are based on very careful management of reservoirs’ storage so that water temperatures that are beneficial for salmon and steelhead can be made available in the rivers during the summer and fall,” he said.
Finding a Reasonable Balance
The water quality control plan begins with the State Water Board identifying beneficial uses, establishing objectives that provide reasonable protection of those uses, and developing a program of implementation. The process is “very elongated” and includes quasi- legislative and quasi-adjudicatory components, the latter “dealing with adjudicating existing water rights to make sure someone actually takes care of the objectives,” said Kincaid. Modifying water rights is complex and difficult, in part because such rights are a form of property right, and due process protections apply. According to PPIC’s report, flows more aligned with the historical natural flow regime “are more likely to favor native fishes,” though “given the altered conditions of the Delta landform and ecology … might need to depart in some respects from these historical patterns to accommodate the needs of native fish.” That could translate into “proportionally higher flows at some locations and times to create seasonal floodplains, and non- natural flow patterns might sometimes be useful in suppressing now-dominant populations of invasive species.” Merely flushing more freshwater into the Delta has to be considered in a much larger context than the purported ecosystem benefits, said Johns. “One of the real concerns is if you just look at the Delta by itself and you just look at flow, and you say, ‘I’m going to do this for the Delta because it feels good,’ you’ve got to really evaluate what the impacts of that would be upstream and how it will affect other issues,” he said. “This has the potential of really undoing a lot of good things that are happening upstream.”
July/August 2012
“There are some pretty important things that have happened in the estuary that I don’t think [State Water Board scientists] have a good handle on,” he said. “Everybody talks about the decline in pelagic fish [but] there hasn’t been so much a depression than a shift in the ecosystem. Changes in flows don’t do that. We see a much better relationship between changes in nutrients and possible causes of what’s going on here than changes in flow.” Revised Delta flow standards will have to account for hydroelec- tric generation production, which is prevalent on the tributaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and is operated for the most part by municipal utilities. Entities such as the Merced, Turlock, Modesto, Oakdale and South San Joaquin Irrigation districts are also responsible for op- erating the dams and hydropower on their respective tributaries and there is concern that water released to the Delta will come at their expense, said Kincaid, with the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority.
“The estimated hydropower losses on each tributary are in excess of $1 million per year based on the State Water Board’s unimpaired flow approach and could be even larger depending on the percent of unim- paired flow adopted,” she said. “These losses will likely force increased ground water pumping and purchase of power during peak periods. The increased demand during peak periods results in several secondary problems, including compounding economic loss to irrigation districts, increased stress on the stability of the system grid and increased reliance on carbon-emitting energy sources.”
Bobker said the alleged impacts to water supplies and hydropower genera- tion “are often really overstated” and that increased flows would not bank- rupt the system. “Water supply and hydropower system operators have a lot of flexibil- ity and generally are pretty smart and creative people,” he said. “They figure out ways to re-operate and mitigate.”
Water users upstream of the Delta, including rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley, are concerned the new Delta water quality standards might tap their water to increase flows in the Delta.
“…if you just look at the Delta by itself and you just look at flow … you’ve got to really evaluate what the impacts of that would be upstream and how it will affect other issues.”