Posted by admin on October 19th, 2009 |
0 commentsIt’s Fish vs. Lawns, Not North vs. South
New York Times-10/18/09
By Daniel Weintraub
Anyone who has flown in an airplane above California’s vast Central
Valley has seen them: two canals snaking north to south, carrying Sierra
Nevada snowmelt to thirsty farms and cities via the sprawling
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Northern California natives are raised to scowl at these channels and
the supposedly rapacious, wasteful, environmentally insensitive Southern
Californians they supply.
But the federal government’s Central Valley Project and the California
Aqueduct are not the only straws sucking water from the Delta or
diverting the Sierra’s liquid bounty from its natural path to the sea.
Residents of seven of the nine Bay Area counties – all but Sonoma and
Marin – draw much of their water from the same source. On their behalf,
rivers have been dammed and majestic gorges inundated.
To keep them in showers and sprinklers, hundreds of miles of pipeline
has been built to move water around or from the Delta, which scientists
say has been pushed to the brink of ecological collapse.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have been haggling
behind closed doors for months seeking a historic agreement to make
California’s water supply more reliable while restoring and preserving
the Delta and its wildlife habitat.
Some in the Bay Area fear that the true aim of these talks is to allow
construction of a new canal to send still more water south for farmers
to grow crops in the desert and Angelenos to fill their pools and wash
their BMWs.
But Bay Area interests have been fighting as hard as anyone to protect
their right to pull water from the Delta and the rivers that feed it.
It is no accident that a key player in the water talks is State Senator
Joe Simitian,. a Democrat from Palo Alto. He represents the Silicon
Valley, where the pharmaceutical and computer chip industries depend on
a reliable supply of clean water for their research, development and
manufacturing. They are working feverishly to guard the valley’s supply.
“Historically, people have characterized this as a north-south issue,”
Mr. Simitian said last week in an interview. “But the fact of the matter
is a significant portion of the water for the district I represent comes
right out of the Delta.”
Or, as the Senate leader, Darrell Steinberg, put it: “The whole Northern
California versus Southern California frame is so 1980s. It’s different
now.”
Indeed, Mr. Steinberg laments he has spent too much time lately fending
off attacks from the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
Unless you pay your monthly water bill to this agency known as East Bay
MUD, you have probably never heard of it. It serves 1.3 million thirsty
customers. Eighty years ago, the district built a dam on the Mokelumne
River in the Sierra foothills, creating Pardee Reservoir, then built the
90-mile Mokelumne Aqueduct to carry its captured Sierra runoff. Now the
district is contemplating a big expansion that would inundate a scenic
section of the river to serve future growth.
Just like the water that goes south to Los Angeles, the water that
residents drink in Oakland, Berkeley and Walnut Creek would flow into
the Delta and help to keep fish alive had it not been diverted.
The same is true of San Francisco, which blocked the Tuolumne River
nearly 100 years ago, filled Hetch Hetchy Valley and uses the water for
itself and cities on the Peninsula.
A key issue in this fight is whether Bay Area residents from San
Francisco to Fremont should give up some water to preserve the Delta’s
ecosystem. Randy Kanouse, a Sacramento lobbyist who represents East Bay
MUD, says that if that happens, more water rationing will surely follow.
“When you make conservation a permanent way of life and all of your
customers take the waste out of their household and business use,” Mr.
Kanouse said, “there’s no more excess water they can give up.
Consumers will have to let their lawns die, their landscapes die, and
business customers will have to cut production. If the Mokelumne River
has to have more water kept in the river to flow into the Delta, it’s a
virtual certainty that rationing will be more frequent and deeper than
it is today.”
Forgive Mr. Kanouse if he sounds like a thirsty Southern Californian.
He, too, has water interests to protect. Yes, this fight might be part
north versus south. But there is a western front that extends all the
way to the Golden Gate.#
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/science18sfpolitics.html?_r=1
During the wet season, the city of L.A. sends 100 million gallons of stormwater into the Pacific each day. That water had, for many years, been handled as pollution, since the water produced in rainstorms picks up various effluents that then flush into the ocean.