California: From drought to deluge
County official push for water storage, saying Delta is losing out on recent rainfall
Take one look out at the Mokelumne River today and you might see the flows are fast and high out on the water. All of the recent rains have created an abundance of water in Northern California, but there’s nowhere to store it all.
The Delta Counties Coalition, represented by San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties, is now arguing that if the state continues to focus on the $15 billion Twin Tunnels project, it will keep missing opportunities to invest in more cost-efficient and sustainable solutions like surface and groundwater storage.
Currently along the Mokelumne River, Pardee Reservoir is still holding 101 percent of capacity and spilling over into Camanche Reservoir.
Camanche sits at 60 percent of capacity as East Bay Municipal Utility District works to maintain enough room to protect against potential flooding. A year ago to date, the reservoir wasn’t even half as full.
Since the last round of big storms, EBMUD has reduced flows out of Camanche down the Mokelumne River to 4,009 cubic feet per second from the maximum 5,000 cfs.
While the Woodbridge Irrigation District officially does not have a position on the tunnels plan, water manager Andy Christensen said that an expansion of reservoirs and additional storage in groundwater basins would be a huge plus for the future.
This year’s storms have generated a whole year’s supply of water in just six days, Christensen said.
“The Twin Tunnels, from my perspective of a water manager, creates problems,” he said. “It misses the mark.” They would only be diverting water to another area and wouldn’t be helping us with our own water issues, he said.
Holding a similar opinion of the plan was Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, a grassroots campaign that advocates for water management decisions that promote sustainability and health of the Delta.
“In a nutshell, restoring groundwater and reservoirs is essential to solving California’s water needs,” Barrigan-Parrilla said.
However, she puts more emphasis on groundwater restoration, saying that reservoirs are prone to evaporation and can be much more costly than groundwater projects.
There is also concern in her organization that some dam projects being discussed in other parts of California are tied to the tunnels project. With talk of raising the Shasta Dam, she is also concerned that the home of an entire Native American tribe, the Winnemen Wintu, would be completely destroyed.
Water storage is not something only environmentalists and water managers are concerned with.
Locals in the agriculture business are paying close attention to what may happen to the Delta, as it has served for countless decades as a premier place to farm with it’s access to good water and soil.
Joe Valente, a local farmer and member of the board of directors of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau Federation, believes that the Twin Tunnels are a threat to local agriculture, especially during a situation like this area experienced in the five-year drought.
It would simply be moving water from one place to another, and in a situation where less water is available, the plan would not work, he said.
Some of the potential effects that this delivery of water away from the Delta could have is bringing more saltwater in from the bay, which is harmful to crops, Valente said.
The Delta has seen the sale of five of its islands to the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, which has claimed to want to use this land to restore habitat in the area.
Valente was critical of the thought of converting much of this former farmland, as it is a precious resource needed to produce crops and farm.
“The Delta has some of the best farming ground in California. We have more and more people to feed and we need to produce more and more,” he said.