“If one looks across all the agencies and all the people with responsibility in the Delta, the Water Board is the one best situated to look at all of the dimensions of the Delta’s problems and to try to address them holistically. That’s what it tries to do.” – Tom Howard,
State Water Board
“This debate is broader than water supply and the environment,” said Jennifer West, director for water with the California Municipal Utili- ties Association. “Nearly 14 percent of California’s power is generated from hydropower and with nearly 400 plants in the Sacramento/San Joaquin basin. CMUA members encourage the State Board to thoroughly examine potential hydropower losses. Further, any pro- posal that calls for a dramatic increase in winter and spring flows could leave reservoirs severely depleted and unable to meet peak summer supply demands.” In a two-phase process, beginning with the Lower San Joaquin River, the State Water Board is revising the 2006 Water Quality Control Plan for the Bay-Delta, looking at water quality objectives for Delta inflow, outflow, in- Delta channel flows and salinity. The two-phase approach differs from the past in part because of the concurrent development of the Bay Delta Con- servation Plan (BDCP), the compre- hensive process that aims to facilitate the issuance of federal Endangered Species Act permits for the operation of the SWP and the CVP for the next 50 years. The State Water Board will begin holding a series of workshops on these issues in September. “Historically when the Water Board did a review of flow objectives it did them all at the same time, looking at the San Joaquin, the Sacramento and the eastside tributaries all simulta- neously. But we decided to break this into a two phase approach … because of the BDCP process, which has gener- ated a lot of information [and] so it seemed like we want to leverage all
that in our review,” said Tom Howard, executive director of the State Water Board.
During both phases, the State
Water Board will examine many factors to determine what flows are reasonably necessary to protect public trust uses, including fish and other aquatic species, taking into account the public interest in the diversion and use of water for drinking water, hydroelectric power, agriculture and other uses.
One of many technical docu- ments that will inform the State Water Board’s review is a 2010 report, required by the 2009 legislative water package, which presented a techni- cal assessment of flow and operational requirements if the only consideration was fishery protection. In the report, Development of Flow Criteria for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Ecosystem, State Water Board scientists wrote that while current flow management regulations “provide some protection for ecological functions and native species,” the current Delta flow regime “is generally harmful to many native aquatic species while encourag- ing nonnative aquatic species.” The report said that net Delta out- flow between January and June should be 75 percent of the 14-day average of unimpaired inflow (i.e., the inflow that would exist without dams or upstream diversions); the recommendation for the Sacramento River was 75 per- cent of the 14-day unimpaired flow from November through June, and 60 percent of the 14-day unimpaired flow from February through June for the San Joaquin River.