California’s water crisis could be on the verge of getting a good deal worse.
In a potentially significant setback for a system already stressed by epic drought, California regulators have ordered a temporary curb in the flows being released from Lake Shasta in order to protect an endangered species of salmon.
Farmers and others said the immediate impact of the 10-day cutback, ordered late last week by the State Water Resources Control Board, is tolerable. But they expressed concern at a water board hearing Tuesday that the curtailments could go deeper, and last much longer. That could bring significant harm to agriculture and even some municipalities.
The unexpected hiccup underscores the fragility of California’s water system as the state tries to cope with a fourth year of drought. Concerns about declining fish populations have prompted wildlife officials to haul hundreds of thousands of salmon, trout and steelhead to cooler climes in the past year.
Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the state water board, said regulators are struggling to strike a balance between the environment, agriculture and other interests. “We don’t get to say, ‘Oh, forget the fish,’ or ‘Oh, forget the water supply,’ ” Marcus said.
State and federal officials acknowledged that reducing flows from Shasta already has caused turmoil among California’s water users.
“There’s a lot of anxiety from a water supply standpoint,” said Ron Milligan, operations manager with the federal government’s Central Valley Project, or CVP. “From Redding to Bakersfield, we’ve got a lot of people interested.”
Shasta is the largest reservoir in the CVP, the massive man-made plumbing system that moves water throughout the state, primarily north to south.
Aubrey Bettencourt, executive director of the California Water Alliance, an advocacy group based in the San Joaquin Valley, said she fears the state water board is considering “a complete cutoff of pumping from Northern California for at least two months this summer.”
But Tom Howard, the board’s executive director, said he won’t know for a while how deeply the state will have to curb outflows from Shasta. The revised plan “is meant to be as reasonable as we can make it,” he said.
Still, there’s probably no easy fix for the Shasta situation, and the impacts could be widespread.
Advocates for the state’s salmon industry welcomed the decision. John McManus of the Golden Gate Salmon Association said the $1.4 billion-a-year industry lost the vast majority of its young fish last year and was fearing a repeat.
“What’s important is we don’t lose a second year,” he said.
Farm groups, however, said the salmon problems are creating enormous complications for them. Water districts south of the Delta, already facing a total cutoff of Central Valley Project deliveries this year, have negotiated significant purchases of water from Sacramento Valley farmers who have better supplies. But those deals, worth tens of millions of dollars, could be negated if the Sacramento Valley farmers don’t get as much water from Shasta as they were anticipating.
Restricting releases from Lake Shasta will cause officials to increase releases from Folsom Lake, which supplies much of the Sacramento region’s water. Letting more water out of Folsom Lake could threaten local water supplies.
“When you look upstream, there is no snow” to sustain the lake this summer, Lorance said. “It’s going to hit down here.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article22926591.html