposals (diagrams, plans, sections, renderings) at the DNP map database. You might search under the development tag for diverse topics related to development in the Delta, or search for Levee Urbanism and South Delta Exchange Authority.
August 18th - See update re issues of tone and accuracy at bottom of this post. I’ve also added links to two ensuing posts that address issues raised by me and others in this post.
The event will also “recognize the work of Dino Cortopassi and Tom Zuckerman for their work on behalf of the Delta.”
Does NIMBY-ism produce the strangest coalitions of all, or what? Here we have farming and fossil fuels, football and fine homes, canned olives and clamshell dredgers.
Let’s be clear: This group uses the rhetoric of restoration, of preservation, to establish the strongest possible bargaining position for those who have a financial stake in the Delta’s land. Once peripheral canal push comes to shove, they’ll need it, and they know it.
Tom Zuckerman is a farmer and lawyer. We think he owns or once owned all or part of Macdonald Island and its private access bridge. We do not know if he owns the natural gas storage fields under the island that are worth tens of millions of dollars. Legal wranglings suggest he did or does pretty well renting them out, though.
We sort of understand what Mr Zuckerman is trying to save, if not “restore” - whatever “restore means - in the Delta. He is a well-spoken and well-respected Delta advocate. He has the inherent authority of a long-time occupier of the place.
Alex Spanos (and his family) is a different species of restorer altogether. He is the developer who gave the Delta one of its largest suburban incursions. Mr Spanos, Mr Spanos’s kids - please stop restoring the Delta!
Spanos Park West and the rest of it is a cookie-cutter development project that might just as well been built in Orange County. Leaving aside the question of whether it should have been built at all, there is absolutely nothing Delta-specific about it. We await the tortured interpretation of how this little slice of suburbia contributes anything to the Delta’s “restoration.”
Update: you can go here to see a post that delves into the question of what “Delta-specific” development may be.
And Mr Cortopassi? He is a wealthy businessman, author, and landowner. He has perhaps the coolest garden in the entire Delta, a miniature, and expensive to create, toy of a restored Delta. Unlike Mr Spanos’s garden suburbs, Cortoassi’s is very Delta-specific.
Mr Cortopassi loves the Delta, and owns quite alot of it, too. Alex Breitler’s spring 2011 interview with Cortopassi covered his concern over the lack of channel dredging and greater flood risk.
He spends lots of his money suing the state over channel dredging. Dredging, you see, is limited due to concerns over the habitats of fragile fish species. Silt accumulates, river levels rise ... One might infer that Mr Cortopassi’s concerns are about land preservation, not endangered fish.
A Jeffersonian farmer/lawyer subsidized by fossil fuel infrastructure, a Southern Californian land magnate who likes football and power boating, and an immigrant canned goods libertarian. As a friend once said, what a strange and beautiful place, the Delta.
update, August 18th: I inaccurately claimed that Alex Spanos was a “Southern Calfornian land magnate. Chris Gulick has informed me (see his second entry in the comments section below) that Mr Spanos was born in Stockton in 1923. I regret the error. I also regret the tone of some of my comments on Mr Cortopassi. Go here to see my apology to both men.
Did the LA Times let Victor Davis Hanson opine in their pages because the Man Can Really Get To The Facts?
His oped piece began with this: “California’s water wars aren’t about scarcity.” Let the “three-inch” fish go extinct. Problem solved.
“Problem solved” is the way that people who don’t have time to deal with complexity sum up their oversimplified solutions to thorny problems. For them, the world is simple, best viewed in black and white.
If only, like Megyn Kelly of Fox News (but for how much longer, we wonder), the Black and Whiters could experience, well, human experience.
In his oped piece, we discover that VDH is a pro-power, pro-business top-downer, wanting to re-live the simpler times of a pre-environmental movement era of the great dam-building men.
But like the rest of his clan (yes, we are talking about you, Michele Bachmann), VDH is a California member of the welfare royalist society. This is the tribe that only likes its welfare checks Really Big. How else can they create jobs and food for the little people?
It’s the small welfare checks - the checks for the queens (not the royalists), that pay for her family’s food and water - that are intolerable.
Recent op-ed articles in the state’s major newspapers by promoters of the 2012 water bond measure, currently estimated at about $11 billion, do not say that it will actually cost $22 billion to pay off the bond. Nor do they say that even more cuts in education, public safety and social programs for the disabled (now financed from the state’s General Fund) will occur so that big growers in the western San Joaquin Valley can keep irrigating and billionaire real estate barons can continue to grow subdivisions in the Southern California deserts with Northern California water. Taxpayers will remain in bondage to bonds for decades.
Crafter of the glib turn of phrase, VDH is a problem-solver. Likes his arguments made with war metaphors, writes books about past wars that teach us important lessons.
No doubt VDH is a smart guy, grew up on a Central Valley farm (must therefore be an expert about water policy), Hoover Institute fellow (okay, a More-Water policy expert), and all, but have you checked out the VDH website? On it, he promotes someone who will tell us, if we only click the link, “Why pedophilia is okay and in practice among Muslims.”
Just like the media front men and women of his clan, they love flirting with the edge of the civil. We wonder where VDH stands on his party’s border/immigration policies. Just like Megyn Kelly, probably too black and white for his experience, we might suppose.
What is being proposed in contrast to what was proposed in the 1980s is a facility with no outlets to the Delta, which would indicate to us that there is no intention whatsoever of maintaining water quality in the Delta. Whenever there is a crisis, emergency powers are enacted to circumvent environmental protection or other protection for the Delta.
Is this an accurate description of what is being proposed, or is Mr. Nomellini hinting at a future point of negotiation? Certainly, there are lots of documents out there that mention or imply the existence of in-Delta outlets from the peripheral canal. Here’s one. And there is no single, prevailing or approved proposal for a canal or tunnel.
But if Mr. Nomellini’s comments prove true, whether now or later, that will be a very short-sighted decision in an extraordinarily difficult process of consensus-building. Jay Lund’s talk on conveyance planning and implementation process lays out some of the major objectives of any system design:
-reduce take of endangered species (smelt at pumps, etc)
-improve in-Delta flows for ecosystem (this is the salient point for this post)
-improved water quality for urban and ag users (the other co-equal goal)
-improved long-term sustainability of water system (reliability, quakes, sea level rise, etc)
-reduce in-Delta conflicts between water supply and ecosystem (an overall objective anyway?)
-improve in-Delta recreation opportunities (pleasantly surprised this is included)
-minimize costs
If you want to absorb just how complicated balancing all of these objectives is going to be, watch Mr. Lund’s talk. But clearly, designing a conveyance system that can contribute to the health of the Delta should be among the highest of the objectives. During the Q&A at the end of his talk, Mr. Lund, when asked to simplify the list of objectives, reduced it to the following:
Delta ecosystem, statewide economics [elision alert - this objective just got very broad], and in-Delta economy. If you wanted to boil it down to three things ... in-Delta economy could also be reduced…
Well, at least the Delta’s culture and its nature made the list of Mr. Lund’s final three, if not two, most important objectives. We think the solution to this is to make these two inseparable. The Delta’s ecology - the intertwining of its ecosystem its economy - should be treated as a single thing, and this way of thinking should be inscribed in the conveyance system’s design.
As we noted year and a half ago, we prefer a canal aligned to the eastern side of the Delta to a tunnel running down the north-south axis of the Delta. This is precisely because outlets in the canal at that position would most benefit the Delta’s ecosystem and water quality by injecting water into the (eastern and southern) Delta’s rivers and sloughs.
We hope Mr. Nomellini is wrong, but know that he is smart. And generous with his time.
From the earliest days of this blog, we have been proponents of further Delta settlement integrated with the many physical alterations in store for this unique and fragile place. There is no doubt that the Delta’s fragility must be acknowledged, but we prefer to do so through synthesis, not functional compartmentalization.
We respect the scenario-based work that the PPIC has done, but think it has a bit of a self-inflicted nature-culture blind spot. We suspect that scenarios proposing increased Delta settlement would compromise the strategy of forging an majority alliance between water supply and environmental advocates. The PPIC/UC Davis narrative and vision they wish to get the public focused on is one in which a lush, green, organic Delta quenches the thirst of the industrial agriculture and urban south.
Which is fine by us, since it always seems to return to the question we try to directly engage - how to pay for things we want. In a kind of self-fulfilling, risk analysis vicious circle, the blind spot eliminates any vision of economic development within the Delta itself.
So, led by the efforts of Ryan Marshall, the DNP team is pleased to present in greater detail a proposal for how the Delta might become more, not less, complex, and how to do this with little loss of farmland, new opportunities for private landowners to profit from developing the land they do lose; increased flood and water supply security; and significant improvements in habitat quality and quantity.
Below is a diagram showing a unit of levee urbanism:
This levee urbanism configuration is situated in the very specific physical context of the South Delta. A ramp gives access to new (settled) levees flanking new channels and wetland and riparian habitat. Contained within this space is an existing, meandering channel that needs flood control improvements because of so-called “choke points” - a term explained to us by Alex Hildebrand that describes especially meandering sections of riparian channel where snags can intensify flood problems. Alex, from a 1997 BDAC (remember them?) hearing pdf of transcript here:
And, you know, people keep talking about new bypasses, but they refuse to maintain the bypasses we have. The bypass at Gravelly Ford is below capacity now, design capacity, and that inhibited the early flood releases this year. We have a bypass down at Paradise Cut which is about the only place where the terrain lends itself to a bypass at the lower end which is the biggest choke point in the system, and that’s not maintained. It’s full of brush. The weir to fill it is inadequate.
then
And then we’ve got a choked up handle in the upper end of Middle River, first few miles are so full of settlement (transcriber’s sic: should be sediment) and bamboo that they carry very little flow, far less than the rest of the Middle River could handle just down a few miles further down. If you restored the capacity of that channel and fixed up the Paradise Cut, you would greatly relieve the river stage down through that area where we had more breaks than anywhere else in the Central Valley.
We digress, but the clarity and precision of Alex’s voice reminds us of a beautiful little book by John Stilgoe called Shallow Water Dictionary. It is a book about the intimacy of settlement and how that intimacy is cultivated through a habitual, carefully observed, and highly diversified use of language.
Alex Hildebrand is the South Delta’s equivalent of Stilgoe’s Massachusetts South Shore estuary navigator.
Levee urbanism is an expression of faith in Alex’s knowledge of his landscape. It is a subset of a larger-scaled investigation we call the South Delta Exchange Authority. The link in the last sentence takes you to previously uploaded content related to the levee urbanism and SDEA work here at the DNP website.
There are many images and diagrams there that present the design ideas. But at least as importantly, you can go there to further explore the context of the idea and why the South Delta, at a variety of scales and in relation to a number of problems, like the kinds Alex describes.
It should be mentioned that levee urbanism is based on existing Delta settlement patterns, exemplified in Oxbow Marina’s linear pattern of modest houses, where the houses are on the water side of the levee. This gives residents visual access to and, in the case of levee urbanism, stewardship responsibilities for developing the habitat they abut.
The second diagram takes the foreground parts of the diagram and elaborates. It is a description of the levee urbanism waste water biofiltration ramp (which needs a better name). The ramp provides a boulevard-like ascent to the levee crest and takes advantage of the slope as a series of tiers of filtration processes and their attendant flora and fauna, as illustrated in the diagram below:
And Nomellini feels that the most appropriate course of action is to simply protect against flooding by the traditional means of reinforcing existing levees. “It’s true that that wouldn’t be a fail-safe plan, because levees do break, but it wouldn’t be any riskier than that same earthquake coming along and knocking out Simitian’s new aqueduct.”
Or, for that matter, the State and Federal aqueducts west of Fresno.
Like all of the speculative work here at the DNP, these are both-and propositions, not either-or. They use design to synthesize (economic and environmental) problems and opportunities. We prefer a Delta future of more, not less, complexity.
The Pacific Legal Foundation is filing for an injunction against the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion limiting Delta water exports due to threats to the Delta smelt:
Delta smelt exists in only one state, so feds lack authority to regulate, says lawsuit on behalf of farmers; feds’ fish-over-people policy called “immoral and flat-out unconstitutional.”
We’re guessing this probably falls under some people’s definition of “frivolous,” if not PLF’s clients in this case - all of whom, incidentally, are nut tree farmers who have been receiving a very small percentage of the water they contracted for.
The problem with tree farming is that trees are productive for many years, and inevitably encounter drought cycles. We wonder when Stewart & Jasper Orchards, Arroyo Farms, and King Pistachio Grove planted their orchards.
We think its fair to assume two things about the plaintiffs:
1/ they knew the risk regarding tree lifespans and drought cycles.
2/ that their land exists in a very particular part of the California manmade water ecosystem, too.
Anyway, let’s get their logic of the lawsuit straight:
As species become more endangered, presumably they “exist” in less space - a state, a county, a creek. In other words, endangered, the smelt may be, but not endangered across state lines.
Taxpayers are going to have to pay to quash this frivolity.
What a novel way to understand the spirit of Endangered Species Act.
These costs ($50M), when connected to the costs of building the small version of the canal, are less than one half of one percent of the total construction cost. Compensatory costs for the big version of the canal are still only $200M, or a very manageable one to two percent.
It is hard to imagine that canal advocates are anything but elated by this information. Of course, there are many other indirect costs associated with building a canal besides the relatively small cost of financial reconciliation with Delta landowners.
Canal construction, like building a road or a WalMart, requires environmental mitigation. If CalTrans widens a highway, they have to calculate the area of displaced habitat and re-“build” habitat elsewhere. The Delta’s own Medford Island is a privately-owned habitat mitigation bank.
Review the evolution of the Delta Wetlands Project proposal from its original 100% water development project to its present 50% water development project, 50% engineered habitat. Think they wanted to do that?
The evolution of the DWP is a super clear expression of environmental mitigation law / un-American restraint on private property rights, and just the type that enrages the anti-environmentalists.
Will today’s rhetoric about “three-inch bait fish” and “wasted water” one day morph to “you can’t eat riparian landscape” and “wasted land”?
Hard not to think it will. For in a scenario where scarcity begins to really grab the attention of larger and larger groups of stressed-out, distracted citizens, and with figures like Fox Nunes fanning the flames, why stop with the Endangered Species Act?
Gross understatement warning: Californians have important decisions to make. Dr. Michael has written elsewhere that it is arguably less expensive for Californians to reduce Delta water exports than it is to build the canal.
It all depends on how you crunch the numbers, and who narrates the small fish story. If instead of the Delta smelt, it is the Westside, things change. One could buy out farmers in the Westside just as much as one could buy out farmers in the Delta, after all…
While doing some research for his work in India, a member of the DNP came across an influential text from many years ago. This is just a brief and slightly off-topic reboot of the *why* of all of this Delta National Park sack-filling.
The post title is abbreviated from the title of the text: “Program versus Paradigm: Otherwise Casual Notes on the Pragmatic, the Typical, and the Possible.”
The author is Colin Rowe, one of the most influential thinkers in architectural theory in the mid- to late- last century. He begins with a few quotes about facts:
Those who refuse to go beyond the facts rarely get as far as fact… Almost every great discovery has been made by “the anticipation of nature,” that is by the invention of hypothesis which, though verifiable, often had little foundation to start with.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Facts, then, come to be like figures in hieroglyphic writing… There they are, holding up their clean profiles to us so ostentatiously; but that very appearance of clarity is there for presenting us with an enigma, of producing in us not clarity but confusion. The hieroglyphic figure says to us, “You see me clearly? Good - now what you see of me is not my true being. I am here to warn you that I am not my essential reality. My reality, my meaning, lies behind me and is hidden by me, and this means that in order to arrive at the true and inward meaning of this hieroglyph, you must search for something very different from the aspect which its figures offer.”
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Facts, then, are like sacks. They won’t stand up unless you put something in them.
Luigi Pirandello
What we try to do here is put things inside the sacks of facts about California water vis-a-vis the Delta. Using an idea about exchange and synthesis of conflicting interests, we design things, things that we project into the sacks of possibilities and vernaculars, policy papers, opinions, studies, etc. that we come across doing this work:
The intrinsic value and fragility of the Delta as a place.
Ecosystem degradation and habitat creation.
Water supply and quality in and out of the Delta.
Flood protection and levee infrastructure.
Peripheral canals and temporary barriers.
Recreation and tourism not as a panacea but as an elaboration.
Temporally programmed design, just like farming.
That’s it. We suppose that if no one is happy with our position, then we are doing our job.
Soon, more on the Levee Urbanism project, and at some point, a post-catastrophe look at aquacultural urbanism in the Delta’s flooded islands.
The Pacific Institute has just published an analysis of the economic impacts of recent water supply cutbacks on Calfornia’s economy.
The study concludes that drought impacts were relatively minor, and echoes UofP economist Jeffrey Michael’s not very well-liked earlier conclusions that suggest that the crash of housing construction set about by the Great Recession was the major force at play in San Joaquin Valley job losses.
People in the San Joaquin Valley disagree. In his comments at the bottom of Mike Taugher’s Contra Costa Times article on the report, Mike Wade, of the California Farm Water Coalition, offers the following:
Studies that attempt to misdirect the impacts felt by the recent water delivery restrictions caused by environmental regulations and the drought is a slap in the face to those who have lost jobs and farmers forced to leave fields unplanted. Like previously stated by politicians attempting to discredit the effects of the cutbacks, this study introduces statewide agricultural production to minimize regional impacts. Linking unemployment in the Westside rural communities of Fresno County to countywide losses of home construction jobs is a fallacy. Anyone who has visited and met the people of these communities would realize their dependence on the farm economy. To do otherwise is misleading.
He’s correct, of course - in part at least - that, from the perspective of the dozens of large landowners and small towns in the Westside of Fresno County, this is misleading.
The real question underlying all of this is whether a small part of a large state, with its disproportionate power, influence and bullying demagogues, will be able to fundamentally alter federal environmental law.
Here’s Bully-in-Chief Nunes and his Fox News Ed McMahon, working their tactics:
But shouldn’t an analysis of economic impacts of the allocation of statewide resources be statewide in scope? Otherwise, why not make an even smaller scope of study? Why not take just the farmer who lost the most on the Westside, or the town with the highest rate of unemployment, and extrapolate? For example, we could extrapolate from Mendota and find that California had a 40% unemployment rate.
Or since we are talking welfare here, why wouldn’t we take measures of the impacts of South Central poverty and conclude that all schools in California need large injections of teachers, facilities, and equipment?
It is true, as Mr. Wade states, that the Westside suffers more both today and historically than other parts of the state’s agricultural economy. But that doesn’t make the Pacific Institute’s study “misleading,” as he claims. It makes it a statewide study.
There are very straightforward legal, geographic, and geologic reasons why the Westside suffers. All of these have been covered ad nauseum, but perhaps most relentlessly by Lloyd Carter.
Complexity, ACWA, and the Delta Stewardship Council
First of all, we think ACWA’s recent (joint Ag-Urban) Alternate Delta Plan (ADP) is a serious and well-considered proposal from a major coalition of California water interests. Clearly expressing a water user’s wish list, the ADP emphasizes all kinds of water supply, conveyance, and storage measures.
By contrast, the Delta Stewardship Council’s (DSC) Draft 4, is still mum on the topic of “ensuring water supply reliability,” the part of co-equal that people have a hard time agreeing on, in the form of any particular infrastructure. Why is that? Perhaps because they have been given an infinitely more complex and ideologically impure task than the one ACWA has given itself.
Through its proposal for “Performance-Based Management Approach,” ACWA/ADP substitutes euphemisms like “accountability” and “mechanisms” for words like “regulation.”
ACWA:
“These complex relationships cannot be created through legislation.” ... “When goals are not being accomplished, the plan allows for changing strategies with a new round of quantification and monitoring.”
and
“An enforceable plan such as this requires sophisticated, collaborative relationships. Assurances and incentives within a regulatory framework are effective tools to achieve such partnerships.”
There are a lot of people who don’t like or believe in the usefulness of regulations. But we find that ACWA’s ADP proposal is a bit soft on accountability. Maybe some of their constituents would prefer not to have too much of it. Or maybe instead of legislation, which can only lead to laws and regulations, they’d like subsidies, tax breaks and other sorts of “incentives” for their complex partnerships?
The ACWA proposal also reaffirms their idea that any proposal must be limited in its geographic scope to the Delta, and this is where we can return to the real issue of complexity - the work of the DSC.
We have already written about the need to understand the Delta as geography with both limits and extents. We agree with ACWA’s idea that locally-based collaborative projects should be important parts of California water management culture. Indeed, they are increasingly useful parts of it. But they are local, and therefore, insufficient in and of themselves. There needs to be real regulations, metering/monitoring, and enforcement, everywhere in California.
Even Nunes (whose last name will no longer will be preceded by honorifics, after his Fox debate demagoguery) knows this, when he threatens to blow up Hetch Hetchy, because it is an extension of the Delta, and all of those effete Bay Area folks would hurt.
And that is why the DSC proceeds slowly, patiently organizing facts, like Figure 4-4, “Strategies to Reduce Water Demand and Add Supply” on page 66. Agriculture’s conjunctive use and groundwater management is a big quantitative player in this analysis, as is Urban’s “Urban Water Use Efficiency.”
And can someone tell us: Why build new dams when groundwater storage is far less expensive and immediately available?
Good for DSC, taking a statewide, or at least a “Delta Plan Study Area” approach to the problem. Besides, what else can they do?
From our perspective, anyway, the conference was notable for two reasons:
1/ the very interesting case studies of (regional) local, collaborative processes regarding physical water management/ecosystem/flood control problems. Next time, more of them, less generic boilerplate talks, would help the content level of the conference.
2/ the startling absence of any examples of such collaborative, locally partnered work in the Delta. In fact, keynote speaker Jeffery Mount tongue-in-cheekily sighed in relief because he would not have to discuss the Delta, for once, during his talk. Much knowing chuckling ensued.
He then of course referred to it in slides and words at least half a dozen times in half an hour. Because it was the elephant in the room.
The work and example of groups like River Partners, whose John Carlon made a IRWM presentation, are exactly the model the DNP is suggesting through our speculative work. Local businesses, working with each other and with state and federal groups, solving problems, creating spaces and a richer landscape.
Local Delta folks might take a look at what River Partners does, and then a bit of a step back. What we here at the DNP propose is not a threat - it is a suggestion for working collaboratively, in your own self-interest. River Partners is a pretty interesting model for you.
To this end, the most recent speculative project we present here is the Catch and Release Campground, an elaboration of the so-called “temporary barriers” that catch and release water in the South Delta:
Temporary barriers are another bit of infrastructure (like the siphon springs) that could be developed into public spaces—in this case, privately-owned campgrounds and a publicly-funded aerated fishing pool formed by the weir when it is closed.
The South Delta temporary barriers are positioned to improve water quality and supply to farms there, and they help guide the migration of chinook salmon. We have introduced a system of oxygen aeration, a problem to be mitigated in the South Delta, and riparian/tule marsh habitat to this mix.
It is the bleak physical quality of the existing temporary barrier “facilities” that are, thankfully, a Delta National Park opportunity. As currently developed, they are little more than a gravel bench/staging area and low riprap barrier extending across the river channel. There is a weir interrupting the riprap to allow control of water level and flow. A guard may be stationed there. “No parking” signs ward off prospective visitors.
Even though these are public facilities, they have no public quality. Our proposal would amend that, and help to populate the field of public works nodes that constitute the Delta National Park.
The diagram from the previous posts illustrates something we here call a “siphon spring.” The spring is located at the intersection of a PC siphon and an existing river or slough. It is a synthesis of recreation and infrastructures including water quality and supply, ecosystem restoration and hatchery. The siphon springs reflects a belief that we need to return to an idea of “public works,” and reject the pernicious word “infrastructure,” except as a subset of “public works.”
Siphons are the pieces of infrastructures that will have to be built in order to allow for a (more or less) natural and a highly artificial waterway to intersect. One must go under the other, and that is accomplished by building a siphon. Here is a diagram of how the DNP folks imagine that might be done:
We think this diagram is pretty self-explanatory if cartoon-like. We welcome input from anyone who has a more nuanced idea of how these huge culverts will actually be built.
Siphon springs would be built at each of the ten or so intersections a PC would make as it wends its way around the Delta. The springs are an example of the carefully sited, complex-programmed speculative public works and design proposals at the core of the DNP project.
Since the siphon springs post we made almost two years ago, we have introduced two new environmental infrastructures to this new public space: oxygen aeration and a fish hatchery. These infrastructures are potentially critical components of a PC that would not simply convey water south, but along the way would inject oxygenated water laterally into the intersecting waterways in geyser-like fountains (Delta, meet the Bellagio), and invest in new hatcheries for endangered migrating fish, especially salmon. Both elements would contribute to the Delta’s ecosystem improvements.
During our recent visit to the Delta, the DNP team had a conversation with a longtime Delta resident (LDR).
We thought we’d relay a story LDR told us - an interesting anecdote about salt and water supply.
Salt was the implicit subject of an exchange he had a few years ago with a spokesperson for Westlands (WS) during a visit there: it goes something like this:
Seeing all of the value-added stuff (almonds, pistachios, etc.) being grown on the West side, LDR asks, “What did you used to farm here when you were a kid?” WS: “Hay and pasture animals, because we had no water.” LDR: “That’s funny, because before that water was sent to you on the west side, the island (Sherman) where I live grew tomatoes and asparagus - but now, because of poor water quality available to us, all we can do is grow hay and pasture animals.”
Such is the nature of decisions about water in California’s and its effects on specific sub- and micro-regions of California’s landscape. Sherman Island is at the western apex of the Delta, nearest to the ocean, and its most valuable commodity these days is the location of the x2 line - the line that legislates where high salinity levels in waterways extends. As places like Westlands and the SJV demand ever-more Delta water, there is a great deal of pressure to move the x2 line ever further up its rivers and sloughs, making the riparian water rights of farmers on islands like Sherman impossible to grant but easy to litigate. Hence, the state and federal government must buy them out.
So let’s be clear: when Devin Nunes proposes something called the California Water Reliability Act, what he is actually doing is scrambling the delicately and exquisitely politically balanced systems of water supply, salinity, other people’s (prior) water rights, and the decades of political negotiation that produced them. For Nunes, it is convenient and politically effective to demonize environmental laws, but it is actually a much broader set of interests, people, and places, that his ill-conceived proposal will put in even greater play than it is every day already.
If Nunes’s bill passes, then the x2 line will creep further north, east and south, The adjacent Delta farmers will be unable to grow high-value produce. They will extract a high price for any policy that supplies them with salty irrigation water.
And that would be the biggest irony. Nunes, if his bill succeeds, will insure that the government will have no choice but to buy more Delta land at whatever bargain price they get out of litigation. Not exactly good Republican values, that scenario.
What makes us think that Nunes would oppose a government bailout of this sort?
Nunes practices a simplistic and reckless form of politics. It is one that sets new if anachronistic precedents and will polarize all concerned.
We prefer to call it the Water Welfare Act - “welfare” because it is an argument to mitigate the adverse effects of market forces on its victims - in this case, west side SJV property owners/victims.
According to Grossi’s account of Nunes’s meeting with SJV constituents:
the Visalia Republican said he expects a lot of opposition in the Senate to his San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act
No, really? In the Senate, yes, but not the House of course, that hotbed of bad ideas for dismantling a centuries’ worth of progressive policy. Led by Republicans, who have proposed legislation that makes Nunes’s bill seem downright progressive by comparison, check out these examples of Gun Rights, Corporate Rights, and States’ Rights activism. Respectively:
There’s a budget proposal by that would privatize Medicare so drooling with the syrup of privatization that even Newt Gingrich himself couldn’t digest it, calling the proposal “right wing social engineering.”
This “build it, and they will come” argument to disembowel federal environmental law because some people made bad property investments is both disingenuous and corrupt.
In Nunes’s world, trickle-down water welfare makes perfect sense and is of a piece with the three radically regressive examples of national legislative thought listed above.
Are we trolls, just out there trying to provoke, with no relevance or contributions to make to the discussions at hand? Or are we as contrarian academic types playing an independent role that is (on occasion at least) useful?
For instance, is the following a reasonable principle to begin with:
We here believe that it is not helpful, and is in fact destructive, to view the Delta as a mythic world of strong independent Americans who exist entirely outside of government assistance.
We don’t believe that to say so is to become troll-ish.
The widely-held view that chooses to ignore the 38-year role of the state government in Delta levee maintenance is a grave threat to the Delta’s future.
A much greater threat than bank fishing by poor people from Stockton and Sacramento.
Contextualization of the above requires a snip from the SacBee’s comments (the SacBee article, by Matt Weiser, was about a relatively modest proposal for more state parks in the Delta):
(May 9) Delta National Park:
Well, the state plan is a start, if only a very modest one. Lord knows the state has no money to do much of anything, and Delta landowners will no doubt resist any “government occupation” of private land.
I know this is going to be like red meat for the “have it both ways” Restore the Delta folks, but the problems of the Delta transcend local or even state scales of remediation. As it is, private levees are maintained through government subvention programs. That is, through subsidy. Those levees are de facto public.
Only when the entire Delta levee system is purchased by the federal government can many of the Delta’s fundamental flood-control and water supply security issues be resolved. Economic opportunities accompanying this purchase can subsidize costs of levee system improvements in the form of recreational, tourist, and residential development.
It is either this or an abandoned, inundated Delta and a peripheral canal, far as I can tell.
(May 10) Delta Wild Rose:
It should be up to the individual counties within the Primary Zone of the Legal Delta that decide when, how, how much to spend as well as designating appropriate areas for expansion of any recreation…state and/or federal government ownership is the surest and fastest course into dereliction.
Also for your information, private landowners are first, foremost and always the first line of defense in any breach or flood event. Only Project Levees are subsidized by the State/Feds.
Please stop with this ‘abandoned, inundated Delta’ fear mongering. The Delta, her levees and the strong, independent Americans that inhabit her region are more resilient than what is given credit for.
Simple solutions may not be easy, but answers lie in the simplicity not in more state/federal regulations, appointed bureaucrats and never, ever in any government. As Ronald Reagan said, when someone says “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” is NOT help.
(May 10) Chris Gullick:
“Delta landowners will no doubt resist any ‘government occupation’ of private lands.”
Troll Alert.
What color is the sky in your world ?
Note to DWR (DeltaWildRose) : Save your breath, this guy is out there.
(May 11) Delta National Park:
Hey Chris - you must be really in there I guess.
My point is that the Delta’s levee system should be maintained and occupied by the public, and developed by adjacent landowners. Just the levees. Call that a rose-colored view of the world if it suits your imagination.
Keep in mind: Already, project levees are maintained in large measure by the USACE. Since 1973, state subvention programs contribute (subsidize) levees that are not project levees. Yes, the public benefits from this, since they have water supply security. My point is that this raises a question often ignored by property rights about public investment in private property maintenance, especially as those investments increase, as they will, I assume you will agree.
All I am doing here is making a suggestion that perhaps, in the future, the government that you refer to in your avatar (assuming it is not an anti-government, government-is-the-problem flag, perhaps a big assumption) could, or will inevitably will have to, step in more forcefully than it has so far with respect to maintaining this risk landscape. How might public cost be mitigated? One answer might be by capitalizing on development in the Delta. My work is about that. Is it far-fetched or merely unappealing? What is the problem with thinking about the future in a way that is not entirely based on how things are today?
(May 11) Delta National Park:
DeltaWildRose, here’s a link for you to check re non-project levees and state subvention programs. Yes, non-project levees do receive government subsidy.
Below, the clear-as-day purpose of the program: The Delta Levees Maintenance Subventions Program provides financial assistance to local levee maintaining agencies for the maintenance and rehabilitation of non-project levees in the Delta. It is authorized in the California Water Code, Sections 12980 thru 12995. It has been in effect since passage of the Way Bill in 1973 which has been modified periodically by Legislation since then. The intent of Legislature, as stated in the Water Code, is to preserve the Delta as much as it exists at the present time.
————————
So, what do you think? The editorial staff has been having a bit of an existential crisis recently. We are glad that the design team is about to finalize a bunch of new content for the speculative portion of the project.
We find that it is increasingly difficult to use language to cut through the “strong, independent Americans,” “no funding for private levees,” “never, ever in any government” mythology and delusion. And not just in relation to issues facing the Delta, but let’s stick with that particular concern since otherwise…well.
Hence, rhetoric - since facts seem so easily tossed aside by believers. And soon, a new bunch of rhetorical design projects!
Of course farmers are strong and independent and many of them American - although that last part gets complicated, doesn’t it?
Farmers have our profound empathy (a key member of the DNP team grew up milking cows, spreading manure, picking rocks, and baling hay), as does anyone who cares about this beautiful, fragile place. That is the point of this work, to maintain a semblance of the Delta’s current life, status and form in the world.
As we posted over a year ago, we think it undemocratic that the sight of families bank fishing on Delta levees is not more common. Further, it’s a stretch for Delta landowners and their representatives (like Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla of Restore the Delta, quoted in Weiser’s piece) to justify their concern about public access by citing minor nuisances like barbecue pits and litter. Let’s just say it - this is to some degree an issue of class.
We can’t have outside people here! They bring trash and barbecues and they pollute! (Powerboats pollute, too - don’t they? Well, that’s rich people’s pollution, after all…) They might sue a landowner for slipping on the riprap!
Our Solution: big government. Feds, buy the levees.
These links go to DNP “links” - proposals that are neither anti-development nor anti-environment. They all represent a call for More, for more of many things, linked together, as they ultimately are anyway.
As readers of this blog may know, there is a fair amount of documentation, analysis, and speculative design on the DNP website. More will be coming soon. Go to the map section of the site. Explore the tags and thematic buttons at the bottom of the page.
This work all begins with an overview of the history of the Delta - its creation out of tidal estuary by land speculators in the mid- to late-nineteenth century leading to its subsequent subsidence to many meters below sea level, the eventual position of the now-fragile, below-sea-level Delta as the lynchpin of California’s water supply, and the ecological devastation of its estuarine ecosystem - and ends with a series of speculative proposals on the Delta’s future.
And so yes, we are pleased to see the proposal by the state Department of Parks and Recreation, but it does not go nearly far enough.
Lord knows the state has no money to do much of anything, and Delta landowners will no doubt resist any “government occupation” of “their” land.
The “have it both ways,” Tea-Party-esque Restore the Delta folks might disagree, but the problems of the Delta transcend local or even state scales of remediation. As it is, private levees have been in part maintained since 1973 through government subvention subsidies. That makes many of those levees fiscally, de facto public. The have-it-both-ways folks don’t like to discuss this too much.
We favor more and bigger government, at least as it intervenes, 2008-GM-style, in finding economic and water security balance for the Delta’s landowners, ecosystem, and water receivers.
Only when the entire Delta levee system is purchased by the federal government can many of the Delta’s fundamental flood-control and water supply security issues be resolved. Economic opportunities accompanying this purchase can subsidize costs of levee system improvements in the form of recreational, tourist, and residential development. Profits can be returned to the landowners.
It is either [recognizing that the Delta is private land only by virtue of public subsidy] this or an abandoned, inundated Delta and a peripheral canal, far as [we] can tell.
...Which is why I honestly don’t think the Delta will be constructively “fixed” before it collapses. Honestly, I think the levee collapse will come first and when the repair work is done, we’ll have an “emergency” Peripheral Canal.
That would be a tragedy, but California has a history and a myth that makes such a tragic ending very possible. At least, the state’s Parks people are making some modest proposals for the good. Let’s hope they find the money to implement them, and that they lead to a new, broader and more visionary way of thinking about the future of the Delta - because all of the existing ones seem to have run their course.
Since every water agency from Oregon to Mexico seems to be “gravely concerned” with them, we can with certainty know that the Delta Stewardship Council must be doing a good job assessing the scope of their charge.
We thought this drawing would serve as a good reminder of that scope. The (inverted) original was ink on mylar, is about 36” x 48”. It literally traces every waterway making its way to and from the Delta, and took several days to produce.
Noting that the Council represents the most important opportunity in generations to resolve the crisis in the Delta, water leaders said they remain committed to the success of a process but that it must be focused and limited to the Delta.
This is absurd, and we suspect the water agencies (and by the way, let’s not forget that these are mostly water agencies, not “water leaders”) all know it. It is impossible to address Delta issues solely within the Delta itself. Statements like this are just signs of early litigious aerobics.
All of the various diversions of water, in the Delta and above it, including let’s not forget Hetch Hetchy, etc., make their contribution to the Delta’s ailing ecosystem (as does urban wastewater treatment infrastructure, yes). This is obvious, and impossible to ignore. Understanding that there are clear limits to the Deltas ability to fix itself is the first step in understanding the geographic, environmental and economic extents and implications of fixing it.
The second step is saying it, and that appears to be what the DSC has done, ensuring the assembly of this particular coalition.
So, yes, Placer, Alameda and Yuba Counties find themselves strange bedfellows in California water political anti-regulation alliance, sleeping right next to the Chamber of Commerce, MWD, and Westlands. They are all concerned about how DSC recommendations will morph into regulations, and how regulations morph into government oversight, land fallowing, investments in monitoring infrastructure, higher taxes, higher food prices.
Finding ourselves in agreement with OtPR until water users can come up with a better and enforceable method of dealing with growing water scarcity in California, we here are for regulating its use, too - everywhere that impacts the Delta. There are no dams on the horizon, and unlike a new dam, the next drought can be easily imagined if not yet seen.
The basic ideological tension in California’s water debate can be clearly seen in two recent articles. The debate is between pragmatic water conservationists on the one hand and idealist water supply siders on the other.
Mr. Gleick’s post is titled “Myth of California water shortfalls,” and Mr. Lusvardi’s response “No shortage of water mythmakers.” Gleick’s sums up his basic argument thus: The real problem: The assumption that all water users can have all the water they want all the time and that when 100 percent of such expectations cannot be met, something is wrong.
Mr. Lusvardi disagrees, and implies, we think unfairly, that the sources of funding support Mr. Gleick’s Pacific Institute receives are good reason to question the legitimacy of his motives. One can question motives, of course, but whether Mr. Lusvardi likes them or not, Gleick’s motives seem pretty straightforward.
We here at the DNP think Gleick is just expressing a political opinion held by many people, which he certainly has every right to do. And as a pragmatist, he understands that there is little political will to spend the kind of money Lusvardi’s position would entail if implemented. Especially given the many competing claims for that money.
To his credit, Mr. Lusvardi cites some data that call into question some of Gleick’s numbers on water use and other assertions. And since we have used some of the myths Lusvardi calls into question, we thought it would be fair to give him an airing.
Lusvardi’s rebuttal is broken down into the following categories, listed below with commentary:
Mythical “Not Enough Water”
Gleick: Not enough water to go around
Lusvardi: The problem is capture, storage and treatment
DNP: $$$
Mythical Eight Fold Water Rights
Gleick: Eight times as many water rights given away as there is water available
Lusvardi: (via Mike Wade) Multiple permits for the same water only mean that we are efficiently using it over and over again.
DNP: Lusvardi’s and Wade’s argument seems truthier
Mythical 75 percent of water goes to agriculture
Gleick: Does not mention this here, and a quick search finds that it is the PPIC who most recently made this claim
Lusvardi: Cites DWR guys who says it’s more like 43%
DNP: Always enjoy reading people use numbers in support of their position. Very important in the political theatre. Though we are open to more knowledge on this, for now, Lusvardi’s DWR guy makes his claim seem truthier.
Mythical claim that drought was good for agriculture
Gleick: Cal agriculture broke all $$ records during drought
Lusvardi: West side farmers (or, as he puts it, “one California valley”) didn’t participate enough in the windfall.
DNP: Take west side farmland out of production. It is toxic, literally and politically. Pay them off.
Mythical No More Money for Large Water Projects
Gleick: No money, no political will, no environmentally acceptable sites for dams, etc.
Lusvardi: $18.7B in water bonds gone to fund greenbelts and open space in wealthy northern California enclaves.
DNP: We could be wrong, but seem to recall that Mr. Lusvardi lives in Pasadena, or near there.
Mythical species extinction
Gleick: Driving fish, plants and other wildlife to extinction
Lusvardi: Value the downstream habitats of rose gardens, lawns and warm water fish
DNP: Salmon tastes much better than catfish. And by the way, environmental and scientific agendas are also cultural and political.
Mythmaker
Gleick: There isn’t enough water to go around
Lusvardi: Property rights
DNP: Myths are incredibly powerful stories
Declinist
Gleick: There isn’t enough water to go around
Lusvardi: Yes there is, if we spend tens of billions to capture, store and treat it—and return to the political culture of the 1940s.
DNP: Population growth intensifies scarcity issues. Thoughtful people develop complex views, and generally understand the difference between what the world is, and what they wish it to be.
The DNP noted this NYT article about changes in Japanese behavior since their awful, awful tragedy began unfolding weeks ago.
We wondered what the most important lesson the people of California could take from the stoic Japanese and from the poignancy of their new reality, and decided that the best lesson they offer all of us would be to turn the volume down and listen.
With aggressive sales tactics suddenly rendered unseemly, the giant Bic Camera electric appliance outlet in central Tokyo has dropped the decibels on its incessant in-store jingle, usually audible half a block away.
We here at the DNP have on several occasions flagged what we consider to be overheated rhetoric, from politicians, environmental groups, journalists, and bloggers.
Despite their incessant calls for reform of a legal system they claim is overrun by personal injury lawyers and malpractice insurance costs, California Republicans have used the culture of litigation at least as effectively as has the left.
And so, while it is difficult to be an optimist about water scarcity in California, and hard to believe that any interest will concede any ground, given that all of them know that the real test comes in court, we look to the Japanese and are optimistic.
If entrenched interests want to keep their powder dry, Californians can outwait them until sense and a sense of community wins out. Because there are other sounds made on the streets of Tokyo. Maybe they will be better heard now.
It may have to be a catastrophe on the scale of what has happened in Japan that ultimately changes the behavior of Californias mosaic of water interests. A 8.5 earthquake that ruptures the aqueducts and liquefies the Deltas levees, It is human nature, we think, for events like that to break unsustainable habits, for people to turn the volume down.
And, what of us who live here, in a place Davis portrays as so dangerous on so many fronts that it ought to be leveled and restored to wilderness? De-engineer Los Angeles into its original sunshine and dirt and there’s no place for the small houses of my blue-collar neighbors or their small victories over fear in living together. Davis (who sometimes sounds less like a Marxist and more like a crude Darwinist) suggests that history has nominated new agents of inevitable revolution, and they’re not the working people of Los Angeles, who have exchanged class-consciousness for aspirations to a job, a paycheck and a house like mine in the suburbs. The Davis who despairs of a faithless working class is telling the blue-collar millions of L.A. that they are sinners in the hands of an angry ecology.
And Waldie’s “what of us who live here?” query applies equally well to places like Mendota, and the Delta, and San Francisco, as is does to Los Angeles.
And his reference to Davis’s “crude Darwinis(m)” should be heeded by all who make, critique, or attempt to void, public policy. And let us say here that includes us here at the DNP.
For while we believe that a greater debate should be had over the sustainability of an urbanized Delta, that belief could be instantly one day subject to the test of a coincidental high flood stage and modest earthquake.
But so could a belief in San Francisco, LA, or the future of the southern half of the Central Valley instantly be tested.
Why do ostensibly green, pro-environmental organizations keep floating options to have urban water users pay for wildly disproportionate amounts of new Delta water conveyance facility development?
Is this what the PPIC meant by “reconciliation,” we wonder?
The most recent proposal comes from Jonas Minton and the Planning and Conservation League. “Finally An Affordable Delta Financing Plan” their blog proclaims - the PCL has figured it out, thusly:
Top Four Actions to Achieve Co-equal Objectives:
1. Direct the State Water Resources Control Board to start updating flow standards now for existing conveyance and set standards for new conveyance.
2. Prioritize Delta levees for improvement and approve funding consistent with those priorities.
3. Call upon BDCP and other stakeholders to conduct due diligence review of a 3,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) conveyance facility.
4. Work with Delta interests and others including MWD and Westlands on phased restoration projects.
That all seems very sensible. But then, in the section about financing this work, we find:
Delta Levee Protection - vital for flood & water quality protection
- Use existing Proposition 1E funds for upgrading prioritized Delta levees
3,000 cfs Delta pipeline - infrastructure to benefit water supply reliability, aquatic species and water quality in the event of a natural disaster
- The $6 billion price tag would mostly be funded from urban water districts receiving Delta water, using the beneficiary pays model (italics ours)
Delta Restoration - Necessary to protect the ecosystem that supports our water supply system.
- Start with existing funds and Delta restoration projects, e.g. Dutch Slough, Prospect Island, MWD and Westlands projects in Yolo Bypass
- Use lessons learned from those projects for additional restoration that could be funded from about $250 million for Delta restoration projects in a future, slimmed down and focused water bond.
A key member of the DNP team is in India right now. He recommends that if Mr Minton and the PCL staffers have plans to visit India one day, they should have someone else negotiate their auto-rickshaw fares.
With our last post we covered the NRDC’s Barry Nelson speculating on how the conveyance facility might be paid for. To be fair, Mr Nelson’s post floats the idea that urban water users may ultimately be required to pony up a disproportionate chunk of the money to finance the work - but he also suggests (tepidly, i our opinion) that he would prefer a straight proportionate beneficiaries pay financing structure, meaning SJV ag would pay roughly 75% of the costs of the work.
Mr Minton and the PCL’s proposal has no such caveat, and in fact explicitly lays “mostly” the costs of the conveyance on cities’ laps. Why is that? Are we missing something here?
The contrast between the alternatives reminds us here at the DNP of the way the US House of Representatives and Senate work - one proportional representation, the other, a legacy of the greater rights of those who own property.
In Nelson’s first alternative, the South of Delta’s two major Delta water consumers, SJV ag and the MWD, would more or less proportionately divide the costs per their consumption. SJV ag uses approximately 80%, the MWD 20%. So the MWD pays 25%, for some historical reasons not described in the post, but okay, something like proportionate.
Nelson’s second method of paying for a canal/tunnel is more interesting and puzzling. He looks at a 50/50 split between SJV ag and the MWD. He does this because, as he writes,
“However, it’s not certain that agriculture south of the Delta will be willing to pay a full proportional share. (More about this later.)”
But there is no more about this later. So the reader is left wondering by who gave and why agriculture south of the Delta was given veto power over a direct proportional system of divvying up the costs of improved conveyance and water supply security.
Perhaps it’s a food security argument, wherein big ag argues that if they have to bear a proportionate responsibility for paying for their water, then cheap tomatoes and grapes from Mexico and Chile will flood the US produce market and make us vulnerable to global competition. Heaven forbid Americans have to deal with the consequences of globalization, after all.
Or perhaps it’s something else. Some rational, equitable reason why a Senate-like distribution of power makes sense in this context.
We here at the DNP await a lesson on the historical reasons for why a 50/50 split can even be contemplated by an environmentalist like Nelson.*
In this instance, entitled to use words that conjure images of violence and war in the context of debate over resource scarcity and allocation. Aid and Comfort to the Enemy? What is the difference between Rep. Nunes writing this and the sort of rhetoric Sarah Palin’s crosshairs represented? It’s a slippery slope, Congressman.
It is obvious that the right believes they have found a winning rhetorical technique - keep it simple stupid - otherwise, people might hear your words as an invitation to think. The protests against budget cuts in Wisconsin may be a warning sign to politicians like Rep. Nunes that their preferred technique is nearly exhausted in its utility.
It is interesting that Rep. Nunes’s contribution to the Republican’s un-spending bill is being opposed by some San Joaquin Valley water interests - even one or two that he cites - but of course, in Nunes’s k.i.s.s. logic, these interests are mere shills for pinko environmentalists.
The DNP staff agrees that it isn’t every day that the Kern County Water Agency gets called a shill for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Poor NRDC - Rep. Nunes calls them names, but not principled environmentalist, like others do.
Who exactly Nunes includes and excludes in his defense of SJV agriculture is of course not something he can want anyone thinking too hard about. Farmers? Yes, some of them. Farmworkers? Well…if they keep their mouths shut and stay away from that union guy, maybe. Landowners? Damn straight, unless they are friends of Feinstein. Migrants? Hell, no - even if no one else will do the work - I don’t care!
Scorched earth from Rep. Nunes - hypocrisy, paranoia, bluster, and bullying - all of it ugly, uncivil, reptilian, and we assume he could care less. The contentious landscape of water politics in the Central Valley (over)simplified to enemies and allies. Nice job.
“These are complex problems, and they require nuanced solutions,” Feinstein said in a statement. “These broad-brush strokes do nothing to help us.”
But Devin Nunes and the new majority in the House don’t do nuance. They prefer to express principles in absolutely clear ways, constituents, issues, history be damned.
Klamath Basin: Ensuring a high-quality supply of ag and enviro water to Klamath and Central Valley
San Gabriel Restoration Fund: Maintaining non-toxic groundwater for 3 million Californians
Bay-Delta Biological Opinions gutted: New lawsuits could ensure end of any Delta water headed to West Side SJV farmers
Water Smart grants ended: More than 260,000 jobs threatened
This is the thing about Nunes and the boys in control of the House at the moment. They don’t really think about the consequences of their expressions of principle - it is the principle that matters, not the effects of those principles.
For Nunes, now Feinstein and Boxer will be exposed as advocates for their “environmental wacko friends.” This kind of quote is an excellent supply of red meat for the faithful.
Any look at Feinstein and Boxer’s records reveal them to be coalition-building centrists with pragmatic approaches to building coalitions that contain positions to both their left and right.
Nunes’s principled anti-tax, pro-corporate agenda is a sure-fire short term winning strategy that will within a few years become a sure-fire long term strategy for returning Nunes, and the like, to the fringes of American politics.
A key member of the DNP team will be in India for the next several weeks, and so the posts here will be even fewer and farther between.
India, and more specifically Chandigarh, capital of Punjabi india, is interesting to us for many of the same reasons that the Delta is interesting.
Like the Delta, Chandigarh was created by humans. And whatever existed there before it was created has been subsumed by a vision, and can scarcely be said to exist as it once did.
Chandigarh, like the Delta, is a place where pro-preservationists and pro-growth advocates have opinions and positions that seem legitimate and sincere.
Like the Delta, Chandigarh’s poor suffer the most, with a lack of basic resources, like high-quality drinking water and housing.
Like the Delta, Chandigarh exists in a real estate bubble, with unrealistic and bloated ideas about what property is actually worth.
In Chandigarh, there is a “Green Periphery” idealized by the city’s creators to be a place full of the remedial experiences of nature walks and working with one’s hands. But Chandigarh’s Green Periphery is more terrain vague than it is public park or pasture, making it, like the Delta, the vessel of many unforeseen functions vital to its urban neighbors.
Chandigarh, like the Delta, is only beginning to grasp what its future holds, what with a population growth projected to double over the next twenty years, and the attendant stress this growth will exert on already maxed out resources like, for instance, water.
As it did during the last Chandigarh visit, the DNP team looks forward to this month-long research trip to Chandigarh, and will post any interesting consonances that are found linking the Delta to Chandigarh’s and by extension, India’s, growth quandaries.
No, it’s not the name of a Frederick Forsyth novel - it’s the name of a dispute over water and taxes that illustrates how California’s “dysfunction,” as Alex Breitler put it, plays out in a tiny farming community like Lockeford.
The dispute is between farmers (“None of us likes to pay taxes. But this is our water”) and the anti-tax people (“‘No new taxes,’ said Hugh Scanlon, a newly elected Republican member. That ‘is the pledge I made to the people’”).
What with need to go ever deeper to find the stuff, not to mention people in power who are talking about monitoring and metering, farmers fear that the days of pumping cheap groundwater as a recourse to drought are numbered. They want to tax the entire community to fund a groundwater recharging system.
The anti-tax people say that the twenty-one dollars each household would have to pay for building the new system is a subsidy to farmers, who have enough subsidies.
The anti-tax folks may be right, but we here at the DNP guess that their representatives, like Mr. Scanlon, understand that many people get their water from somewhere collectively organized and paid for as an infrastructure. This presumption opens Pandora’s Box…
There are the Lockeford farmers whose land is adjacent to the Mokelumne River, and who obviously have riparian water rights. We wonder where these fortunate folks stand on the issue. Have Mr. Scanlon’s constituents who own swaths of land just on the north edge of town weighed in?
And by the way - yes, the town’s citizenry gets its water from the ground, too. The DNP wonders how the anti-tax people felt last July, when the Town Manager signed off on accepting the dollars that Lockeford’s citizens will receive from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the drilling of a new municipal well.
The DNP wonders whether they remained true to their principles and decided that they couldn’t support the citizens of, say, New York City, from contributing dollars to fund their infrastructure improvements? PDF here: CA_ARRA_1511_Cert_Lockforde_CSD.pdf
The Lockeford Microcosm reminds us (and perhaps Mr. Scanlon knows this, too) which way federal tax dollars flow.
Yes, California has complicated water issues. Repealing Proposition 13 (and it’s Lieutenant, Proposition 218 - thank you, Colin -ed. 1/25) would go a long way to letting its people resolve them.
“‘I’m a responsible judge. How can I seriously rule that there is a Santa Claus?”
The DNP team,* while watching Miracle on 34th Street on Christmas day, was reminded of Judge Wanger’s not-so-stalwart BiOps ruling.
Is there or is there not a Santa Claus, movie judge Henry X. Harper must decide. Of course, Harper decides that yes, there is a Santa, and now Judge Wanger hopes he’ll bring so much water to California’s water collection apparatus that all of the boys and girls are fat and happy and more important, indifferent again to the problem of scarcity.
Real-life Judge Wanger must decide whether the threats that the Delta smelt faces from water export are real enough to warrant judicial support of state and federal agencies charged with producing the scientifically rigorous but legally vulnerable measurables that trigger the Endangered Species Act’s restraints on various forms of development.
We are empathetic with but not entirely without suspicion of Judge Wanger’s recent rulings regarding smelt and water supply. He is of course faced with a difficult decision, knows it, and chooses to kick the can down the road.
Wanger’s world, like Judge Harper’s, is one of fantasy - a fantasy world in which irrefutable evidence of ecological science exists, yet because this evidence is economically inconvenient, it is not so ironclad as to be invulnerable to the parsing of lawyers. Or as Peter Gleick comments, The Megaphoned Minority.
This is the problem that the Delta’s ecosystem has, too. There are lots of reasons why the ecosystem is collapsing, not one. While everyone looks for The Scapegoat, multiple perpetrators slip unnoticed out the back door.
Multiple factors of ecosystem degradation is why Sacramento will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading its wastewater treatment facilities so that it won’t dump 14 tons of ammonia into the Delta every day from now on. That is also why Lodi, Tracy, Stockton, etc. will have to follow suit soon enough. Edge-of-Delta cities will do their part, because the harm that they do is measurable enough.
So is the harm that water exporters do.
The not-so-stalwart Wanger doesn’t see it this way. The Judge prefers to live in the fantasy world dreamed up by lawyers on both sides who litigate endless unprovable claims, knowing that the law only recognizes a science of black-and-white facts.
The conservatives’ Pacific Legal Foundation and the progressives’ Legal Planet can both find something to hang onto in Wanger’s ruling. When it comes to being a decider, Wanger requires a higher standard of federal law than that required by states and individuals.
He’s more George Bush than Harry Truman.
*h/t to Adam Bass, DNP East manager, for picking up on the Harper/Wanger resonance.
Obama’s Interior Department has sent signals that less, not more, water for SJV contractors will be the likely result of the plan, Westlands believes.
Westlands also believes that this is a betrayal of the agreement it had made when it signed onto BDCP’s precursor, CALFED.
Everyone gets to write their own history. Choosing when that history actually begins and who the actors/agents are (lying government officials, three-inch bait fish, greedy land speculators, etc.) is a critical part of controlling the narrative.
Westlands starts its history with the creation of CALFED, but not with the underlying motives for the creation of CALFED: California’s fifty-plus year overuse of Colorado River Compact water, an indulgence no longer tolerable to growing regions like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tuscon, and that Gail Norton, President George W. Bush’s Interior Secretary, finally at least put on the brakes.
Another aspect of Westlands’ history that the DNP is keen to know more about was brought to our attention by On the Public Record in the comments section of The craft of parsing post we did a few days ago. OtPr wrote, quoting Tom Birmingham’s oped response piece, the following:
The part I very much enjoyed was this line:
“Corporate ownership of Westlands ended a quarter century ago, in accordance with federal law.”
Which kind of skips the half-century when Westlands’ growers evaded Reclamation’s limitations on acreage by setting up fake owners for their lands. And that a fair portion of that only came into compliance when Ronald Reagan changed the maximum acreage they’re allowed to one [own]. And that growers like the Woolfs STILL own farms larger than ten thousand acres as a joint entity.
But, you know. For two decades they’ve been technically in compliance with federal regs on land ownership in the CVP.
How about that, W?
The DNP welcomes any additional historical information regarding the history of Westlands, as well as any corrections or amendments to the above slight extension of the history of CALFED.
We understand that Westlands feels like they are bearing the brunt of the effects of scarcity, and that they shouldn’t have to - endangered fish should. We also understand that if Westlands’ history was less self-centered, then they might have appreciated that the complexity the Dept. of Interior is dealing with extends beyond their interests.
We also understand that Westlands says there’s no science supporting the causal relationship between Delta water exports and Delta ecosystem degradation. But common sense says that the SJV’s west side’s salty (and selenium-laced) leachate ultimately makes its way into the SJ River and up in the Delta, and that can’t be good for an ecosystem, can it?
The BDCP process is all about sacrifice in the face of scarcity.
There has been an interesting debate playing out on OtPR’s blog. It is a debate that revolves around pragmatics or, as the title of this post indicates, do we engage the world as it is, or dream of the one we wish it were?
The DNP doesn’t completely understand the details of this debate, centered as they are on the mathematics/economics of water markets and supply/demand things. But while the details of the debate are not particularly useful when it comes to imagining what the Delta’s future could be, the debate itself is.
This point can best be seen in another recent piece, this one by Alex Breitler in the Fresno Bee. Breitler’s work comes close to capturing the problem in a way that reflects the DNP’s preoccupations.
Basically, the debate captures the heart of the problem of California’s fraught water situation: There is a pragmatic, capable, and well-informed Technocracy that must try to do their work in a tumultuous political context stirred up by at least three competing and reductive visions for what is virtuous and right.
These three camps we will call the Libertarians (who reduce the world to a kind of market-based personal liberty communitarianism - it’s not personal, it’s just business, it’s not personal, it’s a market), the Transcendentalists (who reduce the world to a kind of ethical conservatism - not everything should have a dollar sign placed on it, and all of us should be willing to pay for that), and the TeaPartiers (who, like the Libertarians, defend individual liberty, but only when it comes to their needs and desires, which are pure and American - like private property, and unlike the taxes that used to be generated by that property).
We here at the DNP like to take a observant but non-aligned view of these visionaries and their agendas. Each has its merits, of course, and each has a significant operative role in the pragmatic and political world that the Technocracy inhabits.
Since people usually have contradictory interests and positions, one of the things that the DNP tries to do is scramble these categories - what would the principles of an offspring of a Transcendentalist/TeaPartier be, for example? Would they forgo their lawn for a habitat stewardship estate so long as they could have their riverbank cabin?
If they owned a hunting cabin on a levee bank in the Delta, and therefore had to acknowledge that climate changes and increased water withdrawals directly lead to rising sea levels and ecosystem degradation, how would a (true) Libertarian/TeaPartier respond? Would s/he support the government-subsidized development of migrant farm worker housing that they could then rent to birdwatching enthusiasts in the fallow seasons?
These hybrid types of political scenarios are the basis of the speculative projects of the Delta National Park project. Non-alignment, we believe, is a sign of respect for ideological difference (that’s what makes America great, btw) and an acknowledgment of the inherently messy, compromised processes of policy and politics.
And one position the DNP doesn’t align itself with is the one that believes its fragile geography makes it too risky to settle. Indeed, we believe that is precisely why it should be settled - to invent just one more method of paying for the extensive infrastructure improvements that must be developed there.
If you are able to think of the speculative work here at the DNP as a economic and political platform, rather than as a series of academic exercises in design, then you are getting close to imagining what we are trying to produce.
More work to come in the New Year, including a Central Delta post-levee-fail aquaculture industrial urbanism, an elaboration on the Peripheral Canal’s siphon springs resort, Temporary Barriers campgrounds, and Levee Urbanism’s bio-remediating highways.
The DNP hopes to be educated on what’s going on here, and suggests information regarding the following quotes as a place to begin.
The first Birmingham quote:
“There is nothing “junior” about our water rights; we have the same rights as other CVP contractors south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Corporate ownership of Westlands ended a quarter century ago, in accordance with federal law. And far from enjoying a surplus this year, Westlands received only 45 percent of its CVP allocation.”
Does this mean that Westlands’ water rights are lesser to water contractors north of and in the Delta? Semantics, and clever phrasing aside, this would be an operative, if not strictly legal definition, of “junior,” for sure, in a state with complicated and contradictory water rights laws, and lots of upstream pre-recipients. Nothing new there. All of Westlands’ landowners have long known this, or should have.
In practice, if not in the word “junior,” Westlands’ access to water is subordinate to other water contractors. This has the effect of limiting the ability of Westlands land owners to access as much water as their eastern neighbors and northern environmental spaces do. It also has the effect of drawing megaphones like Sean Hannity to California to bemoan the imperiled agricultural legacy of certain parts of the San Joaquin Valley, and of undermining of sacral authority of property rights.
The second Birmingham quote:
“Contrary to Collins’ claims, Westlands does not sell water nor do we allow our farmers to transfer water out of the district. To conserve water, we have arranged to store water temporarily in Southern California this year to prevent it from being lost.”
So, let’s make sure we understand: They have arranged to store at least a hundred thousand acre-feet of their (now available but to no avail, because of the lateness of the supply’s arrival) surplus water temporarily in Southern California.
For free, and for the promise of an exchange of Met water next year? Is that the whole story?
Mr. Birmingham calls this agreement “storing,” but really it is a trade of commodities, since the water being stored will be replaced by new water that will arrive in 2011-2012.
It is a water futures market.
Despite Mr. Birmingham’s intentionally and cleverly vague use of language here. we assume money is being exchanged as part of this agreement, but cannot be sure. We’d appreciate Mr. Birmingham’s clarification on this.
Larry Collins claims Westlands stands to make up to $30 million on this “exchange,” but Birmingham’s response to this claim is that Westlands doesn’t sell water nor allow their contractors to transfer water out of the district. Again, the careful language of a legal advocate. Is all he’s saying there, the DNP wonders, is that the District does the selling for the district’s members?
It is simple: will the District or its members be compensated by the Met for water the Met stores (uses now) for the district? If yes, how much money do they receive in this storage agreement?
If it’s 30 million, that’s a chunk of money, not a huge amount, but a chunk. This agreement sure smells like there must be buyers and sellers involved, despite Mr. Birmingham’s parsing. And actually, it’s fine - they own something, water, that is valuable in the market. Just say it, without the veils of language that are so conspicuously and adeptly used here.
Peter Gleick and Bruce Babbitt were among the panelists. Dignan and Nusca organize their piece around several key themes, summarized below:
PRICE AND RIGHTS
How do those who advocate for water markets address issues of poverty and environmental health? Not very well, actually. What is the difference between a water “use right” and a water “property right?” Does arguing that water is a “human right” mean that it should be free? Do plants and animals have a “right” to water? If so on either or both, who pays? Everyone who can, and that includes individuals, towns and cities, NGOs, corporations, nations, the UN.
TECHNOLOGY
Will scarcity lead governments and industries to invent new and better conservation, infrastructural improvement, and water reclamation technologies and regimes? Yes!, said the teleological majority.
IS THERE A WATER CRISIS?
Is water a renewable resource, or is there a growing scarcity of water? Babbitt says its renewable, and that talk of a “water crisis” is “‘Leninist.’” Wow. You are wrong, Mr. Secretary. Sure, water is renewable, in the abstract. But go tell the government of India that they shouldn’t worry about water for their growing economy. And please - don’t tell it to profit-thirsty, myth-driven Californian boosters who just want to keep driving the entire state toward the cliff.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Yes, it’s real, despite, as Matt Weiser points out, the fact that only 34% of American humans think they have anything to do with it. The logical inference (if you can say the 66% is logical, that is) is that since humans don’t have anything to do with it, there’s nothing humans can do about it, especially bothering to spend money on trying to mitigate its effects.
GROUNDWATER IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
It Has To Be Metered, Regulated, and Purchased, Everywhere, Including the San Joaquin Valley. We think this is what Mr. Gleick defines as a “use right,” and we agree. Babbitt is correct here, too. Not renewable, at least not in less-than-geologic time scales. For developing countries like India, there is a different problem than faces Big Ag in California. The problem there, most 100s of millions of people, is just having some water. Different problem, massive small-scale, distributed infrastructure of hand-pumped wells. Just surviving in India, and not sustainably.
AWARENESS AND EDUCATION
Yes, more. 4th grade in Simi Valley, 8th in San Bernardino, 12th in San Mateo, required undergraduate survey courses freshman year at UC and Cal State schools. Think big, Cali, and change.
Check out the comments, too - more thoughtful than most.
Produced by the Metropolitan Water District, this video compresses 150 years of the unnatural history of the Delta into a brief video that feels strangely like a television nature show:
For fifth- and sixth-graders, the video’s clarity and simplicity make it a useful teaching tool. For adults of the state, shame on them if they don’t already know what’s described in the video. Truly, the knowledge of not just the basics of California’s water geography but also the ability to think critically about that geography should be a requirement for voting in the state.
Is California’s unique water geography, and its epicenter, the Delta, an essential element of elementary school teaching there? If not, why not? Because it must be.
If it was, then at least one could imagine that arguments pitting ideological differences against each other would produce intelligent debate - and those made by people like Sean Hannity and Rep. Devin Nunes would be perceived to be what they are - embarrassingly infantile. Not just demagoguery. This is, we here think, a scalable idea, too!
The Met’s video is making the rounds courtesy of SF Gate’s City Brights blogger Tom Philp, who also happens to be the Executive Strategist for the Met (gotta love his job title). Toward the end of his post, Mr. Philp suggests that he will be rolling out other, presumably less uncomplicated, videos.
Both the video and the blog post refer to the work of UC Davis’s Dr. Jeffrey Mount and the Public Policy Institute of California. Given those names and their work (which is good work if in our view too narrowly focused), we here at the DNP think we know what’s coming in the next video: liquefaction, levee failure, salt water in Los Angeles kitchen sinks.
All of which will one day happen, of course, if nothing happens. That’s not our argument. Things Do Need To Happen.
Once we get through the high school and undergraduate curriculum, it would be interesting to view some advanced material.
For example, how does the Met work with large-scale entities like Westlands in California’s elaborate water exchange market? Does the Met think that such an exchange market a sustainable thing given that there are so many stresses on other parts of the state’s water supply and quality, let alone its economy?
Or perhaps news of a shift in policy in which the Met (and maybe, the whole damned state) would get serious about the limits of its water geometry to sustain growth, decide that they’ve reached that point, and no longer supply water to new proposals for suburban developments.
The Met’s could also support developing the Delta’s value as a space of recreation, tourism, and play as a way to at least in part pay for the inevitable burden of stabilizing the currently out of control dynamics of growth and political dysfunction, not to mention the physical structure of the Delta itself.
In this way, Met actions could help to save the Delta, a changed Delta no doubt, but a Delta closer to what it is today than what it will be if left to the limits of technocratic vision.
Met policies could be a bigger change agent, and help move the state toward sustainable principles in general.
This last point is tangential to but gets at the essence of the DNP’s reason to be, and encourages the Met to get on board.
A template is here, not complete, not perfect - but here.
So, we look forward to the Met’s role in water education, and hope they take it past nature programming and disaster reality shows. Big institution, big thinker? We hope so. Their history owes it to the present.
Despite the slightly alarmist tone of article’s title, it does appear that legislation is being generated by Sen. Feinstein and others, in consultation with local representatives, that would make the Delta a “National Heritage Area.”
According to CalWatchDog’s news reporter Katy Grimes, upstream water consumers are concerned that they will have to conserve more water than will their Southern California brethren, and Delta landowners are concerned about their property rights.
Apparently, since Grimes doesn’t mention anyone from that big place, no one in the southern half of the state is concerned about this development. Probably just not paying attention.
Enviro=nazis are not cited in Grimes’ article either. Perhaps the idea gives them hope.
It seems to us here at the DNP that the southern half of the state does a pretty good job of conserving their water. They have to—it’s expensive for them.
Delta landowners will always be paranoid that someone is going to “grab” their land. They have to be—in every way of measuring, they are dwarfed by the thirst of the world’s ninth (or whatever) largest economy.
“Principled” environmental folks just have to hope others will come around, and continue to claim the moral high ground that they hold. They have to - like Nunes - but from a different and more civil perspective.
The title of Grimes’ piece, “Feds Launch Delta Land Grab,” is not exactly what seems to be going on, but there’s nothing like a shrill headline to get someone’s attention. What does seem to be going on is that there is interest on the federal level for (once again, with feeling) stepping into the process of managing the Delta’s future.
Since there is no evidence that the state is capable of doing this itself, the DNP welcomes this development, and hopes it points toward a more robust and creative intervention at the highest level of direction. Speaking of that, the DNP had a notable new visitor the other day:
We know, whoever it was, they didn’t stay long, and yes - it was probably a page who grew up in Stockton - or a clever group screwing with us.
Still, having seen more than a few visits from the Department of the Interior, U.S. House of Representatives, the California Assembly’s Office of Legislative Council, or the Dolphin Group, it was pretty cool to see. Glad to help, Mr. Presidential page from Stockton!
This is serious business. Last time I kiss and tell.
Owning things gives owners rights and obliges them to be responsible to and for the things they own. Laws and daily practice define these rights and obligations. But our customs do not encompass all the attributes of the things owned - customs merely define the extent and limit of how we view ownership.
To what degree do people and places own the Delta? A thoughtful view on this comes from a thoughtful person. This view is not academic - it is, however, careful. There is a difference. It is a view available to all who are willing to stare at and think about something for more than a moment.
The DNP is mentoring a student named Daniel Irvine who is doing research for his Master of Architecture thesis. Daniel is in a stage of his work that is reading and writing intensive. Recently, his work referenced Canadian poet Don McKay, who wrote this about how we encounter “nature.”
“By ‘wilderness’ I want to mean, not just a set of endangered spaces, but the capacity of all things to elude the mind’s appropriations. That tools retain a vestige of wilderness is especially evident when we think of their existence in time and eventual graduation from utility: breakdown. To what degree do we own our houses, hammers, dogs? Beyond that line lies wilderness. We probably experience its presence most often in the negative as dry rot in the basement, a splintered handle, or shit on the carpet. But there is also the sudden angle of perception, the phenomenal surprise which constitutes the sharpened moments of haiku and imagism. The coat hanger asks a question; the armchair is suddenly crouched: in such defamiliarizations, often arranged by art, we encounter the momentary circumvention of the mind’s categories to glimpse some thing’s autonomy - its rawness, its duende, its alien being.”
(Don McKay, Vis-a-Vis )
To what degree do we “own” the Delta? Maybe think about it this way:
That tools [the Delta is nothing if not a tool in the way it is being thought of today] retain a vestige of wilderness is especially evident when we think of their existence in time and eventual graduation from utility: breakdown.
So why will Westlands’ answer to the question cited in the last post be so interesting?
Because it will go to the heart of what they think their non-righted, contract-only, access to water entails them to do with it.
Do they believe that their contracted water gives them the right to sell to cities at a great and painless profit, “their” water, despite the Fox News televised spectacle of some of “their” farmers uprooting almond orchards for lack of getting “their” water?
Sorry for the quotation marks. We aren’t especially good writers.
Yes, the DNP understands the basics of the timing that is everything when it comes to water availabilty, and that water in March and April is critical but harder to come by than it is later on, during the big snowmelt releases and off-cycles of endangered three-inch fish migrations.
But isn’t dealing with those sorts of logistical issues a matter of the management of one’s property investments? Did we bail out people who made bad choices on subprime mortgages? This is after all a highly predictable system of water supply, and not exactly a water system that is dependent on the absolute rule of the foibles of weather. It is about as predictable as it can get, in fact. The entire state is built around understanding (and manipulating) the system it has built. Maybe these are just bad business people, or badly advised investors.
Given water’s increasing dearness, is selling your contracted later-arriving water to the MWD at big profits a practice that Californians want to reward? Why do some think this is a fine example of effective, mutually self-interested markets doing their work? Why should some landowners in a corner of the San Joaquin Valley be the beneficiaries of this profit? Why not the state’s school children? Or its battered wives? Or its poor people?
Does Westlands think that they should be able to do all of this at the same time that they factor considerably in the increasingly dead Delta ecosystem both through their toxic contributions to and water extractions from it?
So, it will be interesting to learn the reasons that Westlands believes that it has the right to pump groundwater when they need to, and to not replenish it when they can, for next March and April, because they can instead sell it for lots of money. Tom Birmingham et al will earn their pay making that difficult moral argument.
The letter Congresspersons Miller, Garamendi, Napolitano, and Thompson sent to Westlands Board President Jean Sagouspe asked one particularly interesting question:
Westlands has indicated that its farmers have pumped unsustainable levels of groundwater in recent years, creating an overdraft situation. Why is the water that Westlands and its water users seek to sell, transfer, or exchange this year not being used to replenish the groundwater basin overdrafted as a result of overuse?
Dams in the West have produced electricity and water for a many decades-long project of modernity embodied in the urbanization and irrigation that has taken shape there.
The West relies on that water for its city and rural survival. The silt that is piling up behind these dams, however, displaces water and will soon enough without intervention end hydroelectric production.
So, the question is, how will the silt be removed? No longer just a simple question of extraction but of husbandry, sustaining this project is now a question for the engineers and policy folks who invent voting majorities, remediative practices and engineering technologies.
From an essay the DNP is working on, titled “Unmasking water conflict in California, ” this excerpt:
As water infrastructures and their remedial adjuncts expand, so do the populations that they serve. Infrastructure has sublimated, metamorphosed into something without scale. In many parts of the world, infrastructure is now, for certain services or resources, like water, for example, nearly entirely indispensable. This indispensability makes infrastructure a concern of security technocracies, politicians, policy experts and environmentalists. These groups often find themselves in conflict. Conflict leads a default strategy that all parties seem to agree upon: Separating the indispensable spaces of infrastructure from human and habitat.
This reductive strategy of separation is usually the simplest political solution in a complex and contentious geopolitical landscape, the path of least resistance. It also masks from its dependent public the fact that the space of infrastructure is a cultural space. This space is produced by and for that public, and the pressing issues of consumption, growth, conservation, and sustainability are hidden by this masking strategy. One such place where this masking strategy is in full blossom is California, where the politics of water provide a first-world test to a global problem - water scarcity.
The DNP guesses Mr. Bacher had to swallow hard to publish this one, especially with his links to respected journals like The Nation.
SB 565 was co-sponsored by co-equalitionists Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). According to Bacher, SB 565 would “give the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) new penalty and investigative powers dealing with water rights.”
The last thing the Delta’s landowners (who are small in number, and rely on very senior water rights to wield their stick) want is someone up in their kitchen doing this.
Bacher’s article sheds all kinds of harsh light on the libertarian, property rights are sacrosanct, streak that seems to inspire much of the work of groups like Restore the Delta.
Even without knowing the CSPA’s position, the article makes all too clear the fractured geography of the anti-water-export coalition. Going their separate ways in this situation (at minimum) are certain Delta interests and downstream fresh water users like those concerned with the health of SF Bay and the Pacific fishery.
The DNP wants to ask whether we can finally put to rest the idea that groups like Restore the Delta are willing to see a world (or a state, really) beyond their small, below sea level piece of it.
A careful bit of work. What a job these folks have. We guess is they do it with a cynical and thoughtful grin. We hope so.
Ideals are not policy. Policy is not law. Laws are not plans. Plans, laws, policies and ideals require enforcement, etc.
Is this possibly a plan to just kill the delta? Paranoid types like we are here at the DNP might conclude that it could be nothing else since its conclusions are extremely impractical. It’s sure not a plan to fix, save, restore, preserve, or co-equally manage the Delta.
It may not be a plan, but it is a description of the scale of the predicament. Those charged with producing this analysis were given a thankless task: how much water does the Delta, and its ecosystem, need to survive?
Some are not happy with the conclusions. Others are.
The answer is in dispute, but is probably as accurate, subtle, and complete as any analysis that has been produced to date.
It is also nonbinding. Simply a description of the problem.
The State Water Resources Control Board has weighed in with its (narrowly confined to water flow-only factors) assessment of what ails the Delta.
Tidily summed up by Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, all that needs to happen is for Californians to allow
75% of unimpaired Delta outflow from January through June
75% of unimpaired Sacramento River inflow from November through June
60% of unimpaired San Joaquin River inflow from February through June
Wow. That was really easy. Let’s make it happen, California! All you have to do is use a lot less water! Start by stop growing, developing real estate, and farming in unsustainable, toxic regions!
Of course, the problem is that the state’s citizens want to have their cake and eat it too. They want water, but they don’t want to pay for it. They want schools, but they don’t want to pay for them. They want to be environmental stewards, like their grandparents are, but they don’t, or should we say won’t, pay for that either.
When push comes to shove, the Delta will be the next endangered species to go extinct. The SWRCB report and this map just makes the point that it’s only a matter of time:
According to KMT&G, the report was produced as a consequence of last fall’s assembly votes, the centerpiece of which, the Water Bond, has now fallen through even the Governor’s big hands.
The Governor wanted his cake and eat it, too. Sorry, Governor—no new taxes, no legacy water projects.
All that is left now are bits and pieces from those heady days. Fragments like this SWRCB report, which will be a nuisance to those wishing to export more, not less, water, from the Delta.
But there were other things agreed to last fall. There was the creation of a Delta Watermaster, kind of an ombudsman of water coursing through the Delta. This position has evaporated with the Water Bond.
A majority agreed that, when it came to sharing responsibility for ensuring water supply and ecosystem health, the idea of “co-equality” meant something.
Also agreed to last fall was all sorts spending that, depending on your view and where you lived, was either wasteful pork or necessary investment. What happens to those projects now?
With its report, the SWRCB has done a useful thing, which is to describe the scale of the problem California faces with its water situation. Unfortunately, that problem is so big and so politically intractable that describing it only reinforces just what a doubtful future faces the Delta. Californians have some difficult choices to make.
Over the past year or so, the DNP has noted how much man made weather has been making the news in California.
Man made droughts, that is.
Droughts caused by men and women who seek to protect “three-inch bait fish.”
Doesn’t it make sense somehow that in some other part of the world the concern is about man made floods?
Like here:
The DNP believes that this clipping illustrates that floods and droughts, like laws and religions, are made by the commissions and omissions of men and women. The pain caused by these acts is experienced by men and women, and that men and women are able to express the effects of that experience to others.
Little fishes like Delta smelts do not have the ability to express the pain they feel, and that is why a whole other group, we might call them other men and women, must do the expressing for them, often in the form of constraints on the ability of men to do what ever they wish to do with “their” land.
One of the points made by some economists opposed to the now terminally ill Water Bond is that it would be paid for by public, but would largely benefit private, interests.
According to this way of thinking, the principle should be that the beneficiary pays. This principle makes good sense, but the devil is in the details, especially because the region that the Bond focuses on, the geography, is a below sea level landscape inhabited by perhaps 50,000 souls who cannot hope to pay for the scope of work the Bond contemplates that serves their interests.
So, Delta ecosystem improvements will not be paid for by Delta residents. Who should pay for them? Sacramento waste water producers? Westlands Water District and Paramount Farms? The cities of Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, San Francisco, San Rafael (actually, no—not San Rafael) and San Bernardino?
All of the above? Certainly, San Franciscans benefit from the bond, even though their water supply is cut out of the Delta watershed long before it arrives there. So does anyone in Crescent City, Santa Barbara or Redding who believes in environmental conservation.
The DNP is a bit confused by this principle of beneficiary pays. Assuming for a moment that the bond actually benefits anyone (as opposed to, say, the shared benefits of increasing water user fees, conservation enforcements, and groundwater regulation—in other words, seriousness on the water issue), who, ultimately, does NOT benefit from the Water Bond?
How can the private beneficiaries be distinguished from the public ones? How does a suburban developer in Palmdale get separated from the person he sold a house to ten years ago?
Let’s face it, honestly parsing these questions would lead to a twenty-two, not a two-party system.
Another point of received wisdom is that the Water Bond was full of “pork” that wouldn’t actually help resolve the state’s water crisis. Dan Walters makes this point in his SacBee piece:
It’s loaded with unconscionable pork—such as a quarter-billion dollars for Schwarzenegger’s pal, billionaire Warren Buffett, to underwrite removal of dams on the Klamath River that have absolutely no connection to California’s water supply.
The DNP guesses that one person’s pork is another person’s job. But really, the point is that the state could use some pork stimulus-packaging its belly. We’d have preferred it was a quarter-billion dollars worth installing metering devices on groundwater pumps in the San Joaquin Valley, but that’s just us.
Can any one help educate the knowledge-poor DNP team on either of these matters?
While many aspects of the Delta’s physical and cultural history have been documented here at the DNP, one sometimes must look beyond the Delta’s attributes (or the state’s policy discourse on water) for spatial and social inspiration.
In India, especially during the dry season, one sees many shipwrecks—or in this case, building-wrecks—old vessels left high and dry by the retreat of water.
These shipwrecks suggest to the DNP many new scenarios for the Delta’s future—particularly scenarios related to the logic that led to Gov. Schwarzeneggar pulling the plug on law implementing so-called “co-equal goals” of water supply security and ecosystem restoration—it is the logic of waiting, of abandonment, of unregulated groundwater pumping, of Proposition 13 and the state’s 1/3 majority rule.
A recent seven-day excursion through Rajasthan and Gujarat, in western, arid, India, yielded a number of examples of building wrecks that, much like the predicament California’s water future faces, suggest how time affects decisions about investing in technology and settlement.
Among the world’s most beautiful water infrastructures is the Indian stepwell, or baoli in Hindi. Stepwells are dug wells like other dug wells, except that these wells were made into permanent constructed pieces intended to be occupied by people, and are therefore social, spatial and architectural.
The stepwell, the Chand Baoli, is in Abhaneri, a few kilometres north of the road between Jaipur and Agra. It is over 30 metres deep, and is today used for movie scene backdrops, not water supply:
The vav (“stepwell” in Gujarati) at Anuraj is of another type, axial, with a single broad and long stair leading down many stories to the pool.
At the end of this journey downward toward water is this, a deep hole. Imagine a rope with a bucket at the end, descending:
Like many stepwells, the Anuraj well was constructed by a queen. The quarters of Queen Padmini of Chittorgarh were constructed in a reservoir in the hilltop fortress between Jaipur and Udaipur, just a short boat ride outside of her palace walls.
India’s water infrastructure is spatial in other ways as well. Reservoir lakes, mostly dry now, are occupied by quarters like Queen Padmini’s, but also by temples, shrines, stepped terraces, and swimming pools.
The town of Bundi, home to dozens of stepwells (including to another built by a queen, very similar to Anuraj), most of them behind the walls of its fort (think under siege 1000 years ago, and water supply) has a lake with many such shipwrecked structures.
Another dry lake is found at Udiapur, once considered the most romantic city in India. Lake Pichola is a good example of how climate change and the immediate, desperate demand for water by an expanding population have permanently changed India’s great water spaces and artifacts.
Everyone one speaks with in India agrees that the days are hotter, and the monsoon season shorter. Once a glamourous enough spot to film a Bond flick there, Lake Pichola has, just before the start of the monsoon season, been reduced to this:
Palaces shipwrecked in the middle of a dry lake, cows grazing on the lake bed—hard to see Bond here…:
It is highly unlikely that any of these remarkable treasures, whether reservoir lakes or stepwells, will ever be filled again, unless the state decides that they are to be artificially maintained in order to fulfill the expectations of the tourist.
The above stepwells, palaces, and other utilitarian and spiritual shipwrecks are among the more exquisite artifacts of India’s water history. A more common sight these days, and a more quotidian one, are these water towers, all built to this or similar design:
And for less populated places, all through India, the state is frantically drilling thousands and thousands of “tubewells.” Tubewells are 30-metre deep artesian wells distributed according to population. These rationally distributed water sources solve an immediate problem of water scarcity, and have taken the place of the collective stepwell and lake water sources.
Like the extensive groundwater pumping operations of California’s agricultural regions, tubewells are relentlessly lowering the groundwater level. Tubewells are the necessary present and future other of India’s water past.
Tubewells now extend approximately 30 metres, sufficiently deep to ensure that no lake or stepwell will ever again intersect with groundwater. Inevitably, as India’s aquifers are drawn down, this infrastructure of water supply will need to extend ever deeper.
And other infrastructures, equally finely distributed and even more base and instrumental, will continue to be relied on by a population that just needs water.
The DNP team is coming back to North America with new ideas about how the stepwell (among other things encountered), a most public and spatial work, might inspire a new group of speculative projects for the Delta.
These projects will focus to a greater degree on the likelihood of an abandoned Delta. The recent decision to postpone the November vote on the co-equal goals proposition is a clear indication that the state is headed toward a bottom-line set of decisions about what it will and will not fund.
Funding the side of the “co-equal” goals that are an expression of the state’s commitment to environmental stewardship will be abandoned, as will the Delta landscape.
The stepwell, an artifact of an earlier age, reminds the DNP of the Delta, in itself an artifact of an earlier age. At the bottom of these fantastic spaces today one finds little more than a puddle of fetid liquid, home to pigeons and bats.
Shipwrecks in the form of abandoned Delta levees, meandering strings of riparian habitat occupied by brave shack cabin owners, fishing and hunting clubs, marinas, camps and the varied marks of the once cultivated polder interiors.
California-scaled stepwells, public elaborations on the vertical access points of an underground twin-bore tunnel sending water from the North Delta to the pumps near Tracy.
Shipwrecked shrines, the pleasure and practices of the transient types who will occupy the Delta’s watery future. One supposes that through them there will be new ways to imagine the Delta’s future.
The light side of abandonment—of failed levees, ruins, saltwater intrusion and the attendant ecosystem and lifestyles of such places as the Delta seems destined, in large part, to become.
Despite Sec. Salazar’s overblown praise for the agents involved, yesterday’s signing of an agreement between water supply and environmental advocates regarding Delta smelt water supply is a token act. Judging from their ho-hum reactions to the achievement, lawyers for both sides know it.
They are gearing up for a negotiation that will not result in token, less-than-a-week-long policy.
The DNP team, basking in 104+ Indian heat, finds relevant what Gandhi, who himself was a lawyer, said about the lawyers of his day (apologies to women lawyers everywhere):
I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby—not even money, certainly not my soul.
and
Lawyers are also men, and there is something good in every man. Whenever instances of lawyers having done good can be brought forward, it will be found that the good is due to them as men rather than as lawyers.
and
Lawyers will, as a rule advance quarrels instead of repressing them. Moreover, men take up that profession, not in order to help others out of their miseries, but to enrich themselves. It is one of the avenues of becoming wealthy and their interest exists in multiplying disputes. It is within my knowledge that they are glad when men have disputes.
The DNP would have preferred that advocates of both sides saved the money of their clients for the real litigation to come.
Even better, that money could have been used to repair levees, restore habitat, and feed unemployed farm workers.
Savvy California lawyers toying with federal administrators desperate for even the thinnest of accomplishments just isn’t fair play.
An abstract just written for a conference in Amman, Jordan called Conservation of Architecture, Urban Areas, Nature & Landscape: Towards a Sustainable Survival of Cultural Landscape:
Design, synthesis and agency: Mediating the production of real estate, artificial ecosystems and water in the California Delta
John Bass
Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
Problems of resource scarcity are emerging as major political and existential issues in all parts of the world. The mythical playground of California is no exception. The state faces increasingly difficult tensions between its desire to continue growing and the limited resources it has available to fuel that growth. This is especially true regarding the resource of fresh water for its thirsty metropolitan and agricultural regions.
The geographical epicenter of this scarcity-induced tension is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, about 100 kilometers northeast of San Francisco, and the largest fresh water estuary on the west coast of North America. The Delta was a tidal estuary that was reclaimed from 1850 to 1900. The Delta’s highly organic soils have since subsided, and most of the Delta’s poldered land now sits at 25-30 feet below surrounding rivers.
Over the last one hundred years the state grew, and its caretakers explored places that could provide the fresh water to support that growth. Logically, the Delta’s fragile, flood-prone islands and meandering rivers and sloughs became the nexus of the state’s complex and extensive water storage and redistribution infrastructure. Ever-increasing demands for the Delta’s fresh water have helped to bring its ecosystem to the brink of collapse and threaten to literally and politically inundate its unique historical settlements, manmade islands and place-specific infrastructures.
The state’s legislative response to the tension between environmental crisis and water supply an objective to achieve the “co-equal” goals of restoring the Delta’s ecosystem and securing the water supply for the state’s urban and agricultural water consumers. Habitat restoration and water supply securitization, yes—but nowhere in this legislation, passed in November of 2009, is there an expressed objective to conserve the Delta’s unique physical and cultural landscape.
The presentation will describe several scales of speculative proposal that folds into the “co-equal” goals this third goal to conserve this unique and valuable area. An overview will describe the state’s water issues vis-a-vis the Delta and the various policy and engineering proposals that have been put forth to address these issues. These include changes to the Delta’s land management practices and a number of systemic and site-specific infrastructural interventions.
Illustrated with a number of speculative and polemical design proposals, it will be argued that while these land use and management practices and engineering artifacts are too narrowly conceived on a singular functional focus, they provide the basic framework for design synthesis.
Drawing a distinction between preservation as a method of fixing in time and place a beloved artifact and conservation as a method of caring for a living, changing one, the approach inherently acknowledges that fundamental physical changes are inevitable in the Delta, and explores ways that the Delta’s many latent resources might be developed to subsidize those changes and conserve essential cultural, historical, and human aspects of this place.
Leaving now for a month-long visit to Chandigarh, India. Working on a book on the tensions between those who believe that that city, as a monumental relic of modernism, needs to be preserved, and those who see it a growing city that needs to change if it is to avoid becoming a tourist-first place. Hopefully there will be an occasional encounter with extraordinary and ordinary water moments. One extraordinary one, the stepwell (reservoir) above, at 10 stories deep, the deepest in India.
Will blog as time allows. Happy summer to everyone!
What should one take away from Professor Glibert’s decision to publish her nitrate conclusions on the Delta and subsequent resignation from the Delta NAS panel?
That her methods were poor or her conclusions incorrect? No one knows, but chances are that Glibert’s take that nitrates are big local and regional contributors to the Delta’s ecosystem problems will hold water.
(Please take note that the DNP chooses not to characterize her conclusions as “nitrates are The Primary Problem” until we read this in something she has written.)
That some of her research was funded by vested interests? Well, we do know that, but really, who’s isn’t, here, except for the “research” of local interests? And are they scientists?
That she is now a criminal, committing the crime of publishing ahead and outside the deliberations of her NAS panel colleagues? Only she knows her motives.
What the DNP takes away at present is that Prof. Glibert acted with insufficient respect to her Delta NAS colleagues or regard to their charge and process.
At present we have little information and no idea why she chose to do this.
The DNP doubts that Glibert just wanted to give everyone a new reason to be suspicious. So what was it?
Was it simply innocent/naive impatience? Absolute belief? Selfishness? A deaf political ear? All of the above?
The [Prof. Glibert’s] paper says the way to start fixing the Delta is to reduce the nutrient discharges from the Sacramento sewer system.
“Until such reductions occur, other measures, including regulation of water pumping or manipulations of salinity, as has been the current strategy, will
likely show little beneficial effect,” the paper concludes. “Without such action, the recovery of the endangered pelagic fish species is unlikely at best.”
Then, Judge Wanger finds that claims of harm afforded the smelt (and salmon, etc.) from water exportation are guesstimations. Again, from Mr. Taugher, citing Wanger’s decision:
“The exact restrictions imposed, which are inflicting material harm to humans and the human environment, are not supported by the record,” he wrote in a 134-page ruling. “Rather, they are product of guesstimations and attempts to try to achieve ‘equity,’ rendering it impossible to determine whether the (Delta pumping restrictions) are adequately protective, too protective, or not protective enough.”
These two artifacts, one scientific, the other legal, are new and significant. They of course will be used by water interests to further their claims on Delta water.
Fairly or unfairly, they will also be undermined by claims of bias (who is paying for this study by Glibert? ACWA! Aha!).
The DNP has long acknowledged that local Delta urban and agricultural interests are in part responsible for the Delta’s ecosystem problems. We published this diagram, the product of research in the Peak Water studio, in early March.
The problem with both the local and the southern water interest communities is that they resort to polarizing and divisive strategies to hold their political ground.
Monitor and meter groundwater pumping in Kern County or Westlands? Over my dead libertarian body.
That locally produced and dumped nitrates could be a significant factor of ecosystem degradation? Impossible! I recycle.
Take a minute and try and contemplate the vast quantities of nitrate that are produced not only by city folk but also in the form of fertilizer and animal waste by agriculture.
It’s not hard to believe that nitrates may just be the single biggest contributor to the problem(s) Prof. Glibert points out.
The real problem, though, is a political, not scientific, one. No one interest will ever budge, because the facts will never support the idea that there is a “root cause” location or culprit to the Delta’s myriad problems.
California has Prop 13 and all of its descendants, fiscally straitjacketing the state and making it nearly impossible for responsible people to deal with any of these complicated issues. It’s indulgent, and very risky, really, to think that the state can simply wait until that indisputable culprit is found. The state will only find itself.
Read Wanger’s statement - that’s what he is saying: All of these guesstimations are “attempts to try to achieve ‘equity,’ rendering it impossible to determine whether the (Delta pumping restrictions) are adequately protective, too protective, or not protective enough.”
Pretty much makes sense, but it is going to be interesting to see what the actual mechanics of his decision are. Wanger has delayed this part of his findings. The DNP urges him to retain the status quo, since his ruling seems to be that he has no idea what should be done.
Having no idea ourselves is why the DNP really liked this editorial in today’s Sacramento Bee. After pointing out that is way premature to point the finger at the Sacramento sewer system for the Delta’s woes (did Prof. Glibert even say or write this, or is that Taugher’s take?), the editorial goes on to suggest that
Instead of heading down this confrontational path, water exporters and Sacramento sanitation would be wise to focus their resources on speeding up a $1 billion upgrade of a treatment plant that eventually will be needed. If it helps the Delta, all sides should be willing to help. That would be far more productive than continuing with the current pattern of finger-pointing and scientific cherry-picking.
Exactly. Sooner or later, Californians will understand that they have no choice but to lead the way in ushering the Era of Remediative Technology. Why not turn what Californians invent into the next big intellectual and industrial age?
At the other end of California’s water supply chain, Orange County has many mitigative technologies integrated into its infrastructure:
Up north, at the source of water, there is every reason to require Sacramento, Lodi, Stockton, Tracy and other communities build new infrastructure that will discharge water back into the Delta that is as clean as the water taken out of it.
Back then, WWD’s perhaps hundreds of people were exploring alternative development options for its toxic but productive real estate.
But we should have known that like any intelligent strategic thinker, Westlands understands the value of a multi-pronged strategy for making money or winning battles over geography and scarce resources.
As the Fresno Bee’s E.J. Schultz reports, Westlands has hired Craig Manson, University of the Pacific law professor and former assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks under George W. Bush.
Quoting Schultz:
Manson worked in the Bush Interior Department from 2002-05 and pushed some policies that were harshly criticized by environmentalists. In 2003, for instance, the administration shrank plans to protect Central Valley vernal pools, citing economic reasons.
One of Manson’s underlings, Julie MacDonald, faced accusations from environmentalists that she bullied career scientists.
She was reprimanded by the Interior Department’s inspector general for leaking information to private groups, such as the California Farm Bureau Federation, and resigned in 2007.
Campana sits on the National Academy of Sciences’ Bay-Delta panel charged with producing independent, sound scientific analysis on the dynamic interplay of the Bay-Delta ecosystem and human impacts, including pollution and water export, on that ecosystem.
Clearly, Westlands is gearing up for their next round of litigation. Why wouldn’t they be? It is in their interest to do so, these perhaps hundreds of people who have no water rights but do have a great deal of political power.
Ironies abound here. The reason why Campana sits on the Delta NAS panel in the first place is because Sen. Feinstein agreed to help out friends and contributors the Resnicks, who didn’t like what the Endangered Species Act was likely to do to their pistachio and pomegranate profit margins.
And if the Resnicks have a moderate Democratic U.S. Senator in their corner, Westlands knows it doesn’t hurt to have the not-so-moderate right wing megaphone at your disposal:
Along with friends in high places and Fox News, litigating is a big part of the tool kit. How do they fund it, these perhaps hundreds of people who control an empire with huge unemployment rates in the small towns that dot their domain?
It helps of course to minimize the expense of putting local people to work. Despite all of the claims of hardship by folks like the Resnicks and the perhaps hundreds of Westlands litigants, keep in mind that they still have the money to pay lawyers millions of dollars a year to advocate their interests.
Manson’s annual salary will be $185,000. That number suggests he might be taking less than market rate for the pleasure of the task.
Despite Fox News’s coverage of an embattled farmer destroying his almond orchard because, he claimed, he had no water to irrigate the trees because of a little fish, California almond production was up 8.5% last year, to 1.53 billion pounds.
The DNP has no idea whether Fox’s (almond) farmer, the Resnicks or Westlands came along for the state’s almond farming 8.5% growth joyride. We suspect they did. From the splash page of the Resnick’s Paramount Farms website:
For the powerful, enough is never enough. As water becomes ever scarcer in California, we hope civility will not.
News out that the Delta Stewardship Council has hired CH2MHill to develop the required comprehensive long-term management plan for California’s Delta.
On its website, the DSC also invites people to comment on the interim management plan that must be implemented until CH2MHill’s work is done and approved.
Restore the Delta has already expressed skepticism about the hire. RTD points out that the firm is already involved in the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan.
The DNP has not seen the short list of firms that CH2MHill beat out, but would be interested to know what they were. And of course, whether any of them would have been more acceptable to RTD. Kind of doubt it.
CH2MHill is getting $9.5M to do the work, charged with coming up with a plan to meet those “co-equal goals”:
State law calls for the Delta Plan to guide state and local actions in the Delta so that they further the coequal goals. According to the California Water Code, Section 85054: “Coequal goals” means the two goals of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem. The coequal goals shall be achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique cultural, recreational, natural resource, and agricultural values of the Delta as an evolving place.
While that seems like a clear enough purpose, the devil is in the details. It is entirely unclear whether it is possible to meet these goals. If Hill is able to achieve these goals, then the state is getting a real bargain.
Keep in mind that “co-equal” goals are primarily of political utility.
Just today, as the Sacramento Bee’s Matt Weiser reports, the Corps of Engineers is considering imposing its national policy of tree-stripped levees for the Delta.
A treeless Delta landscape. So much for co-equal goals. The Delta is destined to become nothing more than a piece of plumbing if the risk-averse get their way.
As a coda to the recently-completed Peak Water studio, the DNP will be blogging on some of the work of the students.
The students, the DNP hopes and encourages, might blog too. We shall see.
Ariel Mieling’s project most directly addressed the issue of public and private space in the Delta.
Mieling’s site was the southeastern tip of Mandeville Island, once owned by Steve Wynn of MGM Grand and Bellagio fame, and now (or at least the last the DNP knew) by something called the Tuscany Research Institute, coincidentally (or not) also of Las Vegas.
Her proposal for an “inverted marina” is a critique of the private nature of the space of the Delta which, despite its key public role in the state’s water system, remains a subsidized libertarian landscape of tax shelters, cheap water, and private hunting clubs. As Mieling puts it
The dichotomy of public waterways and private levees is reflected in the differences between land and water fishing in the Delta ... A marina extends pleasure onto the water. An inverted marina captures the pleasure of water for use from the land.
Ms. Mieling envisions creating a new cut off island from her peninsular site, then flooding the subsided island’s interior to make it navigable and constructing ring piers accessible from the levee with different fishing habitats within the rings.
Mieling also proposes the construction of a water education destination facility with four aquariums that show the Delta’s ecosystem in 1850, 1900, 1950 and 2000. Classrooms and a lecture hall, a swimming pool, bait shop. washrooms and bioremediating water treatment landscape would all be powered by photovoltaics.
The DNP, like Ms. Mieling, supports a more democratically conceived and occupied Delta future—one that is not entirely controlled by risk-averse technocrats, far-flung power centers and slippery legislators who think that their responsibilities can be more effectively adjudicated by the reptilian rules of the state’s proposition system.
We like a Delta future where lots of little girls can spend Saturdays fishing with their dads without threat of trespassing, and do not believe that such a future creates a risk for water security or supply.
The DNP is proud to announce the completion of the self-published Peak Water studio book.
From the back cover:
At any scale that it operates, design synthesizes the claims of competing interests. This premise is examined in the contested, fragile, technological, and below sea level Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region of California. The contents of this book are the results of a two-and-a-half week analysis exercise done by graduate architectural students at the University of British Columbia.
If anyone is interested, the book is available for purchasing at Lulu.com. It costs $41.50 USD (shipping is extra), which is the production cost - neither the DNP nor anyone else makes any money from this. Rather, the book is thought of as a public resource and reference.
It is 185 pages total, in full-color and organized as follows:
Intro
Geography (extents & limits, urbanism, infrastructure, buildings, ecosystems)
Energy (biofuels, water & waste water treatment, wind, sun)
Images (full color, 22 total)
The graphic design of the book was a labor of love for Carey van der Zalm, a member of the studio with a background in graphic design. She did a fantastic job!
Today’s vote on Jean Fuller’s (R-Bakersfield) AB 2336, otherwise known as the striped bass eradication bill, is yet another expression of the ironies at play in the Delta.
The bill turns the tables on sportfishing advocates, putting them on the defensive, shifting their legal expenditures to the defense of their beloved game fish and from threatened ones. Clever, those SJ/Antelope Valley folks. And now the Met is beginning to weigh in, too.
This drawing below, done by Peak Water studio student Angela Enman, is called “the tragedy,” but the story it tells is more an irony. Like the irony of a snipe and a clam.
The protagonist of the drawing, the Delta smelt, is a threatened fish indigenous to the Delta. The antagonist, the striper, who preys on the smelt fry as they try and make it out to the Bay.
Unfortunately, the out-migrating smelt are fooled by the immense pull of the State and Federal pumps at Tracy into thinking that downstream is in the direction of the redirected Delta water flow.
Since the fish are protected by environmental laws, the pumps are forced to work at reduced capacity so that the little creatures can make it out to the Bay. Needless to say, downstate water users are not very happy about this.
But the DNP has covered this particular narrative elsewhere, and instead wishes to redirect attention to the ironies of the relationship between smelt and striper.
For this we need to describe another way that the fish are protected, this time by environmental infrastructure, not policy.
Angela’s drawing describes the how the wayward smelt are captured by fish screens before they are ground into fertilizer by colossal pumps, measured by biologists, and put in a tank on the back of a truck.
They are then driven to a dock at Emmaton on Sherman Island, where they are dumped back into the Sacramento River at a place where the direction of downstream is not influenced by pumps or the Delta Cross Channel.
Like the Delta itself, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that doesn’t lead the smelt to extinction. The striper, whose Delta population has also declined in recent years, suggesting deep ecosystem problems given its hardiness, win!
In Garance Burke’s article in the Washington Post, we find the following from Lynda Resnick’s response to a journalist’s questions about a lawsuit alleging her families’ company has violated utilities law by making money from a vast, taxpayer-funded underground reservoir:
“We’ve done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden,” she said in the phone interview. “My husband should be canonized for all the work he’s done.”
Let’s think about that with a musical accompaniment, My Rights Versus Yours, by the New Pornographers:
Besides all of that work with pistachios, the Resnicks also managed to convince Dianne Feinstein to convince the National Academy of Sciences to commission a multi-million dollar review of Delta management policies and practices.
The DNP foresees that the commission’s as of yet incomplete work ultimately find nothing not already known. Its likely only product will be ambiguous findings that contribute new fodder to the dissonance to debate about what must be done.
But back to pistachios. What does doing lots for them and the Garden of Eden have to do with anything, anyway? For background, from the Garden of Eaden blog, we find that:
Pistachios - Pistacia vera. Native to Iran and adjacent areas, pistachios have been carbon-dated to 6760 BC. This nut of antiquity is one of two mentioned in the Old Testament. In fact its believed that pistachio trees were featured in the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. These gardens were built in around 700 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar as a way to cheer up his wife, Amytis, who found the flat Babylonian landscape dreary. These nuts are also mentioned in Genesis 43:11.
The DNP prefers another metaphorical reference to the Old Testament. Here is another close-knit couple, Adam and Eve, leaving after having too much forbidden fruit.
Did the Resnicks plant pistachios to make the San Joaquin Valley less dreary? Probably not. Follow the money.
This image sums up many of the tensions of the Delta.
A generically picturesque, hypnotically misleading image of a Delta moment.
Photographed by Carey van der Zalm at Trapper Slough, here is a mat of water hyacinth during its dormant season, a spooked egret that had been fishing atop the hyacinth mat, just taking off.
The egret is just availing itself of the situation it is presented. Like striped bass, water hyacinth is a species introduced into the Delta many decades ago for purposes of pleasure.
The egret, bass, and water hyacinth flourish there.
No one is after the opportunistic egret’s intuition to advantage its situation. Feel free.
On the other hand…
Striped bass are predatory (and vigorously protected) sport fisherman’s favorites that are in part responsible for the tenuous continued existence of indigenous fish species.
Water hyacinth is a prolific navigation-clogging but lovely ornamental plant that obliterates daylight to the fragile ecosystem that depends on it below. It has no advocates.
Welcome to the Delta, a complicated place that seems and looks so simple.
A gun has been put to your head - choose an infrastructure for southern Californians to steal your water before it entered the Delta - a peripheral canal, or a tunnel.
A clue to their answer is in a document they recently published via their lobby shop.
The Planning and Conservation League, supported by Delta advocates Dan Bacher and Restore the Delta, have recently published “8 Affordable Water Solutions for California,” (.pdf available at PCL website) that in part calls for a feasibility study of a 3000 cfs tunnel.
Since these are smart people and everything anyone smart does when it comes to advocacy is carefully crafted, the DNP infers that this is a signal that the various Delta advocacy groups would prefer a tunnel to a canal.
Sure, a 3000 cfs tunnel would be preferable to a 15,000 cfs tunnel(s), but in the end, this is the signal:
When push comes to shove, Delta advocates will come down on the side of a tunnel, not a canal.
This is because a tunnel will not require the same extent of eminent domain proceedings to wrest land from landowners along a potential canal route. A tunnel is a path of least resistance, good for Delta landowners, water exporters, and politicians.
This published position suggests the possibility that organizations like California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and journalists like Mr. Bacher are first and foremost concerned about their recreation space, not endangered fish and ecosystem quality.
How does one come to this conjecture? Ask yourself this: is a tunnel better for endangered fish, or is a peripheral canal? Let’s go ahead and make it a 3000 cfs peripheral canal apples to apples situation, if you’d like.
The pro-Delta argument is that removing a significant portion of the Delta’s freshwater inflow will inevitably lead to ecosystem degradation because of greater salt water intrusion and a larger proportion of poorer quality San Joaquin River water in the Delta.
That will happen for sure if a tunnel is built. But not necessarily a canal. This is due to the likely location of each.
A tunnel would be constructed along an ‘as the crow flies’ path. A canal would circumnavigate the Delta at its eastern perimeter.
Certainly, a tunnel would be less of a tool for humans attempting to manage the distribution of fresh water through the Delta’s waterways. Unlike the tunnel, a peripheral canal could be a critical tool for ecosystem management.
Both explicitly and implicitly, CSPA, Mr. Bacher, and RTD are sending a message - let us keep our striped bass and our land, and we might let you have at least 3000 cfs of our water.
I do not believe the statements of any so-called “scientist” who takes money from the government. The enviro-nazi fraud movement has totally captured these people and uses threats and intimidation to force their “findings”, all of which curiously support the government’s takeover of private property rights. It’s clear that liberal fascists believe that they, through their illegitimate government, own the land, the water, and the air, which they graciously allow citizens to rent in order to pay tribute through taxes. Isn’t it time to progress from this feudalism to a more civilized free society with private property rights? We need a Magna CArta to free ourselves from the enviro-nazi fraud nobility.
The body of scientists DemoQueda refers to were implicitly commissioned with the hope that there was wriggle room around environmental laws so that SJV farmers could extract more Delta water.
The DNP wonders what DemoQueda, who is clearly a reactionary, would have thought if the conclusions of the Delta NAS panel had swung his/her way.
Like so many others of DemoQueda’s worldview, one wonders if he/she drives on roads, eats safe food and drinks clean water.
DemoQueda’s behavior is typical of the right these days. Refuse any compromise, whine when things don’t go your way and use dangerous, inflammatory, scapegoating rhetoric to explain the situation to anyone who will listen.
This is because Rep. Nunes saw an opportunity to score political points by making unsubstantiated claims of deal making SJV Democrats on water supply and health care votes.
Shouldn’t Rep. Nunes be thanking his SJV “Democrat” colleagues for their clever negotiating tactics? Of course, when you see the world in the black and white dogma of DemoQueda and Rep. Nunes, then the answer is simple - no!
From the Stockton Record:
“It makes absolutely no sense for federal agencies to continue proposing water pumping restrictions that harm the residents and businesses of California while they simultaneously take separate actions that further worsen the health of the Delta,” coalition spokesman Michael Boccadoro said in a statement.
The DNP knows that Mr. Boccadoro’s experimental forays into “Grassroots and Grasstops Organization,” “Coalition Development” and “Issues Management” take time and cost money, so luckily his clients get lots of it for free.
The Westlands Water District has signed a lease with a private investment group as part of an effort to explore a 5,000 megawatt solar power plant on up to 30,000 acres of land. The project could provide enough power for 2.5 to 4 million California homes.
The DNP applauds Westlands for beginning to find new ways to think about how to create wealth in their district. We also thank WWD for providing the opportunity to use an image from Gattaca, with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman strolling in the solar farm.
New Sky Energy, a Boulder-based startup, has a plan to make money out of thin air. Using basic electrochemical technology and waste salts, New Sky aims to create compounds that suck carbon dioxide from the air.
The “carbonates” created can be used in making a variety of products, such as glass, resins and building materials.
“It is known chemistry we are using differently,” said New Sky’s founder and chief executive, Deane Little.
New Sky and the Westland Water District in Fresno, Calif., are set to announce a joint venture using the technology to build a $3.2 million pilot plant to turn salty drainage water into marketable products.
“We are the largest agricultural district in the country, and we are always looking at new technology because we have limited water resources,” said Sarah Woolf, a Westland Water District spokeswoman.
“This is one of the most promising and positive technologies we’ve seen,” she said.
After observing their behavior for a while now, one of the things one comes to sense about the folks in the WWD is that they are bold.
Sometimes, that boldness expresses itself as attempts to bully, with invites to Sean Hannity to come megaphone the District’s water woes on Fox News.
Other times, the behavior expresses itself in anti-Endangered Species Act strategems, like hiring senators to change laws in ill-considered ways. This is the Bad Westlands.
The Good Westlands is the one that thinks laterally and creatively, not belligerently or anti-democratically. Their recent initiatives demonstrate that new and profitable spatial products can be reaped out of their abundant and abundantly toxic domain.
Let’s hope both initiatives are not too good to be true.
For the unslakable San Joaquin Valley westside water interests and their representatives, logic is a rhetorical art, not necessarily grounded in reason or reasonable extrapolation.
Their logic goes something like this: “The predicament of endangered fish in the Delta has gotten worse since we started limiting water exports, therefore we should stop limiting water exports.”
Rhetorical strategies like this profoundly destabilize public discourse. They are also very effective.
Yet despite their ability to command the agenda of our government through powerful alliances in Congress, none of the endangered fish have shown signs of recovery. Actually, more species are in danger today than when the water diversions started, according to the EPA.
The DNP is glad that images can be rhetorical, too - we wish to congratulate the congressman on his election to the Pretzel Hall of Fame:
The DNP wishes that Rep. Nunes would just come out in support of species genocide.
Other recent applications of the rhetorical logic of the right:
“An environmentally-protected two-inch bait fish is causing water to be wasted, and that’s why there are food lines in Mendota.”
“There was a huge snowstorm in Washington, D.C., therefore global warming is a myth and we shouldn’t regulate carbon-based industries or institute cap and trade policies.”
Despite ballast water depositing invasive clams (e.g.) from Manila in the Delta’s waterways, most of the Delta’s ecosystem problems are caused on land. Those involved in Delta-Cal water issues are familiar with the question of who is responsible for the Delta ecosystem’s failing state.
The answer is “pretty much everyone.” Discharge from urban wastewater treatment facilities ringing the Delta make their contribution.
Students in the Peak Water Studio looked at the question of wastewater in the Delta in two different ways. In the first, they simply mapped the locations, capacities and spills of the various water treatment facilities around the Delta. Stockton’s, apparently, is particularly offensive.
Students also developed a way to think about how Delta agriculture could treat its irrigation discharge water prior to pumping it back into the Delta’s rivers and sloughs. In this solution, 1/7th of each Delta island would be converted to bio-remediating water treatment landscapes, with the rest remaining as farmland.
The students further argue that the increase in habitat would strengthen habitat corridors and help stabilize the Delta’s land-based ecosystem.
As one might expect, a majority of commenters were opposed to the idea of a Delta national park. What is interesting, though, is the lazy dogma of many of the comments. It is an open question whether these folks have the capacity to express rational opinions or just opinions. The DNP could find only one rational (as opposed to ideological, interest-based) comment opposed to the idea of the park:
tomatoman1 wrote on 03/06/2010 10:58:03 AM:
Seems to me that bringing in more people, hotels and housing, and ferries is a bad idea in such a fragile environment.
This is an argument that the DNP respects and respectfully disagrees with. It is basically the argument put forth by the risk-averse, people like Jeffrey Mount at UC Davis and the PPIC’s water experts. The argument might be equally apt in the risky setting of cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles. Nevertheless, it is a clear, principled position uncontaminated by paranoia, NIMBY-ism, anti-government, or xenophobic irrationality.
DeltaGirl2 wrote on 03/07/2010 07:42:38 AM:
“Don’t like overheated rhetoric on any side. My blog makes that pretty clear. Not a big fan of Restore the Delta, Dan Bacher, CSPA, and their nimby preservationist argument either. H**l, I even support in principle the peripheral canal, provided it can be proven to help stabilize the Delta’s ecosystem’s problems.” John Bass, aka deltanationalpark, found here: http://aguanomics.com/2010/01/farming-politicians-instead-of-crops.html It certainly seems like the “neutral” deltanationalpark prof. has a horse in the California Water Race.
Restore the Delta, Dan Bacher, and California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance work tirelessly to defend the Delta, endangered salmon, and to protect the community of the Delta. This past legislative session’s middle of the night passing of special interest water bills, and the $11.4 BILLION bond voters are going to be asked to ok (as if) showed how much Sacramento cares for Delta and local Northern California interests-zilch!
Meanwhile, Westlands Water District, Metropolitan Water District, Nature Conservancy had a shopping spree buying up properties in the Yolo bypass, and Delta—for what? Water rights, obviously, and to “mitigate” damages if they get their peripheral canal or pipe the size of the Chunnel built to draw more and more water away from the Delta, resulting in more endangered fish killed—and we have an Architecture Professor from British Columbia pushing “Delta National Park” in the Sacramento Bee?
Curiouser, and curiouser.
That’s right, the Sacramento Bee, the Met, the Nature Conservancy, and the royal me, known as the DNP, have teamed up to bring you $11.4 BILLION worth of ag and SoCal greed. Please note, Delta Girl2, the word “provided” in your citation of my Aguanomics comment. It’s an important word, meaning “if.”
If DeltaGirl2 is essentially of a NIMBY preservationist persuasion (as are many of the comments), then jbhunt offers a fine example of anti-government, anti-spending irrationality, the other major expression of good ‘ol California political dysfunction:
jbhunt wrote on 03/06/2010 07:41:16 PM:
Why not! The Government is taking over everything else! Our money,banks,car companies,health care just to name a few. What not take the land away from the families,that in some cases,have been living on for generations! What’s really scary is that some people think this is a good idea! Be very careful the government will someday want something you own!
jbhunt, just curious - do you drive on roads? Drink clean water and eat safe food? Go to school once? Did you know that the state already pays a substantial proportion of Delta levee maintenance through subvention programs? Shall we bring Bureau of Reclamation agricultural water subsidies into the discussion, jbhunt?
jbhunt, et al, did you all just ignore the section of the SacBee article that said that the DNP proposes that only the levees would become publicly owned, and not the land they protect nor the development rights to the levee edge?
Finally, to Ruth Gottstein: the DNP says thanks for getting it:
ruthgottstein wrote on 03/06/2010 04:13:00 AM:
Yes, yes, yes! The proximity alone to Sacramento, San Francisco and other urban areas make this an incredible location. It’s hard to believe that such a magnificent area has been unexplored and undeveloped in the fashion in which the study proposes.
The Delta’s unique and difficult soil conditions have brought about the invention of notable machines and implements.
Invented near Stockton was the Holt Caterpillar, the world’s first crawler-type tractor. The invention of its continuous track allowed machines to move through the Delta’s mucky soils.
Rio Vista’s Lloyd Schmidt and his welding buddies gave the world the first sugar beet harvester. The harvester was the result of just the right progressive curve banged into a 20-penny nail. A drawing from the patent application:
The world’s first mechanical beet harvester, invented by Delta blacksmiths.
The DNP has discovered that a new piece of equipment, the Combine Ferry, is being developed by designer Scott Keck that brings together two new Delta-specific needs: the movement of people around the Delta’s waterways, and the harvesting of invasive water hyacinth. Here is a schematic drawing of the device:
Part waterborne corn chopper, part party boat, the combine ferry will lead a busy life in the Delta.
Via @stopperipheral, perhaps the most dedicated Delta issues twitterer, comes news of this announcement of an in-Delta water transfer by the owners of Webb Tract.
Turns out it wasn’t a new policy. At the website, we found a notice for an earlier Delta Wetlands Project water transfer application, dated December 31, 2008. The Webb/Bouldin application proposed to transfer 17, 941 acre-feet of water to the Met from May to September 2009. The Webb tract application is to transfer 4,500 acre feet. Add a year, same time and place.
The DWP owns Webb Tract, Bouldin and Bacon Islands, and most of Holland Tract. They are trying to make some money, and clearly there is more money in selling water than corn.
Anyway, the SWRCB website is a really rich source of information. The DNP found, within a minute, this paper on Delta ecosystem investments by the folks at U.C. Davis Delta Solutions Program.
This paper provides background for discussion on prioritizing ecosystem investments in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Ecosystem investments involve the allocation and expenditure of financial resources, land, and water to improve ecosystem attributes, principally to support desirable plant and animal species. A framework using ten ecological criteria is provided for organizing these investments into a portfolio (or into regional portfolios) that can guide investment prioritization and timing. This framework is meant to be used in conjunction with non-ecological criteria, also presented. This portfolio contains 34 potential investments that are drawn mostly from the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program Conservation Strategy, and the Delta Regional Ecosystem Restoration and Implementation Plan. Means to prioritize these investments are discussed.
Check out the appendix, which gives a breakdown of the ecosystem investment potential of 34 sites in the Delta. The breakdown is detailed, and revealing. The DNP was surprised to learn that Bacon Island, for example
...will be used as a water storage facility. It also has the potential to be utilized as a rearing habitat for species requiring open water habitat. Such an investment meets the needs of improving water supply while potentially assisting species of concern in the Delta.
Bacon Island, which the DWP wants to make a reservoir, has been the subject of 20 years of public hearings and environmental review. It may become a reservoir. To continue with Bacon Island:
If the flooded island were to become inhabited by invasive species it could easily be drained and repopulated with desirable species again.
Or alternatively, repopulated with invasive species. Since when did “invasive” and “desirable” become mutually exclusive categories, by the way? For many, including the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the invasive striped bass is something to preserve. It isn’t clear why the invasive/desirable point is even relevant.
Bacon Island’s management policy has changed recently. No trespassing on the island is now enforced. The DWP has gone to plan B for entering the water development market. Stakes high.
Here’s UC Davis on Dead Horse Island, just north of Giusti’s:
Love that phrase, “shovel-ready.” And, just for good measure, since their “levees failed repeatedly,” let’s get it over with and “breach” this island’s levees for keeps. Any wonder why people in the Delta don’t like the UC Davis folks and their black-and-white view of the Delta’s future?
The UC Davis program and the Delta Wetlands Project are glimpses into two different futures of the Delta.
In the Davis future, the Delta is turned into a landscape of breached levees, brackish water and managed habitats.
In the DWP future, the Delta is a landscape made of equal parts polders turned reservoirs and polders turned mitigating managed habitat.
The two are mutually exclusive, since polder reservoirs collecting brackish water have no value in the water market.
Delta Wetlands has now more than once fallowed its fields in order to sell their water to the Met. Since water is only getting more valuable and land getting harder to maintain, surely this is a sign of the future. Unless, that is, Delta landowners develop and are allowed to develop other sources of income and exchange.
As the water transfers precedent set by the Delta Wetlands Project suggests, the Delta’s land-owning corporate interests are interested in developing water. That is not the only development scenario available to the region. Work together folks.
The Delta is a risk landscape, for sure. Among the things the DNP website was created to do is to disseminate information (and opinion, true) and educate those who need it about the causes and future implications of those risks.
For example, too often one sees the argument put forth that if the levees were breached the Delta could return to its pre-reclamation estuary state. It couldn’t.
If the levees were breached, most of the Delta would become a twenty-foot deep brackish sea. It would take centuries, if not millennia, of deposition before the Delta’s land rose to be a tidal swampy ecosystem.
Another example, more a concern actually, is that if a tunnel or peripheral canal bypassed the Delta, then there would be no public impulse to maintain the Delta’s fragile ecosystem.
Given the brackish sea implication of levee failure, it is important to understand that in the Delta, ecosystems are really infrastructure, not nature. This is why the “co-equal goals” principle has to throw lots of money at ecosystem repair - because here, to repair ecosystem is to build infrastructure. Not to breach a few levees.
But when push comes to shove, is “co-equal” a principle that will hold? The DNP has its doubts, and new polling suggest they might be confirmed
Since Proposition 13 was passed all those years ago, the state’s voters record on taxing themselves to pay for things they need isn’t exactly forward-thinking
If Senator Feinstein’s recent public statements are any indication of what happens when push comes to shove regarding federal environmental law, one might extrapolate that a brackish-sea-Delta future awaits. Westlands may be the first victim, but it probably won’t be the last, either.
The death of a species first, then of a strange and beautiful landscape.
While in the Delta last month, the Peak Water studio had an encounter with a ship. A big ship, as the two-story headquarters building at Windmill Cove Marina (at far right of image below) gives us a scale to judge “big” by:
A big ship, about 60 miles as the crow flies from the Golden Gate, on the San Joaquin River. Seeing it was a real treat for the studio. The experience really drove home important questions about the diversity of ways that the Delta already works. And the issues that it faces, of course…
This ship is its way to the inland Port of Stockton, exporter of rice, grains, sulfur, and petroleum coke, importer of cement, animal feed, liquid bulk fertilizer, and (yikes) anhydrous ammonia.
Although flagged in Panama, the ship may have come from somewhere across the Pacific. Ships like this have made major contributions to the types of invasive species that now call the Delta home. Dumping their ballast water when getting ready to take on cargo, the ships also dump the inhabitants of far away watery places.
Globalization is about the migration of all things.
The ship also clearly indicates another reason to be engaged with, fascinated by, concerned about, and in the DNP’s opinion, loyal to, this Delta place. Look at how much higher the ship rides in the water than is the land on the adjacent Wright Tract:
What the image shows is a dead flat landscape. What it doesn’t show is the land-side slope of the Wright Tract levee, and the something on the order of thirty-foot elevation difference it absorbs. A detail of the above, just to help the viewer imagine what is going on here:
From the bottom of the polder its seems as if boats go by, floating in the air.
For a feed of research, commentary, and policy related to California’s water debate, visit Aquafornia.
As the DNP has said before, the website, put together by Aqua Blog Maven and the Water Education Foundation, makes an important contribution to public discourse.
Aquafornia makes information available - articles, positions, events and opinions on issues related to water in California, and sometimes beyond California.
An example of the latter is Aquafornia’s post of this article in the Wall Street Journal about a huge moral and environmental issue facing the Great Lakes region.
California doesn’t have a monopoly on water problems. Aquafornia gets that.
Via David Zeibin, DNP webmaster genius, check out this video clip put together by Orange County.
The Orange County Water District’s Groundwater Replenishment System takes treated sewer water and purifies it to the highest water quality available.
Despite the demographic represented (is the O.C. really that white?), it is impressive to see not only the technology used but also the fact that the policy was implemented so long ago.
The proximity of the Pacific to the O.C.‘s groundwater basin forced the hand of the county to counteract saltwater intrusion by investing tens of millions of dollars in water treatment and groundwater injection facilities.
Facilities like this cost money, and this is reflected in the rates the county’s citizens pay for water.
From the aptly named RangeFire blog, Tim Findley has an articulate version of the right’s take on the reasons for the collapse of the Delta ecosystem and the economy of the San Joaquin Valley.
It’s the bully lawyers at the Environmental Defense Fund:
The next political move is up to Feinstein, not facing re-election this year and thus arguably the most powerful politician in the state. That is, if you don’t count the unelected, and unaccountable environmentalist bullies who know better than anybody.
The DNP is satisfied that bully lawyers representing dead bird embryos poisoned by selenium-rich agricultural drainage in the San Joaquin Valley’s west side and two-inch fish in the Delta is a noble and just work.
It’s unfortunate, too, Mr. Findley’s reactionary position, because some things he writes make sense. But typical of the right, he calls a foul when the bullying being done by their bullies doesn’t win the day.
What about those economist bullies at the University of the Pacific who did an unemployment analysis of the San Joaquin Valley? You know, the one that doesn’t correspond to the myth that lack of irrigation water is the primary culprit for the Valley’s unemployment problems?
But the DNP does agree with Mr. Findley on one thing: farmers in the SJV are not entirely to blame for the collapse of the Delta ecosystem. On the Public Record elaborates.
Agreed that the wastewater treatment facilities of Tracy, Stockton, Sacramento, and Lodi, primarily, need to be significantly upgraded so that this doesn’t happen. Pollution entering the Delta via the region’s urban wastewater treatment centers does beg the question, however - what about upstream communities of Modesto, Fresno, etc.? What are they dumping into the San Joaquin?
The problems of the San Joaquin Valley’s economy, like the Delta’s ecosystem, are caused by many things. They are systemic problems, tied to population growth, scarcity, greed, indifference, and unknown factors.
Finally, extending to Mr. Findley an olive branch, the DNP points out that Sacramento isn’t above lawyering up when it comes to its own culpability regarding ammonia discharges into the Delta . Won’t Mr. Findley just admit that no interest group is above lawyering up?
So don’t get the DNP started on Westlands and selenium, the gift that keeps on giving. Those folks have lawyers, too - don’t they?
On a recent trip to the Delta, the Peak Water studio crew saw this truck parked on Locke’s main drag:
As always, big government is the opponent, except when it isn’t.
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s announcement yesterday that she would be attaching a rider to a jobs bill being fast-tracked through congress is a sign of a politician acting on the behalf of a desperate constituency.
From the Fresno Bee:
I believe we need a fair compromise that will respect the Endangered Species Act while recognizing the fact that people in California’s breadbasket face complete economic ruin without help.
Her solution, extrapolated from her actions? The Endangered Species Act needs to be de-fanged, made more compromising. Endangered species will understand her conversion.
Feinstein’s statement no doubt rallied the many besieged San Joaquin Valley interests, including Tom Birmingham, the Westlands’ pit bull.
Sen. Feinstein’s new strategy comes on the heels of her key role in the creation of a National Academy of Sciences panel established to determine the “sustainability” of water and ecosystem management in the Delta. Optics suggest she might have been prompted by Westlands pomegranate farmers.
But back to her decision to threaten to attach a rider to a national jobs bill: That Sen. Feinstein would offer up such a political strategy is a sign of increasingly impatient, aggressive and historically contradictory behavior on the part of the Northern California Democrat, and/or her San Joaquin Valley/Southern California constituents.
It is a sign of the effects of scarcity on Cal Water’s constantly forming and fracturing coalitions and constituencies.
It is a sign that the Delta NAS panel may not be headed toward a set of conclusions that support the hope of Sen. Feinstein and those who convinced her to push for a counter view of standing biological opinions.
In many ways, her behavior is an attempt to find a way to adjudicate a complicated problem.
But unlike the measured political decisions of the Environmental Defense Fund, who are not very happy with Feinstein’s new strategem, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both of whom supported this fall’s “co-equal goals” legislation, somewhat against their history and identity, Feinstein’s latest act is impulsive.
Sen. Feinstein’s impatience, if indeed she follows though on the implications of the quote above, may drive both environmental groups back into the fold, and California to its most divisive water positioning ever.
Peak water studio 4: Birds in hand and birds in bushes
The Peak Water studio has completed the site selection and concept phase of their work.
As a group, the students agreed on a few criteria for site selection:
1/ All sites will be on the Large Owner Axis of islands, stretching from Staten Island south to Victoria Island.
This site strategy reinforces the vision of a highly connected in-Delta tourist space overlayed on current land uses.
2/ All sites will be peninsular - that is, the group has chosen peninsula-like sites within the islands, but which were likely considered for being cut off during reclamation. If they had been cut off, they would today be among the Delta?s channel islands.
This site strategy produces relatively intimate space, at least by the standards of the horizontally extensive Delta landscape, and does so for the least amount of infrastructure investment.
3/ The peninsular sites will now be cut off with demonstration project setback levees.
This site strategy has the following benefits:
a/ increased flood plain and flood protection;
b/ increased tidal estuary and other types of habitat;
c/ new economic development sites for landowners to recoup some of the expense of the setback levee infrastructure.
The map below locates each of the twelve sites, the name of the student working on it and the title of their investigation.
The projects will all be designed to function locally, meaning that each will need to provide for its own energy (solar, wind, biofuel, etc.) sources and wastewater treatment on site.
Projects span a wide range of functional and topical agendas. From north to south, they are:
The DNP has been collecting aerial views of the various gardens of the Delta.
There are many of them. Some have a purpose that can be surmised simply by looking at an aerial view; others are more enigmatic, but no less compelling.
Below are a few examples of Delta gardens - but before them, since the DNP wishes to emphasize the possibility of public access to the Delta’s levees, let’s place the Delta’s gardens in the arc of garden history vis-a-vis their private-to-public evolution.
Many of the great gardens in Europe began as the enclave of a noble family surrounded by farmland. Here is a plan of the manor at Bonnelles (Yvelines), from Mosser and Tessyot:
“The garden and the old chateau on its medieval platform, early eighteenth century.”
The functional definition of the landscape? Fields surrounding the manor house and village.
But by the end of the eighteenth century, here is “[t]he garden after the reconstruction of the chateau and the filling in of the moat, late eighteenth century; detail of the royal hunting reserves.”
There are the forms of French axial symmetry, but note the paths cutting across the forest - and imagine a member of the court, armed with a musket or something, standing along one of them, waiting for a deer to cross. You get the idea.
The Bois de Boulogne, today one of the most loved public spaces in Paris, once was a royal hunting ground. From Jellicoe:
[T]he city was criss-crossed with avenues that resembled the traditional hunting rides, except that the quarry was man and not beast. The original Bois de Boulogne, which had been such a forest, complete with rond-points, was transformed in 1852 in the English Picturesque style.
So later, after the revolution, when things settled down:
The English Picturesque style is among the ways that people still envision Nature, even though it is artificial.
So, what about this incredible labor of love just east of Staten Island, on Brack Tract?
An entirely artificial “natural” habitat garden.
Here, at the southeast corner of Bouldin Island, is some frozen nature overlooking two landscapes scoured out of the peat soil by two flood events: A washout garden lookout.
And, speaking of washout gardens, what could this be, on tiny Quimby Island?
The DNP likes to think it is a par three driving range. But enigmatic is this collection of islands set among the riparian landscape caused by a levee breach. Perhaps the purpose of its form may have something to do with a gradual process of reclamation after the flood.
On Venice Island, the DNP suspects that a similar project of gradual reclamation or stabilization underlies the visually curious picture we see here. This appears to be a drainage garden:
And finally, on the appropriately French-named Mandeville Island, there is a hunting garden cut through orderly rows of something cultivated. The island is a playpen of the wealthy owners of the Tuscany Research Institute, dedicated to creating habitat for the pintail duck:
Remember, in French garden history, hunting grounds began as royal enclaves, but ultimately became beloved public parks.
The Peak Water studio has just returned from a four-day field research trip to the Delta.
Among the most significant findings of the trip was that conventional definitions of public and private do not apply there.
Thankfully.
Here is the No Trespassing sign at the Macdonald Island Bridge, an entirely clear indication of private rights.
Similar signs can be found on most of the islands of the Large Owner Axis, the site of the Peak Water studio’s exploration.
But the actual enforcement of the private property right to keep people off of private land is not consistently employed.
Our research trip experienced the Delta’s ambiguous public/private space regulations firsthand. Despite the DNP’s decade-plus experience with
Bacon Island’s previous reasonable access policy, we were forced to leave the island by a security guard wearing a sidearm.
Bacon Island is one of four islands comprising the Delta Wetlands Project, a private water development project that for almost twenty years has been seeking approval to develop roughly 40,000 acres into equal parts managed habitat and water reservoir.
Only recently the DWP’s policy of allowing people to fish from their levee banks must have changed. Despite the common and generous practice of other private landowners who allow people to fish from their levee banks, Bacon’s owners have become less generous. That is, of course, their right.
Here are a few images of people we saw fishing from Lower Jones Tract, just to the east of Bacon Island:
That image, of a dad and his daughter is beautiful, and so is the thought that here, in the Delta, four lawn chairs occupied by four kids with fishing poles, can be welcome.
Bonus points: Here are a couple of teenagers biking on the Jones Tract levee. The Delta’s future, right there.
Can we agree that none of the above are a threat to anyone or anything?
The DNP wonders why the generous policy of access to Bacon Island has been scrapped. Further, the DNP wonders if it is fair that the owners of islands that receive public funding subsidies and rivers of essentially free water to maintain their levees can then in turn deny the public access to those same levees.
Hoping to get folks in the Westlands Water District salivating between apoplectic fits of rage, here’s a river of water flowing onto an island of the Large Owner Axis:
The people one sees on the banks of the Delta’s levees fishing and enjoying each others’ company seem to be average working class people. They arrive in a variety of social groupings, from families to buddies to dads with daughters.
The generic and open system of levee infrastructure is a perfect mechanism for simple pleasures like fishing with friends and family. We experienced how, on an atypically sunny and warm Saturday in January, the Delta fills with working class people enjoying themselves.
Such an experience only reinforces a larger belief that the value of the Delta cannot be reduced to fish, or water, or risk, or any number of other abstract policy talking points. The Delta’s open and generous landscape transcends these policies, and returns to the simple question of its future human potential.
The DNP proposes:
1. That the land of the Delta remain almost entirely privately owned. Make the levees the responsibility of government to upgrade, but their development rights are retained by the property owners. Radically reinforce the levees, as they are doing on Jones Tract. Reduce significantly the threat of flooding and seismic event.
2. Open up the entire Delta’s levee system to the movement and enjoyment of people. Build light ferry systems to help them get around, and develop commercial, agricultural and public facilities to augment the experience and help pay for the cost of upgrading the levees.
![[Delta National Park] Home](data:image/gif;base64,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)
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