LEVEES THAT LIE DOWN: A SOLUTION FOR EARTHQUAKES IN THE DELTA?

By Patricia McBroom

      Levees in California’s Delta have a bad image problem. For several years now, they’ve been called “fragile,” “decrepit,” “crumbling,” and “doomed.” One news story after another warns of a catastrophic collapse from a future earthquake, alongside scenarios showing half the delta under water – quite possibly undrinkable salt water.

When levees fail, an inland sea prevails.
Credit: Patricia McBroom

            The cost of retrofitting these critical structures, meanwhile, is expressed in extravagant terms.  “Astronomical,” said Phil Isenberg, chair of the Delta Stewardship Council, about the cost of making the levees earthquake safe.  Isenberg made the comment most recently during a televised debate on delta dilemmas, but he’s said it before, as have others. The accepted wisdom among water wonks in California is that the levees cannot all be repaired sufficiently to save the state from disaster in the event of a “big one.” Some openly recommend that the state allow major portions of the delta to go underwater, to the consternation of delta residents who live and farm there.

“Why would anyone want to save them,” a state water official was heard to say the other day about the delta levees.  “Everyone knows they’re doomed.”

But what if this public narrative is wrong – or substantially wrong? What if the levees are in better shape than described and – most importantly – can be retrofitted to withstand a big shake?

            If this is the case – if most or all of the levees can be built up to withstand an earthquake, magnitude 7 on the Hayward Fault, for a reasonable amount of money – it would change fundamentally the calculus now driving decisions about major new water infrastructure in California.

Dr. Robert Pyke: Levees can resist earthquakes and
accommodate to sea level rise.
Credit: Patricia McBroom

            The time for that kind of reassessment has arrived with publication of the second draft of an economic sustainability plan for the delta, prepared by a team headed by Dr. Jeffrey Michael at the University of the Pacific.  Little attention has so far been paid to the draft plan’s new information on levees.

            That is a mistake.

            On page 64, in a chapter devoted to delta levees, the report states unequivocally, “This study concludes that the core Delta levees can be made robust under seismic loadings for a total of $1–2 billion.”  

           Written primarily by a civil engineer, Dr. Robert Pyke, who is an expert on earthquake preparedness for dams and levees, working under contract here with Sapper West Inc. in Sacramento, the levee analysis focuses in on 460 miles of agricultural levees that need upgrades, out of a total of some 1,000 delta levee miles.

            The cost of making them seismically resistant is cheap, compared to that of building a tunnel around the Delta ($12–20 billion), or elevating the highways and railways ($10 billion) or even retrofitting San Francisco’s water delivery system from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir ($4.6 billion), the report explains.

            Not only is retrofitting the levees less expensive than other alternatives, but a good bit of the money has already been allocated in bond issues passed by voters in prior years.  California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) has been dragging its heels in releasing the bond money, slowing the repair process in an unconscionable way, considering the risks.  Officials should have even less of an excuse now, in the light of this new information.

            The key to this claim is an enlarged levee that has such a thick landside shoulder that it looks almost flat from the field.  It’s crest is very wide – 50 feet compared to 16 feet now on some levees – and it has three feet of freeboard on the waterside at the high water mark of a 100-year flood.  It's wide crest means that it can easily be built higher to accommodate sea level rise.  On most days, the proposed levee would stand 10-15 feet above the water.  It’s landside berm would extend for some 140 feet from the crest.

Design of proposed earthquake resistant levee for Webb Tract, by Hultgren-Tillis Engineers, similar to that
proposed by Robert Pyke, in the Economic Sustainability Plan for the Delta

            “Making a levee robust enough to withstand earthquake shaking is a lot simpler than retrofitting or even seismically designing a new building or bridge,” said Pyke. “Basically it just takes a wider cross-section and more dirt.”

            He explained that in an earthquake, the big fat levee would deform a bit, but “it’s unlikely that even with high water that you would have a breach.” Asked in an interview how he can be sure without data that this kind of construction would resist a breach, Pyke replied, “The earthquake behavior of dams and levees is central to my education and experience.  I’ve been an expert witness in about 20 cases in California and as far as I know, I’ve never been on the losing side, because I don’t make things up.  I don’t overstate things.”

            In any case, he added with a smile, “It’s hard to see how the levee can fall over when it’s already lying down.”

            Pyke’s claim to expertise is backed up by other civil engineers he’s worked with on multiple projects in the state.  “He’s very, very good – one of the best,” said Ed Idriss, retired UC Davis civil engineering professor who worked with Pyke on a four-man team to evaluate potential ground motion from an earthquake for the new East Bay Bridge.

            “In terms of knowledge, I’d put Bob Pyke way up there.  He’s one of the most qualified to look at the effects of earthquakes on levees."  Idriss served on the Seismic Safety Peer Review Panel for the new bridge.

            If the new report is true, however, it raises a sticky question:  How did so many other experts on the delta get it wrong for so long?  The answer appears to lie in a controversial, but nonetheless influential, report put out in 2005 by the DWR.  Titled “Delta Risk Management Strategy,” , phase 1, the DRMS report made highly sophisticated calculations of levee failure in the event of an earthquake, estimating that up to 50 breaches could occur, flooding 20 islands and disrupting the state’s water supply to 23 million people.  Such estimates were not based on new data on actual levees, and little has been collected since.  In fact, there are gaping holes in bare facts, such as how much loose sand lies under existing structures.  No one knows.

            According to Pyke, lack of basic facts leads to inaccurate predictions. “The data was just not there to do such advanced calculations,” he said. “If you lack adequate data in a study like that, it leads to greater uncertainty.  Greater uncertainty pushes up the mean results.  It’s inescapable and very common.  I caution people not to rush into risk and probability analysis unless you have enough data to do it accurately.”

            Nevertheless, the DRMS study became the basis of more calculations and more analysis by scientists at UC Davis and UC Berkeley who expanded the earthquake predictions into a full-fledged story of levee collapse – still with no new information on how the levees are actually constructed.

            To make matters more complicated, there’s every reason to be concerned.  The hundreds of miles of levees that surround about 70 islands are highly variable, ranging from good to very poor.  They’ve been unevenly maintained; they are made from different materials; some would probably breach in an earthquake if not improved as soon as possible.       

Low freeboard; easily overtopped Delta levee

            “These levees are the poor stepchild – the one critical feature in California that is still being neglected (for seismic upgrades)” said Pyke, noting that Cal Trans and public utilities in the East Bay and San Francisco have spent billions to upgrade their infrastructure.  But levee repair is lagging, even though voters have twice voted for money to fix them.

            Many would argue that the delay can be traced to the state’s preoccupation with building a multi-billion dollar “isolated conveyance” (aka, peripheral canal). If the levees can be retrofitted for earthquakes, one good reason for building the canal would be lost, and wealthy interests in the state want the conveyance – actually a tunnel under the delta.

            Conspiracy or not, it’s clear there is a powerful constituency, highly influenced  by work done by UC Davis scientists at the Public Policy Institute of California, to write the levees off – or many of them.

            Based on this new report, ordered by the Delta Protection Commission, there should be a powerful constituency now to build them up.  At the very least, state planners need to reverse gears and not let them waste away.

PUBLIC TRUST SUIT WOULD CHANGE THE GAME IN DELTA; STOP PUMPS

 By Patricia McBroom     

        Water in California belongs to the people as a whole, under the protection of the state.  It’s not supposed to be sold for profit. But that principle has been violated for years with little recourse for those in the water world who have watched it happen. Water has been sold to the highest bidder across the state often enough that many have come to view fresh water as a commodity – something they own and should make a profit on.

        The drive to privatization received a big boost in 1995 when state water officials got behind closed doors and signed a pact with local water agencies called the Monterey  Amendment.  Within days, a large underground aquifer in Kern County fell under the control of an equally large private argibusiness headed by billionaire Stewart Resnick of Los Angeles.  Since that time, water pumped from the delta rose by more than 50 percent, leading – most observers agree ­– to collapse of its fish populations.  Not all of the water went to the now privately-run Kern County Water Bank, but a lot of it did.

        Now a group of environmentalists has launched a three-pronged legal assault on the Monterey Amendment and violation of the public trust.  Two lawsuits are moving slowly through the courts, while the third – potentially the most revolutionary – will be heard for the first time this Friday in Superior Court. (CaseNo. 34-201080000653)

            This case, based on ancient laws called the Public Trust Doctrine, could completely change the game in the delta, shutting down the pumps, if all else fails.  It also could affect everyone who takes water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, which is to say most of us.

          “This is potentially a very constructive lawsuit, exactly the kind that needs to be brought,” said law professor Brian Gray, an expert on the public trust at UC Hastings.  At the same time, said Gray, it’s naïve to think that anybody who uses, diverts or discharges into delta waters could emerge unchanged from such a basic challenge to business as usual.

            One major effect of a public trust case would be to establish minimum standards for protection of the estuary – standards that do not yet exist. “The fragmented approach, said Gray, “is rife with conflict and it clearly hasn’t worked.”  If this case works as its proponents describe, “it will be a law that establishes an environmental baseline” for recovering the health of the delta.

Slough on the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta

            Sweeping, and fundamentally simple in outline, the new case reflects the intense frustration experienced by environmentalists who have been fighting for years to control over-pumping of water from this most valuable estuary, one of only a few of its kind in the world, and by far the largest source of water in California.

         “Some of us are getting older.  We don’t have a lot of time left,” said Michael Jackson, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.  Jackson lives in the rural northern California town of Quincy and is an officer of the first plaintiff, the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN).  He’s been at this kind of work since he was in his thirties.  He is now 65.  He said a major aim of the action is to broaden the legal base on which to fix the delta, from protection of a single species, like smelt, to the entire estuary.  As for shutting down the pumps if violations do not stop, it may not be the best outcome, but “we have to ask for it,” he said.

         Along with Jackson is the founder of C-WIN, Carolee Krieger, a grandmother of mixed Polynesian background whose adult life has been spent fighting big water interests.  Like Jackson, Krieger has been at it from the 1980s, launching one legal challenge after another from her three-acre estate in Santa Barbara.  She is in back of all three lawsuits.  But the public trust case touches her most deeply.

        “Water is the lifeblood of the planet. If our generation doesn’t do this, we won’t have a California we want to live in, for our kids and grandkids,” she said.

       A descendant of the Hawaiian monarch, Kamehameha I, through her mother’s line, Krieger grew up with the notion of Aina, a Hawaiian term which means “power of the land.” 

       “I have felt strongly about this since I was a child,” she said.  “Hawaiian culture has always seen itself as a steward of the land.  You can’t own the land; you can only take care of it.”

Krieger's "cathedral for chickens" in Montecito

        And take care of it, she does, in a tropical rainforest she has created in Montecito near Santa Barbara.  Under a canopy of oak and sycamore trees that provide shade while retaining moisture, Krieger has built an Hawaiian paradise of trees, plants, flowers and birds, interspersed with her own ceramic sculptures.  She maintains a chicken coop, which her husband calls a “cathedral for chickens.” The sides of the coop rise into the trees high above while peacocks preen under its arches. “You can have wonderful gardens without a lot of water,” said Krieger, who composts everything and feeds it back into the earth. 

       Krieger got her first big taste of power politics around water in 1991 when Santa Barbara County signed on to help pay for an extension from the new California Aqueduct next to Highway 5.  The 144-mile extension was supposed to supply water from the State Water Project to the central coast during dry periods.  The hitch was that water isn’t available from the delta during droughts and when its wet, Santa Barbara doesn’t need it and can’t store it.  Now the county water agencies are selling bonds to pay off the debt because they can’t raise enough money from water use.  “That’s like using your credit card to pay your mortgage,” said Krieger.

       She said Santa Barbara was suckered into voting for the project by lies about its cost and its reliable yield in terms of water.  “That was my first taste of the corruption that is possible around water,” she said. “I knew (this deal) was bad.  I just didn’t know how bad.”

C-WIN president Carolee Krieger

        Four years later, Krieger found herself sitting alone as a volunteer in a small out-of the way meeting while water agency officials first reported results of the Monterey Agreement, one of the biggest water deals in the state.   The deal was “publicly reported” in the tiny coastal town of Buellton, but  “I was the only member of the public there,” said Krieger.  She got the word out as quickly as she could and called a meeting in her carport.  “It only takes a few of us to make a difference.  I think of that all the time. I know I am doing the right thing with my life.”

            A fierce fighter in the water world, Krieger helped launch the first legal challenge to the Monterey Amendment in 1995; then, when the courts ruled for the plaintiffs in 2000, she walked out on what she considered an ineffective settlement and formed C-WIN to lodge two more suits.  But even that was not enough.  As pumping continued and accelerated through the decade, it looked as though the alliance between state water officials and big time water contractors in Kern County and Los Angeles could not be stopped.

            (A recent example of profit-making schemes would have water from the Kern River, a notoriously unreliable source, laundered through the Kern County Water Bank, thereby becoming a reliable source – based on state-supplied delta water.(See page 39 of "Saltworks Water Demand Supply Summary report) While such transfers are badly needed for helping southern California during a drought, in this case, the transfer would allow a developer to build 12,000 new homes on a salt flat in San Francisco Bay, a plan so unsustainable that they would have to build a sea wall to keep out rising ocean levels.)

         In 2005, water environmentalists in California watched in dismay as populations of one species of fish after another crashed.  Jackson and Krieger knew they had to find a better way to make a difference and began to construct  a public trust case for the delta, something Jackson had been thinking about for thirty years. 

         Basing a lawsuit on the ancient doctrine is rare.  Only a few have been won, but when they are successful, a public trust case transforms the relationship between private and public interests in regard to natural resources.  Such a ground-breaking decision was made by the California Supreme Court in 1983 to preserve Mono Lake near Yosemite. The Court ruled that the Los Angeles Water District had to stop taking water from the streams that fed Mono because the lake was being irreparably damaged by the diversions.  The current delta lawsuit is based on that decision.

        As it has evolved since Roman times, the doctrine preserves certain waterways for use by the public, setting up a fundamental right that cannot easily be restricted by private ownership.  Such rights include use of lakes, streams, tidal lands and other natural resources linked to water.

       In the current lawsuit, plaintiffs are suing California’s water agencies: the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and the Department of Water Resources (DWR). In their complaint, they charge that water officials have violated the public trust by allowing so much water to be pumped out of the Delta that fish and wildlife, aesthetics, recreation and water quality are being damaged or destroyed. 

       They also say that state water agencies have ignored their own regulations in allowing temperature and salinity levels to rise in the Delta and have violated California’s Constitution requiring reasonable and beneficial use of water.

      If these failures are not corrected, the pumps must stop, according to the complaint by C-WIN, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) and AquaAlliance.

        The case will open Friday with a request from the state that the case be dismissed because it doesn’t include the Federal Government as a defendant.  (The Feds run the Central Valley Project that also pumps water from the delta).  Asked what he will do if the case is dismissed by Superior Court Judge Michael Kenney, Jackson said, “We will just have to refile it.”

       That wouldn’t be the first time and maybe not the last.  Failing is not an option for these water warriors.

           

WATER DEMANDS TRACED TO AGRICULTURE, NOT POPULATION GROWTH

By Patricia McBroom      

            A small miracle has occurred in the water world, and none too soon. California environmental groups – at bitter odds for more than a year – have come together in a coalition document to influence the state’s soon-to-be-released Delta water plan.

A first draft of that plan is due for release in mid February – two short weeks away. The coalition of 30 environmental organizations filed its recommendations only last week.   

Delta Stewardship Council

“Breathless” hardly describes this kind of pace.  A core group of water policy wonks are slogging daily through piles of data and mountains of opinions to create a rational water plan for the 21^st century. Not least of these sloggers are the seven members of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) who’ve been in office less than a year and are now on the verge of making their first decisions about water.  Their plan will be complete, they say, by October of this year.

Thanks to new cooperation by the environmental community, the Council now has strong support for several very important goals. Among the most important of these is a call to restore adequate flow to the Delta estuary and reduce the State’s reliance on Delta water for human uses. 

In the past decade, high levels of upstream and downstream use of this water have crashed the ecosystem, caused the near extinction of several species of fish, reduced salmon runs to near zero, sent pollution levels soaring and caused all manner of scary ecological changes.  But the extent to which restricted flows in the Delta caused the collapse or can lead to its recovery is a source of intense disagreement. Water contractors and growers have pushed to retain the same high levels of use they had before the drought of the past three years, while Delta ecologists and supporters argue that use should be cut dramatically – up to 50 percent in some scenarios, from 6 million acre feet (MFA) per year of exported water to roughly 3 million.

30 Environmental Groups joined Coalition

The coalition did not put a figure on recommended cuts.  But in asking that flow standards be guided by the best science for restoring the ecology, their recommendations add up to the same thing – big reductions in water use from the Delta, enough to choke a passel of water contractors.

“We can’t continue the status quo,” said William Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.  “We can’t take (so much) Delta water and turn the rest into a sewer and expect anything but disaster.”  Jennings, who presented the Coalition’s recommendations to the Council at a public meeting in Stockton last week, added, “We want reduced reliance on the Delta.”

              That is also what California law requires, said the Bay Institute’s Gary Bobker, in another Council meeting last week.  Legislative mandate calls for reduced reliance on the Delta, program director Bobker said.  “We are talking about how much reduction, not whether.”

              So, can California exporters get along with half as much as much water from the Delta as they took, say, in 2005?  Can exports to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, for example, be cut to 3 million acre feet per year?

             The answer seems to be a surprising “yes” – in spite of an expected population growth in California of another 20 million people by 2050.

              It may come as a shock to people in the north, but the residents of southern California do not need any more water from the Delta than they have now. Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District told a national science meeting in December that the district plans to supply its future water needs through regional self-sufficiency.   Even now, the whole of southern California takes only 20 percent of the exported water; the rest is used by San Joaquin agriculture, followed by Bay Area cities. Kern county alone uses as much water as the urban South.

              Moreover, the amount of water that can be saved through conservation and recycling is immense.  A new space age recycling plant in Orange County turns out 70 million clean gallons from waste water per day, pumping it into the ground for future use.   The plant cost $480 million and will supply 600,000 residents.

           “Coastal people use 4 million acre feet every year and throw it away.  That’s enough for 20 million people,” said Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League.  “I think we can recapture half of it by 2030,” he said.

           “There is a significant body of evidence showing us that with conservation, recycling, groundwater recharge and rain capture, we can more than meet the needs of urban users in southern California and the Bay Area who receive water from the Delta,” said Minton.

            Backing up such claims is the experience of the Contra Costa Water District where water use has declined by 30 percent since the late 1980s, even while population increased by 60 percent.  Other urban water districts, including Southern California’s Metropolitan, are widely acknowledged for doing a good job of conservation.  The point seems to be that – although urban users can do more – population growth in California is not driving a crisis over water.

            That leaves agriculture, where demand comes to rest in an unappetizing mix of inefficient irrigation practices, government concessions to wealthy growers and profiteering on the part of some water rights holders.

            The story is complex.  But if current state planners can uphold the public trust on agricultural inefficiency and profiteering, the payoffs in saved water are enormous – calculated in the millions of acre feet. (One million acre feet is a huge amount of water, enough to satisfy 6.7 million households.)

             The environmental coalition has called for the DSC to establish a statewide target for agriculture that would save 1 MFA by 2020 and 2.5 MFA by 2030 using more efficient practices, like drip irrigation instead of flooding the fields.  The State Legislature didn’t have the guts to impose conservation targets on agriculture when it passed major new laws at the end of 2009.  Perhaps the Delta planners will. 

            Newly-appointed Delta Watermaster, Craig Wilson, has made a good start by placing agricultural inefficiency in the context of the constitutional “reasonable use” doctrine.  That means that wasting water in the fields equals a violation of the public trust, because California’s Constitution mandates that water resources be used reasonably and beneficially. 

             There were howls of protest from farmers when Wilson made his report to the State Water Resources Control Board in January, prompting DSC chair Phil Isenberg to remark, “They (protesters) don’t seem to recognize that the doctrine of reasonable use is constitutional.  That astounds me.  The Constitution is unmistakable on this.”  

             Even more politically unpalatable (and probably less likely to occur) is another environmental recommendation – that the state remove 380,000 acres of drainage- impaired lands from agriculture and turn the property into solar farms.  It’s a grand idea.  But it would take the lion’s share of Westlands Water District out of agriculture, and there’s no indication that these politically connected, wealthy growers are ready to trade almonds for electrons.

            Westlands also uses roughly a million acre feet per year, but in these west San Joaquin lands alongside Interstate 5, the water mobilizes natural deposits of selenium in the soil which lies over an impermeable layer of clay, causing toxic buildup in the soil with runoff into the San Joaquin River.  Most environmentalists believe the land should never have been irrigated (State and Federal officials once agreed on that point) and continue to push for having it removed.

L-R, Council members Hank Nordhoff, Randy Fiorini,
and chairman Phil Isenberg

               One can dream:  clean energy instead of dirty water.  Sounds like a winner for the public interest.

             Finally the environmental coalition called for a broadened evaluation of a peripheral canal around the delta, to include many different sizes, including the alternative of having no peripheral canal at all.  No recommendations on size, though. That is currently one of the most contentious issues in California’s water wars.

             How to balance the different elements of the public interest is the urgent task facing the Delta Stewardship Council this spring.  The 2009 legislation requires that ecological needs and delivery of water for human needs be co-equal – one no more important than the other.  Whoever decides how to balance competing interests will need the help of the water gods, not to mention a coat of political armor.  The environmentalists declined to make such a balance last week, passing the decision to the DSC.  But then, Isenberg passed it back, asking the Bay Institute to do a public trust balancing paper – quickly. 

             Bobker agreed – reluctantly.                                                                                                                                 

           

            

NEW HOPE FOR A THOUGHTFUL DELTA PLAN IN THE WATER WARS

By Patricia McBroom

In California’s water wars, as in the ancient proverb, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

The work of state water officials and contractors was thrown into a blender Monday when the powerful Westlands Water District withdrew from their joint plans to build a giant tunnel/pipeline for diverting water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Loss of Westlands money and participation may mean a slower, more thoughtful process for building a new water diversion system – which is a good thing.  Good for the fish, good for the ecosystem, good for Delta agriculture and good for the 23 million of us who drink from this heart of water.

In truth, this plan was always outrageous in scope and process, driven in no small part by the belligerent demands of Westlands. The west San Joaquin district wanted more water than biologists thought the Delta ecosystem could tolerate and were told that in meetings with the U.S. Department of Interior earlier this month.  They walked out then and have done so now in a particularly hostile way.

Yet, something is needed to back up California’s vulnerable water delivery system in case of a catastrophic failure of Delta levees.  It may be that California will now have a chance to create that alternative. The second time around, the process needs to include the people whose lives are directly impacted by a peripheral canal, the farmers of the Delta, and the county officials whose agricultural revenues would be dramatically reduced. 

Much has been written about the effects of this project on fish; little attention has so far been given to its effects on agriculture in California’s aboriginal Garden of Eden – in this case the northern Delta region where the new facility would be built, some 15 miles west of Sacramento.

The north Delta: growing grapes, making wines

The area targeted as home for fish habitat and massive pumping operation is arguably California’s richest and oldest agricultural land.  High in organic content, with easy access to water, the north Delta has been farmed for 150 years, producing grapes, rice, fruits, vegetables and other crops. It is now home to a growing wine industry.  Six new wineries have been established there in the past five years. Unlike other parts of the Delta to the south and west, these parts of the north Delta have not subsided below sea level and its agricultural production is sustainable into the indefinite future. 

Mark Wilson, Clarksburg wine maker

Mark Wilson, a third generation farmer in the north Delta, lives and breathes water issues, while he and his large family, including father, siblings and children, cultivate grapes and produce award-winning wines in the Clarksburg area, where the diversions would occur.  An ebullient, outspoken advocate for the Delta, Wilson has served on a long list of state commissions, including the current Delta Conservancy, to make sure the Delta’s position is heard.

“We don’t want  our farming brothers in the San Joaquin Valley to starve to death and dry up and blow away,” said Wilson, “but you have to take us into consideration too. We’re not your doormat.  We’re not going away.  We’re not going to be quiet.”  

Wilson’s home could double for a map room in the public library.  He’s collected every kind of map he can lay his hands on, from a map of fault lines in the Delta to a map of the massive facilities planned for the new water delivery system in his area.  Rattling through a number of them, he put his hands on a map of the proposed water intake facilities on the Sacramento River and spread it out on his dining room table.

East Bay's Freeport plant pumps
1/10th as much water as each of
5 proposed new intakes

“These are giant facilities,” said Wilson, pointing out five intakes in an eight mile stretch of the river from Freeport to Courtland.  Each intake would be ten times the size of the one already located at Freeport which pumps 300 cfs.  The existing Freeport plant covers 600 feet of waterfront; the new pump buildings would be more than a quarter of a mile long, at 1,500 waterfront feet. Each would pump 3,000 cfs. (The size and location of the intake facilities are still being analyzed according to the BDCP draft plan posted on Tuesday; they may be located on shore rather than in the river, for example, and a range of sizes is under consideration.)

The intakes would change forever the meandering quaintness of Highway 160 and surrounding farmland.  They could also threaten fresh water supplies in the Delta because at peak operating capacity, the combined pumps could take the entire river flow – which BDCP proponents say would not happen.

BDCP draft of intakes (squares) on website. Blue,
green and orange lines represent western, middle
and eastern tunnel options.

Delta residents and county officials are not so sure: better to limit the pump size than to rely on changeable rules in these water wars. Wilson said he can understand California’s need for an alternate water delivery system, given the vulnerability of the current system to catastrophic failure, but it should be “restricted in size so they can’t just take everything.  A small conveyance would give (California water users) redundancy and flexibility. I’m open to discussing that.  But it has to be on terms where we are treated as equals in the process and that hasn’t happened yet.”

In addition to the intakes, the north Delta will also be ground zero for the creation of new habitat for fish, required by law to compensate for taking the water.  State water planners originally targeted the entire Clarksburg area for a fish farm, but have since drawn back to the Yolo Bypass, a flood control area visible from Hwy 80 near Sacramento.  Most people, including Wilson, agree that parts of the Yolo Bypass are suitable for habitat, but such conversions would still strongly impact agricultural production in Yolo County. Farmers use the bypass to grow rice and alfalfa when it isn’t covered with flood waters, and water fowl feed on the rice seed, a cycle that would be broken by fish habitat.

Fall sunset on the River Road (Hwy 160)
near Clarksburg

To assure that their interests are taken into account, Yolo County supervisors placed a two-year moratorium recently on any projects to create new habitat – not to stop it altogether but to give the county time to develop its own rules for converting the land.  Westlands purchased land in Yolo County to chalk up as habitat against the water they wanted to take.  This would stop the conversion temporarily.

“We’re not saying ‘no habitat ever,’” said Yolo County supervisor Mike McGowan. “But we want to have our differences worked out.  How much land?  How long flooded?  We just weren’t getting their (BCDP planners) attention.”

McGowan also agrees that some parts of the Yolo Bypass are suitable for habitat, but how much is the question.   “These folks are looking very grand. They can’t do all their mitigation in the bypass because it is essential for flood control and needs to be kept clean. So plans are flowing outside to other parts of the county.”

McGowan explained that Yolo county has historically pursued what he calls a “vow of poverty,” a decision to forego revenues by barring the development of housing developments and strip malls in the unincorporated areas.  Along with many desirable consequences – such as preserving farmland and creating a sharp break between town and country – there are important negative effects:

 “They see us as easy pickins’” said McGowan.  “A big unintended consequence of not paving over paradise has been that folks who want to do all this mitigation see us as a prime unpainted canvas.  They say, ‘What do you mean we shouldn’t cover Clarksburg with a swamp for fish farms?  There’s nothing there!’ But their ‘nothing’ is our everything.”

So what is in store now that Westlands has withdrawn from the project? That depends on how politicians and federal and state water officials respond to their challenge.  In withdrawing, Westlands president, Jean P. Sagouspe, wrote an astoundingly nasty letter to U.S. Under Secretary of the Interior, David Hayes, saying in part, “it is our view that your myopic and unscientific obstructionism will bring this entire effort at water reform and ecosystem restoration to a halt.”

At the same time, Westlands spokesperson, Sarah Wolff, held out the promise that if their district could be assured of getting the amount of water they want (70 percent of full contract) they would be back on board.  That’s the kind of allocation that helped crash the Delta ecosystem in the first place.  Biologists and environmentalists are united in their opinion that there isn’t enough water to feed these high demands of water contractors and also save the fish.

Let’s hope they continue to prevail.

           

           

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: LET DELTA VOICES BE HEARD

              
By Patricia McBroom
         In the gathering dusk of a hot evening in August, 2009, a 570-foot New Zealand freighter carrying rice and lumber from Stockton’s Port tried to make a close turn to starboard past Bradford Island in the Delta.  It didn’t work.  The San Joaquin River channel is only 600 feet wide at that point; there’s no room for mistakes. The ship temporarily “lost steering” and plowed bow first into the levee.

            Not to worry.  With the assistance of a nearby tugboat, the freighter backed out and proceeded on to the Bay and ocean – once it had been inspected by the Coast Guard and found to be undamaged.

            No one looked back at the levee or even reported the impact.  Coast Guard entries from that day say that the ship “ran aground.”

The morning after.  (Photo by Mike Warren)

            The next morning, residents on Bradford woke up to find their island in immediate danger of flooding.  The levee was literally falling into the river with cracks opening up before their eyes. A section 150 feet long had been washed out.

            I was on Bradford Island last week to talk to the people who rose to the emergency and saved the island that day.  They are the unsung heroes of the local reclamation district who maintain levees critical to California’s water supply, not to mention those lining an international shipping channel.  It may come as a surprise – certainly it did to me – that levees on a deep water shipping channel are maintained by residents.  And it’s a shock to realize concern is so limited that the Coast Guard didn’t even bother to check out or report the damage.

Bradford is a private island reached by ferry at the end of a levee road only five miles from the urban rim in Contra Costa County.  About 2200 acres in size, it stands close to the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Fresh water bubbles up through the ground producing lush pasture land that once grew corn.  Now, Karen and Smith Cunningham maintain a cattle ranch there, sharing the island with about 50 other, mostly seasonal, residents.

Karen met me at the ferry and took me on a tour across the ranch, through Johnson grass so high and dense it slapped the pickup like rubber flippers in a car wash.  Our windows were down and in a flash, the cabin of the truck was filled with hundreds of lady bugs. Noticing a cattle fence standing open, Karen went in search of animals that might have wandered off and fallen into one of the many bogs on the island.  We didn’t find any, but we did find her husband Smith Cunningham and fellow resident, Mike Warren.

As Smith Cunningham talked..

Cunningham led the fight last year to save the levee.

“There’s no doubt about it.  This man saved us,” said Warren, gesturing to Smith. “He called people and they came out here immediately.  If we had sat around waiting for the engineers, the water resource people, whatever…..the levee was just going further and further into the water, with new cracks coming fast and furious.  It had gone on all night this way and we didn’t even know it was happening because nobody had the courtesy to tell us.”

....Another freighter passed on its way to Stockton Port

Project director for local Reclamation District 2059, Cunningham reported the damage to the Coast Guard (which still called the incident a “soft landing”).  Then he got to work on emergency repairs.

            “I didn’t wait to go through all the procedures,” said Cunningham.  “I was doing the mumbo-jumbo with politics (procedures) at the same time, but my purpose was to save the levee and you have to have some common sense about that.”

Within hours, contractors with dozens of trucks and bull dozers were working around the clock to stabilize the levee.  It took them three days at a total cost of $800,000, which the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) paid.

“The DWR told me, ‘Well, you did the right thing.  Thank you. You saved us $50 million.’”

Actually, the loss of the island could have cost the public a great deal more.  A flood on Bradford could lead to a shutdown of the State water supply because of the island’s strategic position vis-a-vis water pumps in Tracy. (Bradford is one of eight western Delta islands that, if flooded, could draw salt water toward the pumps.)

Mt. Diablo behind Bradford Island

 This story about Bradford is sadly illustrative of a larger phenomena that affects everyone in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  California relies on local people to maintain levees that are critical to our water supply, yet those same people are all but invisible to State officials planning a huge – and expensive – project to divert water from upriver near Sacramento.  We will get our first view of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) next month in a preliminary draft release, but several things have been clear about this plan for at least a year.

One, it has little or no input from Delta people or their elected representatives in the five county region – Sacramento, Stockton, Contra Costa County, Yolo and Sonoma.  Thirteen members of Congress and the State Legislature from those counties sent a protest letter last month which said in part “The Delta community has long been told….they will be involved in decision–making about the future of their own communities, even though they have been mostly excluded to date.”

“This most recent exclusion (referring to reports of closed-door meetings of BDCP principals) only serves to frustrate and anger those in the Delta community who are genuinely interested in working constructively with the state and federal agencies…” the letter said.

Another thing that’s clear about this plan is that it aims to divert as much water as possible from upriver of the Delta, through tunnels so big they could suck out 80 percent of the Sacramento River at peak operation, which BDCP defenders say would ONLY be used during periods of high water.

“Trust us,” is a commonly heard refrain.

“Not on your life,” reply 186 Delta owners, including the Cunninghams, who have joined legal action to keep State officials off their property, officials who want to conduct tests for environmental reports.

Meanwhile, a casualty of the focus on a future peripheral canal is levee maintenance.

Local engineers who have maintained the levees for decades say they can bring them up to snuff for a yearly State investment of about $100 million for eight years.

Outside authorities estimate a 2 to 4 billion dollar price tag, with some recommending that a large swath of the south and central Delta be abandoned to the floods without levee upgrades. (These people, of course, want the peripheral canal).

As for the people of California, if they knew what was going on in the water wars, they would be saying loud and clear, “Give the locals a voice. Right or wrong, they should at least be heard. Their input might save the State some money, not to mention a shipping channel or two.”

EARTHQUAKE RISK IN DELTA WORSE THAN EXPECTED, USGS FINDS……BUT, WATER SUPPLY SURVIVES

By Patricia McBroom

When California water officials predicted four years ago that many delta levees would breach in a bad earthquake, flooding the region and threatening the State’s main water supply, they didn’t have any specific site information to prove their point (see Delta Seismic Risk Report, 2005).  Now they do.  And the situation looks worse than ever.

            Soft delta soils amplify seismic waves by up to a factor of 15, compared to recordings in rock at Black Diamond Mines in Pittsburgh, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park has found.  They monitored the action of ten small earthquakes (up to 4.2 magnitude) that have occurred in the East Bay since 2007 and were picked up by monitors at eight places in the delta, including four sites on levees.

Levees on Sherman Island, across the bridge from
Antioch, are among the most vulnerable.

            There had been some hope that the peat soils characteristic of the  Sacramento-San Joaquin delta would dampen seismic waves.  But the USGS recordings found no evidence of such an effect. On the contrary, the wave configuration had an unusual shape with a strong, consistent peak at a single frequency, as well as a strong amplitude.  As a result, vibrations were stronger at the top of the levee than at the bottom.

            “This means these levees are going to shake a lot harder than we thought and will probably lead to multiple failures, said Jon Fletcher, chief of the Earthquake Effects Project at USGS Menlo Park. Prior reports from the Department of Water Resources had projected that as many as 50 levee breaks could occur at once from Bay Area earthquakes, such as one on the Hayward Fault that runs from Oakland to Berkeley.

            Fletcher said soil conditions in the delta resemble those in the San Francisco Marina District where buildings collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; in both cases, the soils are very soft and seismic waves move through with large amplitudes.

            The USGS findings, due for release later this year, were not included in California’s controversial “Delta Risk Management Study” (DRMS) which predicted that as many as 20 islands in the delta could flood simultaneously in a major earthquake, potentially causing salt water from the bay to contaminate the source of California’s largest water supply for urban and agricultural users.

            “I think the risk is worse than what DRMS has reported,” said Fletcher.

            But, fortunately for California water users, the consequences of such a catastrophe might not be as bad as the scenario offered up to the public for the past three years, according to new studies of an earthquake aftermath prepared for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

            “It’s not true that a major earthquake would mean the end of the delta and we’d never be able to use it again,” said Greg Gartrell, a hydrologist with the Contra Costa County Water District, who is familiar with the new modeling.

            “Yes, you get a lot of salt water coming in, but as soon as it rains, that water can get washed out.”  Pumps that supply California’s urban and agricultural water would have to stop for about three to four months, under the conditions studied, said Gartrell, and then could become operational again.  Most urban water districts have local water supplies to cover such a period.

            Agricultural communities would suffer the most (depending on the season) because they don’t all have backup, but for urban users, the challenge would be “difficult but not severe.” The Contra Costa district, which is normally supplied by delta pumps, has up to a year’s supply in accessible reservoirs.

            Loss of fresh water to the delta’s pumps in an earthquake has been a major justification water contractors have used for planning to build an “isolated conveyance” (aka, peripheral canal/tunnel) from further north on the Sacramento River. If urban water users can withstand such a catastrophe, there is less reason to build a huge tunnel that delta residents strongly oppose.

            The new modeling shows that after the salt water is pushed out by winter rains, the delta actually freshens, rather than staying salty – contrary to many scary scenarios. Flooded islands then act as a buffer to reduce salt water flowing in, said Gartrell, adding that there is time then to go in and fix some of the levees. 

            The new study is based on a major 7.0 earthquake on the Hayward Fault, using severe conditions for salt water intrusion, including a multi-year drought and simultaneous levee failures.  It found that salts can flush out fairly quickly, depending on how soon rains or releases from the reservoirs can get water flows going again – a period of 3 to 4 months, in this case.

            “A lot of hysteria is leading people to believe it (massive levee failure due to earthquake) will shut down the delta for a long period of time and maybe forever.  That’s not correct, so long as we plan properly,” said Gartrell.

“The world doesn’t come to an end,” even with massive levee failures in the delta, but the State “needs to do emergency planning now. We need a sense of urgency about this.”

State agencies have lagged behind on creating an emergency response plan and are now stockpiling rock on some delta islands – a bare beginning.  Local districts, however, have been working on emergency plans for years, as many engineers and local officials told the Delta Stewardship Council this summer.

But they have no money to implement their plans or bring them together into a regional emergency response.

“The agencies that have the money (Department of Water Resources, for one) don’t respond.  And the locals, who want to respond, don’t have the money,” said Ronald E. Baldwin, director of emergency operations for San Joaquin County.

“Empower people at the local level,” Baldwin urged council staff at the meeting last July. “If we can do that, and let the lowest (governance) level deal with the problem, we can take the burden off the State and Federal agencies,” he said.

This problem of depriving local authorities of power and money is not new for California or the delta.  It has consistently tied the hands of local engineers and experts who know what to do from close observation and are ready to move ahead with levee repair and flood control plans.  Two weeks ago, the State finally released the money for $120 million in levee repairs we wrote about in the August 10 post.

MBK engineer Gilbert Cosio welcomed the move but was cautious about the money flow.  “We’ll see how it goes,” he said.

VITAL WORK STALLED ON LEVEES IN CALIFORNIA DELTA

By Patricia McBroom    

        Vitally needed strengthening of levees in the California delta has been stalled for over a year – in spite of the fact that bonds have been sold and projects approved.  The California Department of Finance has yet to release $120 million for upgrades on about 20 islands of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

These projects were approved in 2008 and 2009, and money should have been available by now, according to water officials as well as local engineers working on the levees.

“The bonds were sold by October of 09.  This is a long time for them to hold back the funding,” said Mike Miramazaheri, manager of the delta levees program at the State Department of Water Resources (DWR). He said cash flow on delta levee projects has fallen behind by about two years since 2007.

As a consequence, many levees in the delta that have been widely described as “vulnerable” remain that way despite the clear intention of California voters to shore them up.

Meanwhile, delta farmers and local reclamation districts that maintain the levees are standing by with their portion of matching funds.

MBK engineer, Gilbert Cosio:  "We're ready to go!"

“We’re ready to go.  Just give us the money!” said Gilbert Cosio Jr., of MBK Engineers, which maintains roughly 35 percent of the levees in the delta. Cosio said reclamation districts used to do the work on a promise, trusting that the State's portion would come through, but they’ve been burned by delays in recent years and now “nothing is going on.”

Les Harder, senior advisor with the architecture-engineering company, HDR, said the money "is vitally needed. The people of California voted for this and the delta needs it.  It’s very unfortunate the funds have not been made available,” said Harder, a former deputy director for public safety at DWR. 

            As a 27-year veteran of MBK,  Cosio is intimately familiar with the levees and knows their potential for breaching in critical areas.  One such area is Bouldin Island, right smack in the middle of the delta (see map; island with "head" crossed by 12). A constant stream of traffic crosses Bouldin on Highway 12 which connects Interstate 80 with 5, and the Bay Area with the San Joaquin Valley.

One of the largest islands in the delta – 6,000 acres – and one of the lowest – 20 feet below sea level – Bouldin is a flood waiting to happen. Each year, it has a one to five percent chance of flooding. If its levees broke, Highway 12 would disappear under 20 feet of water.  The huge bowl of land would fill up like a bathtub and salty water would be pulled inland from the bay, creating a substantial risk that salt could contaminate the Contra Costa County water system, as well as the State Water Project in Tracy.

About $8 million of the $120 million that has been delayed would go toward reinforcing Bouldin’s levees.

On a recent day in August, Cosio drove around the island, pointing out how the levees need to be reinforced.  To begin, they are too low;  high winds and high tides can send water crashing on the top, as it did in 2006.

Bouldin's levees are too low

Cosio wants to raise the top by one to two feet, and structurally reinforce the base by adding a wide shoulder called a toe berm on the landward side.  This wide shelf means that instead of a steep slope rising from the fields, the levee slope would descend more gradually to a berm wide enough for a roadway, with fields 150 feet away.

Such improvements greatly reduce the risk that high water on the other side of the levee can push it over, said Cosio. He added that the materials they are using, plus the greater width and strength, improve chances that in an earthquake, the levee would deform but not break.

These improvements are not aimed at making a levee earthquake resistant and there is no guarantee they will, said Cosio. But he said their aim has been to “figure out what it will take to allow the levee to deform but not breach, and still have enough structural integrity so that engineers can come back and fix it.”

         How much would it take to bring all the islands up to adequate flood protection standards? 

         Cosio estimated $800 million – roughly $100 million per year, close to the amount voters have already approved in two propositions, 1E and 84. That total is about half of what State engineers would estimate; MBK work costs an average of $1 million per mile, compared to the State’s $2 to 4 million per mile, he said.

        “Local engineers can do it cheaper and more efficiently. We know where the problem areas are. We just go do work. Outside agencies (like the U.S. Corps of Engineers) have to study the problem, do an economic analysis, then put out the contract to people who usually pad the bid,” he said.

Ostensibly due to California's disastrous financial condition, the delay is souring a public dialogue already rife with rumors and whispers about ultimate intentions:  beliefs that state agencies are neglecting the delta to increase pressure for a peripheral canal, as water users toward the south would like.

Whatever the truth of such rumors, one thing is clear: If the money isn’t released soon, it may disappear, either because the life of the bonds has run out or because State officials develop new plans for the future of the delta. This year, with new laws in effect, California has moved substantially away from local governance toward centralized control over water decisions. How much of the delta levee system will be maintained and to what degree depends on decisions that will be made in the next 18 months.

Such centralized control has obvious benefits in making quick decisions, in a field with multiple players.  But it also has serious drawbacks – drawbacks that were identified last year by the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University.

Ostrom won the prize for her research on how humans evolve governance of the commons, including water and other common pool resources.

 She discovered that user-managed systems worked better in most cases than state-managed, centralized systems because the users bargained with each other and formed cooperative relationships, even when they were prone to fight over water.

 In Nepal, for instance, irrigation systems managed by farmers produced more crops and irrigated more land than systems maintained by the state. When farmers at the head of the river needed users at the end to maintain the system, they engaged in some hard bargaining over payments and allocations that resulted in solid relationships. By contrast, the state-run systems removed any need for the upstream and downstream users to recognize their mutual dependencies and they reverted to “a state of nature,” with increased conflict and lower productivity, Ostrom found.

This advantage of the commons or “users” governance remained even when the state was able to build bigger, better waterworks.

“Interventions designed by outsiders that ignore….reciprocal relationships among farmers may cause more harm than good,” she wrote about her work in Nepal, which has 1.6 million irrigated acres, compared to California’s 9 million.

California’s water problems are surely more complicated than Nepal’s, but it’s not too hard to see the relevance of Ostrom’s work:  Cooperative governance by users takes time, but so do the interminable lawsuits being filed on all sides by stakeholders in California’s water wars.