Helping Our Peninsula's Environment

California Statewide Water Scarcity

April 3 1998

Jeanine Jones, Chief

Statewide Planning Branch

Department of Water Resources

P.O. Box 942836

Sacramento, CA 94236

(Comments - Part I)

We appreciate the effort that went into this update, and find most of the information that is included - valuable. The compilation of information to allow us to understand the magnitude and risk of California's Water Crisis is worthy of award.

Unfortunately, we find this Plan missing some critical basic factual, objective science. Since this Plan is very probably subject to CEQA, we urge proper environmental review to help fix and fill in the, sometimes staggering, gaps in critical information, analysis, alternatives and conclusions.

1. EIR Required California Water Code section 10005 states "... it is the policy of the state that The California Water Plan... is accepted as the MASTER PLAN which guides the ... development ... of the water resources of the state." (emphasis added)

a. A Master Plan for Water Development for the entire state of California for the next 20 years (until the year 2020) would unarguably cause inherent adverse potentially significant environmental impacts to water quality, quantity and the flora and fauna which depend on that water for habitat - at the very least indirect impacts.

b. CEQA compliance is not optional.

c. CEQA demands an EIR even if only indirect impacts will occur.

Is this Water Plan exempt from CEQA? No.

This Plan potentially could be exempt from CEQA if it only collected data. But it goes far beyond collecting data to include forecasting and advocacy (e.g. "... the need to develop new facilities..." pg 10-1, "Recommended Actions" pg 10-13, Options Evaluation in Appendices). And since state law mandates its use as a "Master Plan" some regional or local water agencies can reasonably argue they are forced to rely on it.

As you know CEQA Statutory and Categorical exemptions are not absolute.

CEQA Section 15300.2 (b,c) states that no project is exempt if it could cause any Cumulative Impacts or Significant Effects.

The Draft itself identifies significant existing adverse environmental impacts to water quality and quantity on page 1-2. "[This Plan] estimates water shortages at a 1995 level of development ... [of] 5.2 million acre feet in drought years."

The Draft goes on to describe and advocate many water projects which it claims would reduce water shortages in drought years. Those include Dam projects on the Sacramento and Carmel rivers which harm the habitat for many endangered species including the Steelhead Trout, Coho Salmon and the California Red-legged frog.

The Federal EPA has compiled a long "Checklist of Potential [Adverse] Impacts from Impoundment Projects.(1)" Any one of these 90 impacts (e.g. sediment pollution and stream siltation) is sufficient to trigger a significant impact and thus an EIR.

Clearly this Plan is a project not exempt from and thus subject to CEQA.

This is a request that you prepare an EIR on The California Water Plan (Bulletin 160) as directed by CEQA section 21000 et seq.

The Draft ignores the verified research (pg 3-11) showing that California has been subject to two droughts exceeding 100 years in the last 1000 years (2),(3). One drought exceeded two hundred years (4).

The criteria used to select a standard "statewide design drought" using water years 1990 and 1991 (pg 3-18) is embarrassingly irrational and inadequate. It uses indefensibly poor logic, equivalent to claiming "We don't want to use North Pole temperature data, so measuring the temperature here is good enough."

Failing to recognize that California droughts can last and have lasted beyond six (6) years - to decades and centuries - makes most of the Draft Plan's conclusions invalid. According to accepted science at the very least - one third (33%) of California's last eleven hundred years experienced what we define as drought conditions. Ignoring this fact in a Master Plan for California Water can not be described as credible or responsible research or leadership.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This Water Plan is only as valid, useful and responsible as it analyzes a reasonably possible bad drought.

This Plan has a major weak link in that it does not "plan" for a reasonably foreseeable bad drought.

100 to 200 years droughts should be recognized.

The 1977 drought was not the most severe drought known.

The worst drought year should be described.

At least one third and possibly as much as half of all years should be expected to be drought years.

Underestimating the amount of gas a car needs to get from Sacramento to Los Angeles can leave you by the side of the road in Mendota, taking your chances hitchhiking to a gas station. In this case the helpfulness and generosity of Californians should pull you out of the jam and you would be offered a ride.

In the same way a substantial underestimate of the amount of water our state needs to get from today (1998) through a multi-decade (or multi-century) drought - would leave millions of Californians stranded with basic industries like agriculture - withering. Unfortunately, the climate has no sympathy for our state's residents and we will be stuck to deal with a very real drought by ourselves.

Mark Twain wrote "Never cross a river with an average depth of three feet." The use of the word "average" on pages 1-2 and 3-1 and 3-6 is grossly misleading. When a measure varies by more than 50% it is probably improper to average it. In this case water supply maximum is several multiples of the minimum. This is underscored by the Plan's use of two measures ("drought years" vs. "average water year") to inadequately describe this large fluctuation. The Water Plan should be rewritten to use a "range of extremes" instead of "averages" to prevent hiding huge variations and their attendant uncertainty.

The table on page 1-3 states (but does not add up for the reader) that California used 78 million acre feet of water per year in 1995.

This is directly analogous to needing to feed seventy eight (78) people, but only having adequate food for fifteen. You can't keep that up for long. Neither can this state continue to ignore the existing, huge and growing statewide water shortage crisis.

Any 5th grade California student could tell you that a short drought (even five years) on the order of the 1977 drought would cause substantial long-term damage to the state's residents, agriculture and economy.

The length, severity and frequency of a reasonably possible bad case drought must be acknowledged and evaluated in this Plan. We urge you to examine a drought equal in length and severity to California's worst known drought - the 220 year drought that occurred from approximately 899 AD to 1108 AD.

"Meanwhile, researchers from the California State University believe they have found further evidence that small changes in global climate can have dramatic regional impacts. Radiocarbon data suggest that California suffered two periods of extended severe drought during the Medieval Warm Period between AD 900 to AD 1400. These droughts which lasted 220 years and 140 years respectively, were even more severe than the 1987-1992 drought and the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. Richard Madole from the US Geological Survey suggests that this different climate, with temperatures not much higher than current temperatures but with very much lowered water tables, could mean that California may already be near the threshold of desertification. The study prompted researcher, S. Stine, to state: "We can't predict when (another such) drought will come, but the consequences would be profound...The mind boggles about what would happen to California's agriculture , should global warming tip the Local climate towards another drought period." (From the Greenpeace Climate Impacts Database Web site.)

The amount of water need for Public Trust resources should be described and estimated clearly and put in a quantitative legal or physical context.

a. Public Trust water needs often come legally before additional water demands. Endangered Species Act compliance supercedes ALL state water rights law. Several species (Coho Salmon, Steelhead Trout, California Red-legged Frog) are seriously endangered and federally listed and require substantial amounts of water from streams, groundwater and surface water in California that is also used by people and agriculture (see Plan pges 2-23).

Under CEQA alone, economic factors can override or outweigh, environmental impacts on any species. Under the US-ESA, economic factors can not override or outweigh, environmental impacts on a listed species. The US-ESA mandates that listed species must be protected "whatever the cost."

The Supreme Court wrote in Sweethome v Babbitt: "The plain intent of Congress in enacting this statute," we recognized, "was to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, WHATEVER THE COST. (Emphasis added) This is reflected not only in the stated policies of the Act, but in literally every section of the statute." Id., at 184, 98 S.Ct., at 2297.

a. The years of Dam building are over. The Army Corps of Engineers records of Dam building permits shows that after the Dam building frenzy of the 1940s through the 1960s Dam permitting is now almost non-existent.

b. In fact because of the adverse economic and environmental impacts Dams are now being removed(5). Congress held a hearing in February 1997 to consider draining Lake Powell and removing the Glen Canyon Dam.

c. Dams soon fill with silt and become worthless and harmful.

d. Dams go dry in multi-year (let alone multi-decade or multi-century) droughts, thus giving false assurance of water availability.

Advocating dams is clearly not a systematic or long term approach to genuinely solving our state's water problem.

Please evaluate which Dams could be removed to enhance the long term economic and environmental health of California.

We strongly urge the preparation of a Carrying Capacity estimate for the amount of California "civilization" that the water resources (or lack of) can credibly sustain, so we can be prepared to prevent and minimize emergency and panic when (not if) significant droughts return.

We would suggest a definition of sustainable human water use in California as "No more water pumping than that widely fluctuating amount left after wildlife and ecosystem needs are met, at the end of another one hundred year drought."

While we were aware of our local Monterey Peninsula bad water planning causing shortages, we never imagined the astounding magnitude of the existing statewide water shortage. California development has gone foot to the floor for so long that we find ourselves an incomprehensible distance beyond what any reasonable person (or engineer for that matter) would consider responsible long-term sustainable water pumping ("perennial yield"). It is irresponsible to hide this fact. This should be clearly explained in the Introduction.

We now realize our state's quality of life and economy has hanging over it the dagger of an almost incomprehensibly huge risk of a very real drought (like 1977 - only lasting five or more years) which could begin with any summer. This situation can not honestly be described as anything other than a crisis.

This Plan does not yet adequately analyze this crisis, nor plan for its genuine long term remedy.

Please rewrite and reanalyze all water use and water supply numbers with the real water resources (or lack of) risk potential if a drought begins this year and continues until the end of the Plan's intended life.

You have the opportunity to provide California with a real leadership Water Plan if this one analyzed the carrying capacity of each area and the state as a whole in terms of long term water availability. We hope you choose to do so.

Sincerely, D. Dilworth, Co-Chair RCMP

(1) Larry W. Canter "Environmental Impacts of Water Resources Projects", 1985, pgs 78-81

(2) S. Stine, "Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during medieval time", Nature, v.369, p. 546-549, 16 June 1994

(3) F. Alayne Street-Perrott, "Climate change: Drowned trees record dry spell", Nature, v.369, p. 518, 16 June 1994

(4) "California's climate poised on a knife edge", New Scientist, p.10, 25 June 1994

(5) A. Murr and S. Begley, "Dams Are Not Forever", Newsweek, p 70 Nov 17 1997.

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