[House Hearing, 105 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE FUTURE WATER NEEDS OF CALIFORNIA UNDER CALFED,
CALFED FINANCING, THE MONITORING AND PERFORMANCE STANDARDS OF CALFED,
AND CALFED PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER AND POWER
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 12, 1998, WASHINGTON, DC
__________
Serial No. 105-83
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
-----------
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
48-751 cc WASHINGTON : 1998
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana GEORGE MILLER, California
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
ELTON GALLEGLY, California BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Samoa
KEN CALVERT, California NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
RICHARD W. POMBO, California SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
LINDA SMITH, Washington CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO, Puerto
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Rico
Carolina MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona SAM FARR, California
JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon ADAM SMITH, Washington
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
KEVIN BRADY, Texas CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin
RICK HILL, Montana Islands
BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado RON KIND, Wisconsin
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
Lloyd A. Jones, Chief of Staff
Elizabeth Megginson, Chief Counsel
Christine Kennedy, Chief Clerk/Administrator
John Lawrence, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Water and Power Resources
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California, Chairman
KEN CALVERT, California PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
RICHARD W. POMBO, California GEORGE MILLER, California
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
LINDA SMITH, Washington CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California SAM FARR, California
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas ADAM SMITH, Washington
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona RON KIND, Wisconsin
JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon ---------- ----------
CHRIS CANNON, Utah ---------- ----------
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
Robert Faber, Staff Director/Counsel
Joshua Johnson, Professional Staff
Steve Lanich, Minority Staff
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held May 12, 1998........................................ 1
Statement of Members:
Doolittle, Hon. John T., a Representative in Congress from
the State of California.................................... 1
Herger, Hon. Wally, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 4
Miller, Hon. George, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 3
Radanovich, Hon. George P., a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, prepared statement of............. 5
Statement of Witnesses:
Berliner, Tom, City Attorney Office, San Francisco,
California................................................. 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 83
Bobker, Gary, The Bay Institute.............................. 59
Prepared statement of.................................... 119
Letter to Lester Snow.................................... 139
Davis, Martha, Board Member, Mono Lake Committee Sierra
Nevada Alliance............................................ 10
Prepared statement of.................................... 84
Dickerson, Dick, President, Regional Council of Rural
Counties, Redding, California.............................. 63
Prepared statement of.................................... 96
Gaines, Bill, California Waterfowl Association............... 65
Prepared statement of.................................... 98
Golb, Richard, Northern California Water Association......... 57
Prepared statement of.................................... 93
Hall, Stephen, Association of California Water Agencies,
Sacramento, California..................................... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 87
Moghissi, A. Alan, President, Institute for Regulatory
Science, Columbia, Maryland................................ 61
Prepared statement of.................................... 129
Pauli, Bill, California Farm Bureau Federation, Sacramento,
California................................................. 9
Prepared statement of.................................... 83
Potter, Robert, Chief Deputy Director, Department of Water
Resources, State of California............................. 39
Prepared statement of.................................... 89
Quinn, Timothy, Deputy General Manager, Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California............................ 42
Prepared statement of.................................... 91
Snow, Lester, Executive Director, CALFED Bay-Delta Program... 55
Prepared statement of.................................... 112
Yardas, David, Senior Analyst, Environmental Defense Fund,
California................................................. 40
Prepared statement of.................................... 102
Additional material supplied:
CALFED Bay-Delta Program, Briefing Packet, May 1998.......... 144
Communications submitted:
Wilson, Pete, Governor, California, letter from.............. 90
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE FUTURE WATER NEEDS OF CALIFORNIA UNDER CALFED,
CALFED FINANCING, THE MONITORING AND PERFORMANCE STANDARDS OF CALFED,
AND CALFED PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1998
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Water and
Power Resources, Committee on Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in
room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. John T.
Doolittle (chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Doolittle. The Subcommittee on Water and Power will
come to order.
The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on
future water needs of California, CALFED Financing, CALFED
public participation, and the monitoring and performance
standards of CALFED.
We are gathered here today to have further oversight over
the CALFED Program. Last year, we held an oversight hearing
concerning this program with emphasis on the fiscal year 1998
Federal Funding Request. Since that hearing, the Subcommittee
has been monitoring the program and seeking answers to
questions raised at last year's hearing. Even though we are
into yet another year of budget requests, the information we
have requested has been slowly materializing. We hope this
hearing will accelerate the receiving of those answers.
Our questions are focused, today, on four central concepts
associated with the CALFED Program: water supply, financing,
evaluation of progress, and public participation. Witnesses at
the hearing are expected to provide current information
regarding these areas. To develop the issues more clearly,
witnesses have been selected for our floor panels to address
the following basic questions: one, has CALFED expanded or
reduced the options available to meet future California water
needs? Specifically, how are going to use the CALFED process to
meet the future California urban, rural, agricultural, and
environmental water needs? Has the CALFED prejudged or
eliminated some water planning options? For example, on-stream
storage, water reuse, water transfer, et cetera.
These issues must be addressed, immediately, for two
reasons, First, the demand for water in California already
exceeds water supply during drought years, and second,
according to CALFED own documents and the California Department
of Water Resources, by the year 2020, California will have a 3-
million up to a 7-million-acre-foot-per-year shortage. If the
CALFED Program does not immediately begin to address these
needs through quantifiable means including on-stream storage,
we will lose the valuable time necessary to prepare for this
need. I'm interested in each of the members first panel
providing the Subcommittee with their level of commitment
regarding expanded water supplies.
Two, how does CALFED propose to pay for California's
expanding water needs. Interim fundings for the common elements
in the CALFED Program is being provided by Federal
appropriations and California water bonds. Are the long-term
solutions going to be funded by public interest groups,
beneficiaries, or government financing? Also, are CALFED costs
going to be borne by local communities through unintended
program consequences?
In addressing these questions, I would like the second
panel to provide its opinion regarding benefit-based financing.
Which benefits should be paid for by public money versus user
money? Should some groups' contributions be reduced based on
their members limited ability to pay? And should contributing
stakeholders group be credited for payments they have already
made to CALFED or to other ecosystem restoration programs
operating within the region.
Three, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars how
does CALFED propose to determine if we are any closer to the
environmental restoration which it asserts is the reason for
asking for the initial funding? How do we evaluate the
effectiveness of the funding we are providing? What clear and
unambiguous performance standards are being adopted to
determine if we are closed to success or have achieved success?
Are we going to postpone any major program decision or
alternative until we have the results of the early phases or
are we going to agree on a basic blueprint and simply adjust it
through adaptive management as we move along?
A related issue, the definition of our starting point. It's
my understanding that the Early Restoration Program has not
defined the baseline for determining the goals and targets for
restoration activities. While there maybe a wide spectrum of
views on how to create baselines, we nevertheless, must develop
both an operating baseline as well as a financial baseline if
we are ever to determine if we are making progress for the,
literally, billions of dollars we are being asked to spend.
And four, are the affected parties of the public being
given an ample opportunity to participate in the process? Have
we institutionalized the process to assure that local
landowners are fully appraised of potential program impacts?
Have we institutionalized a process to assure that local
landowners are protected from government manipulation of
property values as part of a Habitat Rehabilitation Program.
I do not believe that these concerns that present
insurmountable obstacles of the CALFED Program rather they
represent reasonable attainable goals which should reflect the
way government conducts its business. As mentioned last year,
the Federal California Bay-Delta Environmental Enhancement Act
coupled with California Proposition 204 advanced a partnership
with potential funds of nearly $1.5 billion. It has the
potential to be used to expand the water quality, enhance water
quality, and restore environmental resources in the Bay-Delta.
Yet, how it is administered will be a test of government's
stability to transition to a smarter, more efficient, less
coercive mode of operation.
I understand that the Governor and the Secretary of the
Interior met yesterday and released a statement and will extend
a comment period for a month while emphasizing the importance
of selecting a preferred alternative. I understand it will,
actually, be only a draft preferred alternative which means
that it will spillover into next year, into the lapse of the
new State administration. And I presume that means that it will
drag on for much, if not most, of next year.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and will
recognize at this time the gentleman from California, Mr.
Miller, for his statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
convening this hearing. And I appreciate an opportunity to
speak today and I welcome the witnesses and others involved in
the CALFED process to the hearing. And certainly, in advance of
their testimony and others who will not testify, I want to
thank all of them for the monumental effort they have put into
this effort.
Obviously, this is a critical issue for every Californian.
The most important resource to the future of our State is
water, and the recommendations, and policies enunciated by
CALFED will likely frame how we think about and how we use
water in California for a generation or more. For all too long,
California and the west, in general, has asked only whether a
water development project could be built. Little regard was
given to the financing of the project which, generally, was
paid through enormous public subsidies. Even less concern was
paid to the environmental consequences of the water diversion,
massive development, and widespread irrigation that flowed from
the water-policy decisions.
Over the pass 15 years, Congress has enacted important
reforms to water policy affecting California including the
Reclamation Reform Act, the Coordinated Operating Agreements
Act, and in 1992, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
These laws directly address issues that are the official
priorities of the CALFED process, environmental restoration,
promoting voluntary transfers, reduction of subsidies and other
incentives to an efficient use, and promoting the integration
of project operations to serve mutual goals.
Implementation of many of these components of laws has been
obstructed for years by those who oppose water management,
contracting flexibility, and subsidy reduction. There is,
however, a growing and justified concern in California that
CALFED is perilously close to repeating many of the mistakes of
the past. Particularly, the top-heavy reliance and costly and
controversial water project construction. CALFED's common
program elements do not receive adequate consideration in the
EIS and her proposed alternatives to maximize the market-
oriented approaches to promote the most efficient use of water.
Transfer conservation, waste water reuse, progressive pricing
and groundwater management must be more aggressively
implemented. With CVPIA and other statutes, we have learned
that the implementing reforms on a timely basis is far more
complicated than pouring concrete.
CALFED must maximize water conservation, improve
management, voluntary transfers to the maximum extent possible,
and if costly new construction projects are necessary, then let
us be assured that this time those who desire the projects are
also the ones bearing the costs of paying for them. Let us
remember that a good part of the goal of CALFED is to save the
Bay-Delta Ecosystem which is in the state of collapse because
of the decades of massive pumping and withdrawals by State and
Federal projects.
A CALFED plan that is, primarily, designed to provide even
greater withdrawals to fuel the tremendous population growth in
other arid regions of the State strikes me, and I have no
doubt, most residents of Northern California is simply being
unacceptable. More of the responsibility for managing and
conserving water and the naturally arid portions of the State
will have to come from residents in those areas rather than
making more and more costly demands on taxpayers and residents
in the northern areas of Oregon, which in themselves are
growing and in need of secure water resources. The CALFED
process is historic and all of California should be grateful to
the extensive and difficult work already completed by the
participants.
I am confident that public comments and the draft DEIS will
help the CALFED participants to develop a new set of
alternatives that address the full range of efficient water
management resources. Let's make sure that before anyone
obligates Californians to decade of debt, we have implemented,
and not just promised, the operational managerial efficiencies
that we know are possible with modern-water policy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
The opening statements of other members will be included in
the hearing record, without objection, and I do have,
specifically, one from Mr. Herger, who is not a member of this
Committee, but who has an opening statement, and that will be
included in the record as well unless there be objection.
Hearing none, that's so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Herger follows:]
Statement of Hon. Wally Herger, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California
Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the
opportunity to testify about CALFED and its impact on water
within the state of California.
According to projections by the Department of Water
Resources, California can expect a population increase by the
year 2020 equal to the populations of Arizona, Nevada, Oregon,
Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. As a result, California
could experience a water deficit of at least 1.6 million acre
feet during average water years, with the water shortfall
possibly mushrooming to 7 million acre feet during drought
years. To put this in perspective, Shasta Lake, one of the
biggest reservoirs in northern California, holds only 4.6
million acre feet.
The CALFED Bay-Delta Program was created to addresss
conflicts over water useage in California's Bay-Delta region.
There is no question that this goal is essential and necessary
to the future of California. However, a CALFED spokesman
recently stated that CALFED was, quote, ``Tasked to fix the
bottleneck in the Delta, not solve California's water
deficit.'' end quote. While this may be technically true, such
a narrow view is dangerously self-defeating. In reality, the
problem is that the Delta does not have enough water. You
cannot fix the Delta or preserve its unique environment without
more water.
Currently, California is home to approximately 33 million
people and sustains the world's richest and most diverse
agricultural industry. The state is also home to diverse
populations of wildlife and native plants. None of this would
be possible, however, if it were not for our ability to store
water for use in the arid summer months. Of the past twelve
years, seven have been droughts and the state suffered serious
water shortages.
California does not have unlimited options for producing
new water resources. CALFED, however, focuses on proposals by
extremists within the environmental community who suggest we
take water away from existing uses through additional water
conservation efforts. Again, water experts at the California
Department of Water Resources have noted we are quickly
reaching the limits of water conservation strategies and that
we will soon be hard pressed to satisfy the needs of the
state's growing population. Another proposal to increase the
water supply is to sink deep wells and increase the water drawn
from the underground aquifer. As a third generation rancher who
grew up in northern California, I can say this is one of the
most extreme and impractical proposals I have ever heard. There
was a time when we relied principally on groundwater to meet
our water needs, but when the aquifer began to dry up and we
sank our wells deeper and deeper, we were forced to install
above-ground reservoirs to ensure we had enough water for
summer use. We still rely on groundwater, but can only do so by
supplementing with additional surface water. It would be
fruital to return to past practices and further deplete our
limited aquifer.
Clearly, the best solution for the Delta, and for
California, is to place greater emphasis on upper watershed
maintenance, and on off-stream water storage. In the past month
CALFED has increased its commitment to improving the health of
the upper watershed, and I commend CALFED for this action,
however, none of the three potential alternatives included in
CALFED's massive, 3,500 page draft environmental impact
statement explicitly plans more water storage. Water storage is
talked about in general terms, but you will look in vain for a
map that points out where new dams and reservoirs will be
built. What you will find, however, is a map that shows a
peripheral canal. Not a structure to hold more water for usage,
but an isolated channel designed to move northern California
water south. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.
This situation must be corrected and water storage, not the
peripheral canal, should take precedence as the key element to
fixing the Bay Delta.
In closing Mr. Chairman, until CALFED gives increased water
supply the serious attention it deserves, I fear that any of
the three current alternatives is destined to fail.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Radanovich follows:]
Statement of Hon. George P. Radanovich, a Representative in Congress
from the State of California
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to convey my
comments on CALFED today. The CALFED agreement, which comprises
a unique multi-agency partnership that addresses ecological and
water supply problems simultaneously, is of significant value
to the state of California.
I, along with many members of the California congressional
delegation, have worked diligently to secure Federal funding
for this project. Bay-Delta was funded at $85 million in fiscal
year 1998, and I fully support the fiscal year 1999 budget
request of $143 million.
As a farmer in the Central Valley, and a representative of
the two largest agricultural producing counties in the nation,
I am extremely concerned with any action that CALFED takes with
respect to the agriculture community. It is essential for our
state to implement a CALFED package that includes a balanced
approach, which meets water supply needs, water quality
objectives, and ecosystem restoration in the Delta. As it has
always been intended, CALFED must address the importance of a
reliable water supply to sustain the agricultural economy in
our region. Water-use efficiencies must be applied to all
stockholders--agricultural, environmental and urban. Additional
conveyance and storage facilities are key elements to the
program and must be included in any final package.
As alternatives are discussed, the protection of private
property is also a high priority of mine. Private property
rights must be secured throughout the process. Furthermore,
CALFED representatives or other Federal and state bureaucrats
must obtain written permission from landowners when conducting
surveys or other biological work on private property. Any
actions that violate landowners' rights are unacceptable.
Consideration of the socioeconomic impacts of each of the
alternatives is also necessary during this process. Taking
agricultural land out of production will not solve California's
water problems. Agriculture is a nearly $25 billion industry in
California. The livelihoods of farmers and others in local
communities who are dependent upon the production of farmland
would be devastated in exchange for the minimal gains in
environmental protection that this unwise course of action
would accomplish.
While I am still evaluating my position on the various
alternatives presented in the CALFED Bay-Delta Programmatic
EIS/EIR, any final solution that is adopted must be equipped to
handle the necessary improvements in the operation of the CVP
and the State Water Project for the long-term environmental,
water quality, water-use efficiency and flood protection needs
for the future of the State of California.
Furthermore any final solution should include the
utilization of an open-channel isolated facility. Such a
facility would provide the greatest flexibility in terms of
future Delta operations, without abandoning the ``common pool''
concept of providing benefits to municipal and industrial and
agricultural users alike.
Also, CALFED decisions must be implemented in a timely
manner. Certainly, concerns must be addressed, however, this is
not an excuse for delays. I urge all stakeholders and
government officials involved to forge ahead this year to
accomplish the essential tasks necessary to complete the CALFED
process.
California's water needs are best met by maximizing an
``adaptive management'' strategy for ecosystem restoration and
water quality and efficiency improvements. Adaptive management
means having the ability to quickly and easily take water to
and from different places in the Delta, at different times,
using various amounts. The final solution must allow for this
type of ``need based'' management of the resource, improve
conveyance capabilities, and provide for the most effective
water storage opportunities.
In summary, the solution to California's water needs must
include providing a reliable water supply and a healthy
environment at the same time. Some in the environmental
community think that CALFED is only about improving the
environmental condition of the Delta and not addressing the
issue of supply. That is simply not true. One cannot--and must
not--be achieved without the other.
I appreciate your time Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to
continuing the work of providing long-term solutions to
California's water needs, through the CALFED process.
Mr. Doolittle. Today's hearing has a different format,
somewhat, from the other hearings that we've conducted. We did
this trying to look for, perhaps, a more useful format and one
that would lend itself, particularly, to the nature of this
hearing. The hearing today is organized into four panels with
each panel addressing one program component of CALFED. Each
panelist prior to the hearing was asked to address a specific
question regarding CALFED, and we will ask the entire panel to
give their statements, as we normally do, and then members will
alternate questioning these witnesses. I'd like to ask the
first panel of witnesses, if you'd pleased come forward and
remain standing. Take the oath, and then we'll begin.
Mr. Berlin, you are just going to remain where you are,
but----
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. Let the record reflect each
answered in the affirmative. We are very happy to have you hear
today.
The first panel will address the following question: how
are we going to use the CALFED process to meet the future
California urban, rural, agriculture, and environmental water
needs, and has the CALFED process prejudged or eliminated some
water planning options, such as on-stream storage, water reuse,
water transfers, et cetera?
I think you're all familiar with those three lights there,
but, basically, we urge you to try and keep within the 5
minutes. At the beginning of the fifth minute, the yellow light
will go on, and you don't have to stop in mid-sentence, but
it's a guide when the red light comes.
Our first witness today will be Mr. Tom Berliner from the
City's Attorney's Office, city of San Francisco. Mr. Berliner
you are recognized for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF TOM BERLINER, CITY ATTORNEY OFFICE, SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIFORNIA
Mr. Berliner. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of
the Subcommittee. My name is Thomas M. Berliner. I'm general
counsel for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to appear
before you to submit this statement concerning the water
supplies benefits which are expected from the CALFED Bay-Delta
Program.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is a retail
and wholesale water supplier. We provide water to approximately
2.4 million residents of the Bay Area in a service area which
extends from San Francisco through the South Bay and Silicon
Valley and up the eastern side of San Francisco Bay to the city
of Hayward. Service areas which abut ours include the East Bay
Municipal Utility District and the Santa Clara Valley Water
District, with whom we share various customers in the Silicon
Valley.
I'm here today representing the Bay-Delta Urban Coalition,
which is an unincorporated association of major urban
California water agencies. The Coalition has been extremely
active in the CALFED process, and San Francisco has been an
active member of that effort as well.
The Urban Coalition has put a great deal into the success
of the CALFED process. Individually and collectively, we have
been working for many years to achieve a long-term solution to
the Bay-Delta problems. In our view, CALFED provides the best
opportunity we have seen to achieve this long sought after
success. Furthermore, the failure of CALFED leads us to an
unacceptable return to the insecurity of years past.
I would now like to respond to the questions you posed to
this panel. As to how we are going to use the CALFED process to
meet the future water needs of urban, rural, agricultural, and
environmental California, four basic elements drive the CALFED
process: water supply, water quality, ecosystem restoration;
and system integrity. The latter focused mainly on levee
stability.
From the Urban Coalition's perspective, improved
reliability of water supply is essential to the maintenance of
our economy. This reliability will be achieved by improving
water quality and quantity, as well as restoring the ecosystem
so as to reduce the conflicts between supply and environmental
needs. As to water supply, CALFED will provide us with the
greatest assistance in terms of improving water quality.
Urban water purveyors have made a strong commitment toward
meeting their demands through a variety of sources. We are in
the era of integrated resource planning efforts. Every major
urban water supplier has invested substantial resources in
these integrated resources plans. Components of this plan
include improvements to water quality, conservation,
reclamation, better use of local storage, including conjunctive
use, and water transfers. Improved water quality is necessary
if we are to achieve the potential of increased use of
reclaimed water. Further, better quality water from the Delta
will better enable water supply agencies to fully utilize lower
quality water from the Colorado River or local sources.
Finally, improvement of the water transfer market is a
major component of the CALFED Program. By improving Delta water
quality, and access to transfers, urban supplies can be made
substantially more reliable.
As to coordination with other California water planning
activities, the urban water suppliers have been planning for
their future for several years. As I stated previously, through
integrated resource plans, urban agencies are seeking to
balance their sources of supply. CALFED provides us with, yet,
another opportunity to further augment these supplies. In
addition to improving supply by virtue of improved water
quality and increased yield, CALFED will also promote improved
water management for the environment. For example, we are
actively engaged in the effort to develop a sound Ecosystem
Restoration Program Plan. An important component of the ERPP is
adaptive management of fishery requirements. By improving the
efficiency of water management for the environment, it will,
hopefully, be less necessary to use water that otherwise could
be used to meet consumptive needs.
Water agencies will continue with their own local planning
efforts, and not rely exclusively on the CALFED process to meet
their long-term needs. CALFED was not designed to meet
everybody's needs, and it should not be regarded as the answer
to all water-supply problems.
By coordinating local water supply efforts with the
improvements expected to result from the CALFED process, we can
decrease the tension between consumptive and in-stream storage
uses of water. By reducing this tension, each sector will be
freer to pursue those activities which are essential to its
long-term security. The Urban Coalition is firmly committed to
working with all interests to insure long-term supply
reliability.
As to whether CALFED has prejudged or eliminated some water
planning options, in our view, the CALFED process has been a
remarkably inclusive. CALFED has been open to suggestions of
alternatives for meeting water supply, environmental and
infrastructure needs. CALFED has reviewed over 100 options and
narrowed them down to the most preferred elements. It is
considered the role of the water conservation, water transfers,
reclamation, and potential infrastructure changes including
over 40 reservoirs sites and twelve ways to move water around
the State. Each idea has received a fair share of comment and
scrutiny. In the end, many ideas had to be eliminated and of
the three alternatives which remained, ultimately, only one
will survive. It may be that the one alternative chosen will
comprise a combination of the others, but in the end, we can
have only a single vision for the long-term solution to the
Bay-Delta.
I conclude my remarks here. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Tom Berliner may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness will be Mr. Bill Pauli, president of the
California Farm Bureau Federation. Welcome, Mr. Pauli.
STATEMENT OF BILL PAULI, CALIFORNIA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION,
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Pauli. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the
Committee.
On behalf of the California Farm Bureau and our 75,000
members, I'm pleased to have the opportunity to appear before
you. I'm a farmer over in Mendocino County and grow wine grapes
and Bartlett pears.
We are committed to seeking solutions which will insure a
reliable, affordable water supply for all of California.
California population is projected to grow by 17 million people
by the year 2020, and without prudent planning, our current
water deficiencies will surely grow.
California farms provide key supplies of food and fiber,
$25 billion in revenue, $12 billion in exports, and important
jobs, and coveted, open space throughout our great State. The
CALFED process provides an unprecedented opportunity to craft a
plan to meet our State's water needs for the next 30 years. I
can't stress that enough. It's to look ahead for the future and
the future growth of our State, and to plan for that.
Unfortunately, the CALFED plan to date falls short of this
goal. Current CALFED effort is based on redirecting
agriculture's two most vital resources, land and water, to
satisfy other uses rather than developing reliable, and
affordable water supply.
Nonetheless, we are optimistic the CALFED process can
succeed. There's three critical issues for agriculture:
increasing water storage; minimizing fallowing; and
strengthening our water rights.
Current total use of water in California is broken down
into about 46 percent for the environment, 42 percent for
agriculture, and 11 percent for urban usage. And additionally,
millions of acre feet of water flows out to the ocean which is
available for good uses year in and year out. Instead of
redirecting water from productive agricultural and urban uses,
we should concentrate on fully utilizing the water that now
flows to the ocean. By conserving overflows, we can increase
flood protection while saving water for dry years. We need to
increase the capacity of existing reservoirs, such as Lake
Shasta, Millerton, Los Vaqueros and, potentially, others as
well so that that water can be used for agriculture, for
urbanites, for our cities, and yes, for the ecosystem.
CALFED proposes to fallow 250,000 acres of prime
agricultural land which holds senior water rights. Overall,
fallowing could approach 1 million acres. California
agricultural land has significant, global impact. As a matter
of good public and social policy, this land should not be
converted and we strongly oppose such efforts. We recognize new
conveyance system or reservoirs will require the retirement of
some acreage, and in those cases the landowners should be
compensated. And we clearly recognize the same land will be
removed, but the fallowing of agricultural lands for levee
setbacks, shallow water habitats and other environmental
purposes should not be part of the CALFED process. The combined
total, according to the EIR/EIS, could range from 396,000 acres
and 914,000 acres removed. Protection of agriculture water
rights is a key to the ultimate success of CALFED.
Farmers and ranchers depend on established water rights to
maintain their livelihood. CALFED must assure surface and
groundwater rights. Areas of origin must be protected and
strengthened. Impact in those areas could be monumental. CALFED
should abandon the notion that groundwater can be used in areas
feeding the Delta as a future source of water for urban and
environmental uses under the guise of conjunctive use.
We cannot support the continued investment of public money
as long as farmers bear a disproportionate share of the burden
in reaching the Delta solution. Farm Bureau supported
Proposition 204 and previous Federal appropriations as a down
payment to secure major improvements in the Delta water
management. Unfortunately, both have been used to fallow
agricultural land and set the stage to redirect agricultural
water.
We continue to support the need for a long-term Delta plan,
but we are losing confidence that the solution will contain
meaningful steps, primarily, water storage. Fallowing will
seriously hurt California agriculture and the surrounding
communities. I cannot stress the amount of impact that it will
have in those local communities if that land is fallowed. We
tend to forget about the people in the tire shops, the cafes,
the newsstands, newspapers. We cannot underestimate the impact
on those people. Therefore, it is impossible for us to support
continued Federal funding until we see marked improvement in
the proposal.
We are discouraged, but we want to remain optimistic that
CALFED will turn the corner and work toward meeting the State's
long-term needs for the next 30 years, and we are confident
that that can occur. The main concern for us at this point is
the devil in the details which we do not understand and have
not been able to get clear through.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pauli may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
The next witness will be Ms. Martha Davis, Board Member of
the Mono Lake Committee Sierra Nevada Alliance. Ms. Davis,
you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF MARTHA DAVIS, BOARD MEMBER, MONO LAKE COMMITTEE
SIERRA NEVADA ALLIANCE
Ms. Davis. Thank you very much. Good afternoon Chairman
Doolittle, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the
invitation to speak before you today.
My name is Martha Davis. I am speaking today on behalf of
the Sierra Nevada Alliance and the Mono Lake Committee. Both of
these citizen's groups work on water-policy issues in
California. The primary focus of the Sierra Nevada Alliance in
on watershed restoration in mountain counties. While the Mono
Lake Committee works to promote conservation, recycling, and
why-is-water-use programs in Southern California, I also serve
as a member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Advisory Council, and on
the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Roundtable.
In summarizing my testimony this afternoon, I want to make
sure that I address the two questions posed by the
Subcommittee. The first question is how are going to use the
CALFED process to meet future-California urban, rural,
agricultural, and environmental water needs?
CALFED is addressing the State's future water needs in the
context of fixing the San Francisco Bay-Delta. While it's not
CALFED's goal to resolve all water issues in California, the
water-use policy CALFED, ultimately, proposes to include in the
final preferred alternative, especially the programs for
increased conservation and water-recycling, will have a
profound impact on how much water is available in the future to
share between urban, rural, agricultural, and environmental
water needs.
The recent developments of conservation and water-recycling
programs in Southern California has already made a tremendous
contribution to meeting the State's current environmental,
rural, and agricultural water needs. Let me give you two
examples, the city of Los Angeles. As a primary result of
conservation programs implemented since 1990 in Los Angeles,
the city is currently using the same amount of water as it did
in the mid-1970's only now we are serving almost 1 million more
people. The success of these programs have made it possible for
the city of Los Angeles to protect Mono Lake, a vital resource
to the rural community of Mono County, without taking water
away from Northern California or the Colorado River. And that
is a clear benefit to the rest of the State. Further, the city
of Los Angeles believes that it can meet all of its future
water needs even with all the growth projected for the region
through additional conservation and recycling projects.
Second success story, the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California. At the peak of the drought of the calendar
year 1990, MWD sold 2.6 million acre feet in imported water
supplies. Since then, Metropolitan Water District has developed
its Integrated Resources Plan, refocused its efforts on
developing a more balanced mixture of local and imported water
supplies, and helped the region to start to aggressively
implement conservation, recycling, and groundwater management
projects. The result, MWD has reduced its imported water sales
down to about 1.8 million acre feet. Although this year has
been wet, and I think they may go lower. Possibly as low as 1.6
million acre feet. This dramatic reduction in MWD imported
water needs means there's more water available to meet the
State's other environmental, urban, rural, and agricultural
needs.
How much of a difference can future water-conservation and
recycling make to meeting the State's needs? Let me answer with
a question. How many in people in 1990 would have predicted the
overwhelming success of conservation programs in Southern
California. These programs have fundamentally reshaped our
water demand, and there is still much more that we can, and
should, be doing in Southern California. And what's been done
in Southern California can be done elsewhere.
The second question posed by the Subcommittee is whether
the CALFED process has prejudged or eliminated some water-
planning options from the discussion? The answer is no. I don't
think so. CALFED is not yet completed its planning process nor
yet made a decision on the preferred alternative. Addressing
the Bay-Delta problem is a huge, if not heroic, undertaking and
the work of CALFED is far from finished. But I do, briefly,
want to raise concerns I have been hearing about some of the
information CALFED is relying upon in its evaluation of the
water-planning options. These are the assumptions used in the
California Water Plan, known as Bulletin 160. Bluntly, the
concern is that this document has greatly overstated the future
urban-demand projections and, substantially, understated the
potential for conservation and opportunities to recycle water.
In other words, it's been making the problem with meeting the
State's future needs a bigger problem than, perhaps, it needs
to be.
I reviewed Bulletin 160 with an eye toward Southern
California, and I agree that the document raises some troubling
issues. For example, why does Bulletin 160 assert that water
demand in 1995 for the South Coast Region was in the vicinity
of 4.3 million acre feet when the actual demand was in the
vicinity of 3.5 million acre feet? The 800,000 acre-foot
difference is more than the entire water needs of city of Los
Angeles.
Why does Bulletin 160 identify over 1 million acre feet and
potential conservation and water recycling projects for the
South Coast Region for 2020 that only count approximately
300,000 acre feet of this water in the final water projection?
And how is this information incorporated into the CALFED
environmental analysis? I mean, perfectly honest, I find it
troubling when I see charts that show a potential shortage of 6
million acre feet for the year 1995, which was a year that we
had ample water supplies. And I understand the need to
normalize the data, but my question is what is the data that
those projections have been based upon.
I don't yet have the answers, but I am confident that we
will find them in the context of the CALFED process.
I'll end my testimony there. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Martha Davis may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness is Mr. Stephen Hall with the Association
of California Water Agencies. Mr. Hall.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN HALL, ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA WATER
AGENCIES, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Hall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members. It's a
pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting us.
The Association represents agricultural and urban water
agencies around this State that collectively deliver somewhere
between 90 percent and 95 percent of the delivered water in
this State. We're the folks who, actually, deliver it to the
users, the homes, farms, and businesses. As you said in your
opening statement, Mr. Chairman, we're here to discuss the
State's water needs and what role CALFED will, and should, play
in meeting those needs, and in our minds, the two are
inextricably linked.
We need additional water in a growing State. A State that's
going to continue to grow by all projections. And CALFED, in
our view, is the best way to provide for the water for that
growing State.
There's a fair amount of debate still going on. You heard
Martha Davis' testimony just now. There was perspective that
says the water demands are overstated and the opportunities for
the so-called ``soft-path methods'' are understated. I think
that debate will continue, but one thing is clear and that is
that no single option is going to get us where we need to go
with respect to water supply for the State. We're not going to
get it by simply building additional reservoirs, but we're also
not going to get it through more conservation. I think it's
going to take a mix, and that's why we're supporting CALFED
because CALFED provides the sort of mix that we think we're
going to need.
At our present rate of growth, the most recent estimate are
we're going to be somewhere 3 million and 7 million acre-feet
short in the year 2020. Sounds a long way off. It's the
planning horizon. By the time you plan it and build it,
whatever it is, whether it's a new reclamation plant or new
reservoir, you are going to need the water that you started
planning now.
There is some question about the estimates that are being
proposed by Department of Water Resources Bulletin 160, but
frankly, there's no more credible study available. And although
there remains debate about how much can be developed through
conservation versus additional development, those are all
within a reasonable range and if you look at any of them, it
clearly shows that no matter whether you take the low end or
the high end of the range of estimates, you're still going to
need that mix.
Everybody understands in California who studied water that
in decades past we met our needs through building additional
reservoirs. In the last three decades, the 1970's, 1980's, and
1990's we've met our needs through, what the environmental
community calls, the ``soft path,'' conservation, reclamation,
land conversion. We've got a remarkable record in that. In the
urban setting in Southern California alone they've spent over
$160 million, conserved nearly a million acre feet of water,
enough to meet the needs of the city of Los Angeles, as Martha
pointed out. In fact, I was glad she made my point for me.
We've done quite a bit in the urban setting.
In the agricultural setting, the record in some ways is
even more impressive. Water use in the agricultural setting
through land conversion and conservation has been reduced by 4
million acre feet since 1980. Production in the meantime is
increased by 50 percent. Projections are that agricultural-use
will go down another 2 million acre feet over the next twenty,
twenty-five years. And agricultural has invested over $2
billion--$2 billion with a b, in drip systems alone.
Urban and agricultural-water users have gone a long way in
conserving. It's something we should have done and we're glad
we did, but clearly, conservation alone is not the answer. It
won't fix the system in the Delta which is badly broken. Today,
we have conflicts between protecting fish and delivery water.
It cannot be fixed with the existing system. We have drinking
water quality problems that can't be fix with the existing
system, and we're badly in need of additional flood control in
this State. That's why we believe as a part of whatever
develops, CALFED has to deliver more water for the State. We're
glad that CALFED now has up to 6 million acre feet of
additional storage in its plan, and we're going to stay engaged
and supportive of CALFED and see that as a final plan it
contains a significant amount of additional storage.
We will also, though, continue to support the so-called
``soft-path methods.'' CALFED has as much as 4 acre feet of
water through conservation for every 1 acre feet of additional
yield in its projections. What that agricultural final mix
looks like in terms of how much conservation and how much water
supply is what CALFED will sort out over the next several
months and, I think, everyone of the stakeholders here at this
table, and in this room will stay engaged to try to help them
get to that right mix. But the bottom line for all us--the
thing that I think we all agree on though we disagree on some
of the facts, is that CALFED is the best opportunity that we've
had in a generation to solve the problems, reduce the
conflicts, and meet our present and future water needs in this
State.
CALFED must succeed and the Water Community is committed to
staying engaged to make sure that it does.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hall may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
For the benefit of the members, we'll probably will do a
couple of rounds or so of questions here.
Mr. Pauli, are your members of the Farm Bureau, actually,
actively opposing the funding in this year for CALFED?
Mr. Pauli. No. Our concern is that if we don't make
progress in terms of the issue related to fallowing and make or
have assurances related to additional storage, that it simply
does not make sense to continue to fund the process because the
process needs to include those two to be viable, and that's
what we're saying. Not to cut funding, but in order to continue
funding, it needs to be a well-rounded and complete program or
we would not favor continuing the funding this next year.
Mr. Doolittle. Are you expecting some assurances to be
given at some point before final action is taken this year or
are you waiting to see what happens next year in order to make
that conclusion?
Mr. Pauli. Well, hopefully, as we go forward with the
discussions during the summer and fall we'll receive some
adequate assurance and, there again, that part is quantified,
but adequate assurances that those two issues will be addressed
in a way in which we can continue to proceed with the process
because we all recognize how important the overall outcome of
the process is.
Mr. Doolittle. It's my understanding we presently have, not
in this year, but on the average we presently have in an
average water year a water shortage right now. Is that--anybody
disagree with that?
Ms. Davis. I'm sorry. Do we have a shortage this year?
Mr. Doolittle. Not this year, but that in an average year,
we have a deficit already at least as I understand the
California Department of Water Resources analysis of this.
Apparently, they estimate that there's about a 1.6 million
acre-foot shortage for an average water year.
Mr. Hall. I will say that we cannot reliably meet the needs
of all areas of this State in an average water year today, and
that there is groundwater overdraft which is, in part,
indicative of water shortages.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. I think we're probably get to the
quantification in one of the other panels, but--I mean, if no
one--does anyone dispute the assertion that we are short on the
average right now?
Ms. Davis. I don't know how to answer the question because
when I read Bulletin 160 and I try to put all the pieces
together and understand how they put together their numbers, I
don't know they got to the outcome they got to. I think that
part of the point of the testimony I wanted to make today was
the need for a good, quality answer to that question. What are
the water needs of the State currently? How do we define for
urban, for agriculture, for the environment the water needs so
that we track through those numbers and then take a what the
supplies look, and take a hard look at the match and whether
there's a mismatch. I do believe there is a perception that
there is a tremendous mismatch between supply and demand, but I
don't think we've got the document that gives us the answer to
the question.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, we'll ask Mr. Potter when he comes on
Panel Number 2.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, may I just make one additional
comment on that.
Mr. Doolittle. Yes.
Mr. Hall. Regardless of what any report says, when you have
declining water tables and when you have water users who are
chronically receiving 50, 60, 70 percent of what they've
contracted for and are paying for, that to me strongly
indicates the shortage. And that's in normal and above normal
years.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, that would, certainly, be an indicator
of that to me as well, and I presume, CALFED believes there's a
shortage or they wouldn't be proposing to fallow these hundreds
of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land which, I
think, is a real concern.
I am interested in seeing our water supplies increase, and
Ms. Davis testified she didn't think any of the options had
been foreclosed which I guess means that even on-stream storage
isn't foreclosed under CALFED. Is that--anybody here disagree?
Do you believe it has been foreclosed by CALFED?
OK. No disagreements so far. You all, or some of you
alluded to it, but I wonder the discussion of the soft-path
land is to increase conservation, and the conservation of the
city of L.A. is remarkable. I think it shows what we can do
with improving technology and understanding of our water
systems.
But it seems to me that it might be dangerous to rely upon
conservation as the main solution to our water problems because
I look upon that as kind of being the emergency solution, when
we run out of water or have a crisis facing us. It seems like
we're giving up our response capacity if we use conservation to
be the main source for additional water development. I mean,
obviously, where we can conserve without impacting
significantly our lifestyles, that's one thing, and that
apparently has gone on in the city of Los Angeles, and in other
areas, and that's very encouraging.
But there's always the option to impact our lifestyles,
when necessary, in the event of a major drought or something. I
would like to see our policy increase the amount of water
available so that we don't have to--so that we no longer have
the ability to respond in an emergency without experiencing
grave, negative consequences.
Did anybody want to comment on that?
Mr. Pauli. Mr. Chairman, I think we need to focus to the
future. You know, we've made tremendous strides in agriculture,
tremendous strides in urban use, in terms of conservation, and
being much more efficient with the water we have available. And
yet, as we look forward over the next 20 to 30 years, I think
Mr. Hall said, as you look forward, what are we going to do
with the growth with the next 15 or 20 million people?
We agree already that there is a shortage, the magnitude of
which maybe we can't quantify, but clearly, a shortage. What
are we going to do for the next 15, or 20, or 30 million people
who come to our State? Can we provide water for all of their
needs, including recreational environmental without additional
surplus or additional supplies and storage? Can we continue to
take all of the water that they're going to need from
conservation? At some point, I think we can only conserve so
much.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. Mr. Miller is recognized for his
questions.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all
of you for your testimony. This panel alone probably has given
us a week's worth of questions, but we'll see if we can get it
done this afternoon.
Well, let me just go to the point that's been raised here.
Ms. Davis, in your testimony what you describe as
discrepancies, or questions raised, I guess would be better, we
don't know if they're discrepancies or not, but questions
raised by Bulletin 160 of State Department Water Resources, I
don't know how exhaustive your list is, at one point, the South
Coast you refer to a number of times, but they're fairly
substantial numbers. It looks to me like somewhere between
conservation and overstatement of use. You're very close to 2
million-acre feed of water. Is that correct?
Ms. Davis. The first number that I refer to is for 1995,
and the second was for the year 2020. So I was trying to cover
both current and the future situation----
Mr. Miller. OK, I see. I see.
Ms. Davis. But, when you start, there are a very large
number of comments that have been submitted to the State
Department of Water Resources that raise similar questions, and
a substantial amount water, both looking at 1995 and 2020.
Mr. Miller. Well, my concern would be that if the fall to
160 is as deeply integrated into the CALFED--others can respond
to this later--as you suggest it is, if there are flaws there
with respect to assumptions made about usage or about
conservation or the future of usage and/or conservation, as you
carry those into the CALFED process, it seems to me, we start a
multiplier effect here, as we start extrapolating these things
out to 2020, we hope that CALFED carries us more than a few
years down the road.
The impact on water decisions, the impact on taxpayers can
be fairly dramatic. You can take a small area here and it can
be rather large out there in the future.
Ms. Davis. I agree. I think that everything that CALFED
stands for is trying to get the best quality information pulled
together so that we can make good decisions about California's
water future. These questions need to be answered.
Mr. Miller. You know, my concern is a couple of things. A
little bit of this is deja vu. I sat in this hearing room for
25 years, and I probably spent the first ten with people
sitting at that table telling me that if we didn't build a
thousand nuclear power plants, if we didn't bring on line X
number of generations, year-after-year-after-year, this economy
and this country wouldn't go. Later, we find out, that we
should be growing economy and decrease your power consumption
rather dramatically in this country, actually.
And now, California taxpayers are looking at $28 billion in
stranded costs, because a lot of decisions were made on bad
underlying assumptions. It turned out just not to be the case.
And here, we're looking at whether you generate a million-acre
feet of water in conservation, non-structural ways are two
million-acre feet, or whether you generate it behind a large
structure is a big difference to the taxpayer--very substantial
difference if you're going to ask for general obligation bonds.
So, I don't know if you or Mr. Hall is quite correct here,
about how you attribute this, but it seems to me that the test
would be if this was the plan to build a motel, and you say, I
believe my occupancy rate is 90 percent, loan me the money, but
if the figures show that it's really 30 percent, you made a
drastic mistake. And so the question is here, if we're going to
go to the taxpayer at some point, because I think we're in
agreement with what Mr. Doolittle said, that none of these
options are off the table, and nobody believes they should be
taken off at this point.
But we've got to start in this common-period, and I guess
in the next common-period that the Governor and the Secretary
have agree to, we've got to harden this information. Because at
some point, we're going to go to the market, or we're going to
go to the taxpayers, at minimum, if we won't go to the market.
It may not fly in the market, but with unfortunately, the
taxpayers, it might.
It's analogous to what goes on around here. We're arguing
now over cuts, and spending, and tax-cuts. And what they're
saying is they want to know you've made every effort to cut the
spending, so they know what they have for tax-cuts, or before
you raise taxes, you want to know that you've made every effort
here.
And so, a good chunk of the questions that the chairman's
asked you and other panels to respond to, this discrepancy is
absolutely vital. And we're going to go to the people for a big
flood control bond. They're either going to double-back on
water--they ought to know that we've rung every drop of water
out of this system that we can at the lower cost if that's
available. Otherwise, we're going to look like the utility
industry. Well, we are the utility industry. We just haven't
had our turn in the de-regulated atmosphere. But, we shouldn't
repeat that history, or be within coming along and asking
people in 2020 to keep coughing-up money for a bond issue, and
the benefits have disappeared.
That's my opening statement, Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
Let me just say that I think this is absolutely
fundamental. No matter how you think the end of this process
comes out, if we cannot go to the public with hard figures, I
think we're doing a real disservice to ourselves, in the
interest of putting some stability into California's water
system. But we're going to be doing a real disservice to the
taxpayers who were going to be asked, apparently, under a
couple of scenarios to foot most of the bill.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. Mr. Pombo is recognized.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Davis, do you believe that water needs for the future
of California can be met through conservation?
Ms. Davis. I think the experience from Los Angeles is
instructive. In 1990, when we were in the midst of litigation
with the city over the protection of Mono Lake, the city
insisted that it could not afford to share a single drop of
water with Mono Lake. That the city's growth, water needs, and
concerns about the growth of those water needs were so large,
so monumental that it was not possible----
Mr. Pombo. And we--they adopted low-flow toilets, shower
heads, I mean, they did it--we did it throughout all of
California. We did water rationing during the drought. We did a
lot of different things. But the reality is they've done all of
these things to this point. They've gone after the easy
conservation, and I think that, that's true with all of
California; it's true with agriculture. They've done everything
they could, in terms of what they could realistically do at an
economically viable place.
Now, we're talking about adding 17 million--the projection-
17 million people, additional land, it is going to be
irrigated, all of these different factors; will conservation
alone do that?
Ms. Davis. Well again, going back to the Mono Lake example,
as a result of the conservation that has been done to-date, the
city has saved more water than the entire amount of water that
they divert from the Mono Lake ecosystem. And the way this city
has been looking at conservation, they've linked it with
solving every problem that the city is facing.
We have had problems with sewage. We have had problems with
antiquated infrastructure in Watts area, South Central Los
Angeles, and by investing in conservation, we're investing in
our community. It's a combination of solving problems and
drought-proofing our economy. So what's happened is, we've
learned that conservation is not just a short-term emergency
response to a drought, although there's that component of
conservation, what we've learned is that if we don't conserve,
if we're not building in water recycling projects, we're making
ourselves economically vulnerable during droughts.
And so, what the city-council has said, their plan is to
meet future growth through conservation water recycling
projects.
Mr. Pombo. So their forays up into the valley to buy
farmland, and transfer the water from the farmland in the
valley into southern California is not real? They're not really
doing that?
Ms. Davis. I'm not aware of LADWP with proposals to
transfer water from the Central Valley.
Mr. Pombo. Well, we'll go on.
Mr. Hall, do you believe that conservation of our water in
California will meet the future needs of California over the
next 20 or 30 years?
Mr. Hall. No, I don't. As I said in my statement, I think
conservation of water, and frankly, of other precious resources
is a strongly indebted ethic in California, and that's a good
thing, and that we can make additional progress. But, as I said
in my statement, we have made remarkable progress in the area
of conservation, and the downside to that is, that it does
harden demand. The demand that remains is less flexible. And
when--because it's not if, it's when--we have our next drought
we will have less capacity to conserve. I think that's a risk
worth running, but only if we also put together a mix of
additional water supply options.
I think, we're at a point in California water, where the
cost of water, both in dollars, and politically, is such that
you cannot develop additional supplies, unless they make a lot
of sense. I think we're at the point now, where we can go
forward with a mix of additional conservation-reclamation if we
include additional water supplies, and we can make it work now,
and in the year 2020.
Mr. Pombo. Do you believe that any water plan for the
future of California that does not realistically look at the
development of new surface water resources is being realistic?
Mr. Hall. I frankly don't. I think there are other options
that are easier to do, and perhaps, more affordable,
conjunctive-ousting--my favorite example. But there are some
things conjunctive-use can't do; flood control is one of them.
You don't get much flood control benefit out of conjunctive-use
as you do out of surface storage, whether it's on-stream or
off.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Pauli, agriculture has done a lot in terms
of conservation over the past several years. Do you believe
that there is a huge amount that they could do in the future to
save water?
Mr. Pauli. Well, we'll currently continue to try to
conserve water, and I think we can continue to make progress in
a number of areas. But, we will reach a point at which we can
no longer conserve additional water. Where that is, I'm not
sure because we continue to have technology that does allow us
to conserve water, but there will be a limit.
The other thing that's clearly occurring as part of the
conservation effort, we're converting from one type of cropland
to another type of cropland as though we've gotten some
benefits there. But where the limit is, I'm not sure.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. Mr. Dooley, you're recognized.
Mr. Dooley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I guess first-off,
I'd like to express just a little bit of frustration because
some of the opening statements, and including that of Mr.
Miller in that, we appear to be finding ourselves lapsing into
some of the old rhetoric, and some of the old battles that got
us into a position where we weren't able to find solutions. I
think I, myself, was looking at this cow-fed-process as a best
opportunity for us to move forward in a collaborative fashion
with all the stakeholders at the table, in order to try to find
some solutions.
And while I had took some exceptions to Mr. Miller's
remarks, Mr. Pauli, I would say, as a farm bureau member, I
also take some exception to the California Farm Bureau
basically coming out, and saying that they're not going to
support public funding if these two conditions aren't met.
Because I think that disrupts the opportunity, or impedes the
opportunity, I guess it is, for us really to try to move
forward.
We're not all going to get everything we want; it's clear.
And, I hope that there will be a little bit of softening of
some of the rhetoric here as we move forward. Because I think,
in some of the testimony, where Mr. Doolittle asked all of you
to testify on whether or not the CALFED-process was prejudging.
I mean, we heard in so many opening statements that it appeared
that we were already making statements, in terms of prejudging,
in terms, that we are looking at favoring concrete solutions
over recycling and others, where we are looking over taking
greater withdrawals out of the Delta over the others, and I
guess, when I look at the various alternatives that you have
been offering, that we're still in a process, I have trouble
seeing how any of us can say that we are now at the point where
we're prejudging anything, because we haven't determined what
the drought process is.
I also express a little frustration over this Bulletin-160.
I think it's appropriate for us to really ascertain the
accuracy of this document. And, I think, that's a legitimate
issue that I would hope that during the remainder, and the
balance of the CALFED process, that we will continue to look
at, and make our determinations of what the final draft
proposals should be. But again, I think that we have to be
careful that we are going to be trying to justify whatever our
personal pre-judged position should be based on whether or not
that is valid or not.
I guess one of the other issues that I was most concerned
with, there was a statement made that there wasn't enough
consideration given to market-oriented approaches, and in that
reference, I think we were probably referring to transfers. I
guess, Mr. Berliner, you made some reference to that. Has this
issue from your perspective, been adequately addressed? Has it
been taken off the table, or where are we at as we look at
water transfers?
Mr. Berliner. I don't think that water transfers have been
taken off the table at all, in fact, quite the contrary. I
think water transfers are one of the major issues in the CALFED
process, and an area that the urban community is looking to,
very favorably and quite strongly, as being available to meet
some of our future needs. So, we intend to rely quite heavily
on water transfers. I had ordered to move water in the areas
that are water-short.
I might comment about an earlier conversation that had
taken place regarding conservation. Certainly, urban areas are
not going to be able to meet their future needs strictly from
conservation. Water transfers and additional yield from the
system are going to be essential.
We met last week with members of the business community.
There was a letter signed by 28 chief executive officers,
urging the President and Governor Wilson to proceed toward a
preferred alternative by the end of this year, and in their
view, water transfers was one of the key components of the
CALFED program, and urged that review of water transfers
continue. We support that. We believe that we do need to move
toward preferred alternatives, and that water transfers are a
very important component. We are glad that the business
community is becoming engaged in this. After all, the
California economy, the business community is what that's all
about, and water is a key, in part, to the survival of our
economy.
So, water transfers are hugely important, but I would add a
caution which is, that water is essential. It is not equivalent
to buying a car, a totally free market in water is not
possible. You cannot simply move water toward money. Water has
to stay, in communities words, essential. And we cannot see
wholesale transfer water, simply based on money alone. So, an
entirely free market in water is something we would not
support.
Mr. Dooley. Ms. Davis, I understand you're a member of the
Bedock process advisory group, would your statement in terms of
questioning the need for water, a need for additional water
developments--excuse me, and yield, I would point out, through
means other than just conservation and soft-path approaches,
then, do you object to, during the CALFED process, the
consideration as I think, Mr. Berliner identified that they
were looking at potential infrastructure changes, including
over 40 reservoir sites, and 12 ways to move water around this
State, do you think that it is inappropriate for that to be
considered during the CALFED process?
Ms. Davis. No, I do not.
Mr. Dooley. So, then, when we're looking in terms of the
potential way we can move the process forward, and you're
certainly not saying that you're not open nor should we be open
to looking for additional yield that might be actually new
surface or whatever water infrastructure developments are in
need to increase yield?
Ms. Davis. I think the CALFED process has to look at all
the options.
Mr. Dooley. All right, thank you.
Mr. Doolittle. I'm going to reserve my time for now, and
recognize Mr. Miller for his questions?
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It would be a mistake if people suggested that these line
of questioning is about whether or not an option will fill the
needs of California. The whole CALFED process is to determine
the range of options, and what mix of options make the most
sense for the future of California. And that continues, I
think, to be the mission.
The question we get to now ask, and what I characterize as
a mid-term review here, and I'm not sure Lester would be happy
with that because that sounds like he's going to be doing this
the rest of his life. But, it's at the mid-term review, you've
got to start asking and narrowing tougher and tougher
questions. And, I think, some of the questions raised about the
basis, that Ms. Davis had raised, about the basis for 160, and
then the use of 160 in this process are very legitimate
questions because they have huge ramifications for how you
measure different alternatives, the cost, and the efficacy of
those alternatives.
No one here is suggesting that all of our needs are going
to be met with conservation. I guess maybe that could be a
conclusion, but there's no evidence that that's the case so
far. But, when you're picking choices you've got to start at
some point, match them-up based upon the need. I have people in
the financial community in the San Francisco Bay Area, from our
leading banks that tell me if we had a free-market system,
there would be a surplus of low-cost water available in our
State; they just believe it. I've sat for hours, went through
them--they were not exactly ideological travelers with me--and,
when we got all done discussing this, and all the ramifications
of the politics of water in California, they said, in a real-
market system there would be a surplus of water available.
Now, you made a decision, Mr. Berliner, the people you
represent, that we have other values in California whether it's
supply for San Francisco or whether it's the future of
agriculture, or what-have-you, but those decisions also come at
a cost. Because if you said you're going to take agricultural
water and throw it out on the free-market, it be a dramatic
change in the make-up of our State. I don't know if it would be
winners or losers. Because I don't know if just trading in a
row-crop for a three-bedroom-two-bathroom home necessarily
makes it a better State.
But, there are those who suggests, like natural gas, people
like myself who fought those market forces all of those years,
kept saying, just throw it out in the market, you'll have more
natural gas than you know what to do with, and you'll have it
at prices that people can afford. Well, for the last 10 or 12
years, they've been proven correct. I don't know if that will
be proved in the long-run or not, but these questions must be
asked. Because we are now getting into a different process.
We're getting into the process of selection. And so,
whether or not there's a million-acre feed in conservation or
two-million-acre feed, or the market can generate surpluses, or
transfers can generate additional water, these are crucial
questions at this stage. And, I just think that it's very
important that they be asked.
Let me, on another point, Mr. Pauli, welcome and thank you
for your testimony. But, let me ask you a question because--and
I only ask this because I'm not clear of the accuracy of it.
Somewhere in your statement, on page two, you said that your
concern was about Proposition 204, and you say, ``that Federal
appropriations have been used in large part to follow
agricultural land and set the stage to redirect agricultural
water to other users.'' Is that accurate?
Mr. Pauli. Yes, sir, I believe so.
Mr. Miller. I thought we were using a lot of this for some
restoration projects, and a lot of fish screens so irrigation
districts could continue to take water, and some other things.
Mr. Pauli. We're clearly using it for a wide range of
products. I mean, there's not one simple answer to one thing
that we're using it for. It's a wide range of things. Yes.
Mr. Miller. OK, so, I guess, maybe Lester can clarify that
or we can get that information for the Committee. The
chairman's raise, and I think it's an important issue.
Let me just say, Mr. Dooley referred to breaking down the
comedy here, the suggestion that somehow, 204 was the
environmentalist money, and now somebody else is entitled to a
pot of money to build structures, there's a lot of that
environmental money that is there, and the reason we're here in
the CALFED process is to avoid the crash of the system, so that
people think that they can get, as Mr. Hall pointed out,
additional yields out of this system if we shore-up the
environmental structures. So, the benefits flow a number of
different ways. Just as when people go to build these dams,
they're going to want to tell us what great environmental
structure they are, so they won't have to reimburse for the
cost. These will become the biggest environmental projects in
the western United States by that time.
So, I just want to make sure that we don't, ``that was your
money, now it's my turn.'' Because there's an awful lot of
money there that is going to benefit a whole lot of different
purposes. As I understand, some of these projects that are done
in terms of watershed restoration, the fish screens, and
others. I don't know that money has actually been spent to
fallow land.
Mr. Pauli. Well, we clearly supported 204. Our primary
concern is the fact that when you start talking about whether
600,000 or a million acres, we know there's a range there, and
we don't know the exact number that's going to come out of
production agriculture. We're concerned.
Mr. Miller. Yes, but we haven't spent money. I guess what
I'm trying to clarify, we haven't spent money, to date, to do
that.
Mr. Pauli. No, but at some point, you'll get an opportunity
to spend money for that. I mean, it says voluntary purchases or
acquisitions, so you will get a chance if the program goes
forward to spend that money. Somebody's going to have to pay
for that land.
Mr. Miller. All right. I'll live with that. Thank you.
Mr. Doolittle. OK, Mr. Pombo.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pauli, in terms of land that's going to be fallowed or
retired from use, you stated that it would be somewhere between
400,000 and 900,000 maybe as much as one million acres of land
that could possibly be retired under this plan. We know that
there is a proposal here to take about 250,000 acres of land,
and retire that, mostly in my district.
Just to put that in context. San Joaquin County has 467,000
acres of irrigated land. If this were to be put into place, the
250,000, about half of the irrigated land in San Joaquin County
would be taken out of production. What impact would that have
on the economy of San Joaquin County?
Mr. Pauli. It would clearly have a major impact, and not
just in terms of the land that's removed per production,
because clearly, those people in theory, are going to be
compensated for the sale of their land to the restoration
projects, but the people who are put out of a job, the taxes
that aren't paid to the school districts or the water districts
for the other community services districts, the cannery and
processing facilities are not going to receive that product.
Now, I don't know what the mix would be of that 250,000
acres, but probably, a quarter of it would be tomatoes. I mean,
you're talking about an awful lot of tomatoes, and those are
going to mean workers who aren't going to be working at those
processing facilities. There are going to be banks that aren't
going to be getting paid because of the mortgages on those
processing facilities. The earthquake effect is going to be
felt much broader than just those farmers who receive payments
for their land. It's going to have a big impact on the
communities across-the-board, in terms of things we haven't
even contemplated yet.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Hall, along the same lines in talking about
the retirement of land. One of the things that they go by on
this report, and you mentioned six million acre-feet of water
in response to a question, one of the basis that this report is
going off of, is that, by retiring that land that they're going
to create new water. And that water is going to be transferred
either to other contractors or to environmental uses. The
people that I've talked to will argue that letting those
islands flood, creating the wetlands out of it, is going to use
as much if not more water than irrigating it. So where is the
additional water going to come from?
Mr. Hall. I don't have a ready answer for the last part of
your question, though it intuitively makes sense. That, if you
keep the area flooded, and divert water to flood it, you're
probably not going to save much, if any, water. I will say that
my membership is not in support of retiring ag-land to
reallocate the water.
It is true that if we were to build a system today, we
would probably set back levies, we would develop more riparian
habitat in order to protect the fish, that use that system just
like we do. Because the fact is today there are fish numbers
declining, and because of that, they're becoming endangered,
they're listed as endangered, and that, in turn, impacts on
every diverter and user out of that system. It does seem clear
that we're going to have to develop additional habitat along
the Delta corridor, and along the Sacramento/San Joaquin
corridors. I don't think we need to retire the amount of land
that you all have used in your estimates, and we would not
support that.
Mr. Pombo. Unfortunately, it's not my estimate. I got it
out of the CALFED. I mean, if it was my estimate it wouldn't be
anywhere near that high.
Mr. Hall. I understand. But the numbers that you all have
discussed today, which come out of CALFED, I'll let Lester now
talk about that, but we are going to need some land to develop
habitat, so that, the water supplies for folks in your
district, and the folks who use the system up-and-down, and as
exporters, can continue to rely on that supply. Obviously,
we're not interested in retiring any more land than is
absolutely necessary. And, we would not support anything other
than a willing seller sort-of basis.
Mr. Pombo. But the land has to be identified.
Mr. Hall. It does have to be identified, and we would, as I
said before, would like to see the amount of active agriculture
land that's now in production, see the amount of that
converted, kept at a minimum.
Mr. Pombo. Let me ask Mr. Pauli a followup question on
that. Mr. Pauli, you're a farmer. If you were looking to expand
your operation, and you looked at a ranch in San Joaquin
County, and it was slated for possible purchase by the State or
Federal Government or by someone else to be turned into
habitat, would that be a parcel that you would continue to look
at or would you look elsewhere?
Mr. Pauli. No, I would not look. And the bigger problem
would be is if you were interested in a piece of ground
alongside of a farmer. He had two pieces. One, he said, I'm not
going to commit to the program. I don't want to sell it. I want
to see it stay in production agriculture. And I said, well, I'm
interested in buying that. And the next day I learned that the
2,000-acre piece of ground alongside of it has a willing
seller, and he's going to convert. I would not then be
interested in the first piece of ground because of the impact
that it's going to have on me to farm that piece of ground
alongside of land that's owned by the state or the Federal
Government, and the consequences of doing that.
So, we clearly do value the land, and my ability to sell
it.
Mr. Pombo. So, the result would be, even though the Federal
or State government has purchased the land, not bought an
easement on it, they've not bought it fee-title, all they've
done is put it on a map or put it in a book, like this, and
said, that we want to buy that land. So the end-result is we
have devalued the property.
Mr. Pauli. I believe so, yes.
Mr. Pombo. For agricultural purposes, it has less value
today than it did before it was put on a map as being possible
habitat for something.
Mr. Pauli. I believe it's already impacting land prices in
that area, because everybody can see what's coming.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Chairman, are we going to have the----
Mr. Miller. I just answered your question. It's absolutely
a point in for me. How would you go about this process. I mean,
we know that there's going to be some riparian restoration,
there's going to be some landowners that have already indicated
some willingness in some of these areas. How do you go about
that process? You've got to do some planning. You've got to
identify it so that it passes must-do. This is an improvement.
Mr. Pombo. I've been arguing for the past couple years that
they have to be very careful about the documents that they put
together, because once you identify the lands that are suitable
for purchase, you've impacted the value of those lands.
Mr. Miller. Well, you know, we've had a hearing on that. I
don't disagree with you that you don't be a landowner living
under this kind of uncertainty. I just wonder, how do you then
proceed?
Mr. Pombo. Well, with their proposal, even if you take the
lower figure of 250,000-acres, I don't think there's anybody in
this room who can honestly stand up and say that they're going
to have enough money to buy 250,000-acres of land, and yet,
they've clouded the title on that 250,000-acres of land just by
saying that we are going to go out and purchase it. And there's
nobody in here, George. And you know as well as I do, that
they're ever going to have that money.
Mr. Miller. But you've got to pass environmental must-do,
you've got to pass a whole series of riff, they can't put in a
blank. Well, you can't say, well we're going to have blank-
acres of land. So, at some point, it's what any city or country
goes through with zoning or whatever. You've got to say, look,
this is open for consideration, and then the process refines it
down or something. Maybe it's in these processes that they
decide that they should be talking about 100,000 or 200,000,
whatever the figure is. But, I don't know what the option is
for them. I appreciate your concern. I think it's real. I mean,
in the real world, that's a problem, but I don't know what the
better vehicle is.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Chairman, are we going to have an
opportunity to have another round of questions with this panel?
Mr. Doolittle. Well, I would remind our members, there's
three more excellent panels to go. I think we ought to try and
wrap-up. Well, let's just hurry.
OK, Mr. Dooley. OK, Mr. Dooley is going to pass on his
questions. I only have one or two myself. There's a lot we
could talk about here, and I think that's obvious, from the way
the hearing's been going on.
We have three other hearings, Mr. Pauli. There are
conversions going on in agricultural land, but we're moving in
some areas, more toward permanent crops, and away from the
annual plantings, and it's been pointed out that in the case of
going to the permanent crop, you then lose your flexibility.
You absolutely have to have the water then. You don't have the
option of not planting that year, or something like that. And,
of course, the permanent crops use water all year long. Would
you care to characterize whether this is a trend? Can we
generalize, and indicate that this is going on pretty much
throughout the Central Valley, or is it just in isolated areas?
Mr. Pauli. I think, I think, Mr. Chairman, there's a couple
of points there. No. 1, generally, we are converting to the
higher-value crops, permanent crops, and the trend there is
because that's where there's still viable agriculture. It's
where you can still make a profit, where some of the other
crops, we haven't been able to. Certainly, that doesn't include
some of the other major crops. We tended to move away from some
of the livestock-type of operations, and more to the tree and
vine crops. We haven't necessarily moved out of cotton or rice
or some of those crops. So, we have moved to that.
No. 2: clearly, as we look ahead, you don't have the same
flexibility. I mean, you can't shut those trees or vines off
for a year or for 2 years during the drought. Whereas, if you
were in some of the other crops, even tomatoes, as an example,
and there wasn't the water available, and you didn't plant for
that year, you wouldn't necessarily have the same kind of
losses that you would in a permanent crop.
Mr. Doolittle. It's very difficult for farmers to know what
amount of water you will have, isn't it?
Mr. Pauli. Well, you know, that's why the question of
assurances and reliability become so fundamental in this
process. And, that's why we continue to stress that one of the
things, I think for all water-users, whether you're an urban
water district or whether you're a small, rural agricultural
water district, assurances and reliability so that your
customers, your members in making their commitments, whether
it's to a sub-division in homes, or a school, or a hospital, or
whether it's to a processing facility, or 100-acres of almonds,
that you're going to have assurance and reliability of that
water in order to make that investment. So assurance and
reliability are absolutely fundamental in this whole process so
that we know where we are, and what kind of commitments we'll
have for water.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, do you see CALFED moving in a positive
direction with reference to assurance and reliability?
Mr. Pauli. Well, I think that we're all hopeful. And I know
that Mr. Dooley said that he was concerned about my comments. I
reiterate the fact, that we have stayed at the table. We've
continued to participate in the discussions. We're still
optimistic that something can work out, but at some point the
rubber meets the road, in terms of assurances and
reliabilities, and not having the million acres of following.
And if the plan ultimately comes out to be extensive volume,
we're clearly going to oppose it.
We want it to work. We hope it will work. We need
assurances. We need reliability. We need a plan in California
that deals not only now, but into the future for all
Californians, and all water-users, and for the ecosystems for
the fish, and for everything else. And that's what this process
is about, a plan that works for everybody, that we all get
better together with. We simply don't remove a million-acres of
production from California agriculture as the solution. That,
we will absolutely oppose.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Thank you to all the members of the panel for appearing for
your testimony. There are further questions. I know Mr. Pombo
has some. I'm sure probably all of us have further questions
that we will submit in writing, and we'd urge you to respond
expeditiously to those questions.
With that, we'll excuse the first panel, and ask the second
panel to come forward.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, the issue of
water transfers came up earlier in the discussion, we have
recently written a rather extensive letter on this subject. I'd
like to attach it to my testimony for the record.
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you, without objection, that will be
entered in the record as well.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Doolittle. If members of our second panel will remain
standing for the oath, the three members, panel No. 2. OK, if
you gentlemen will please raise your right hands.
[Witness sworn.]
Let the record reflect that each answered in the
affirmative.
Thank you. Thank you for coming, and please take a seat.
Let's see. Let's focus on our questions from earlier. The
second panel, we've asked to address the following questions:
one, how are the future needs of California identified through
the CALFED process going to be financed; two, since interim
funding for the common elements in the CALFED has been provided
by Federal authorization, and the California water bonds, are
the long-term solutions going to be funded by public-interest
groups, by beneficiaries, or by government financing, and
three, are CALFED costs going to be born by local communities
through unintended program consequences?
Our first witness, Mr. Robert Potter, chief deputy director
of the Department of Water Resources, the State of California.
Mr. Potter, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT POTTER, CHIEF DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT
OF WATER RESOURCES, STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Potter. Thank you, Chairman Doolittle, and members of
the Subcommittee.
My name is Robert Potter. I am the chief deputy director of
Department of Water Resources. The department operates and
maintains the State water project, and develops and updates the
California Water Plan. In addition, I serve as the Department's
representative on the CALFED policy group.
It really is too soon to get too specific about how we
finance the CALFED program, given that we have not arrived yet
at a preferred alternative, nor agreed on a plan for
implementation. However, it's an appropriate time to start
thinking seriously about some of the things that ought to go
into whatever the financing plan is. And there's some things
that stand out in my mind.
There is some background that I think we ought to consider
when we decide how to fund this program. The CVPIA allocated
800,000-acre feet of water away from the cities and farms in
California to the environment. The 1994 Delta Accord allocated
an additional million-acre feet of water away from cities and
farms into the environment. And thus far, there's been
essentially no recovery or compensation for those
reallocations.
Within the CALFED program itself, it's not clear yet, what
quantity of water will be developed or how it will be
allocated. Both issues are still on the table.
In terms of principles for how to arrive at equity, most
people involved in the discussions and debates have some
support for the concept of user-pays. Most people support the
concept that the beneficiary should pay. When you look at
California, we basically all use water, and we all benefit from
California's healthy economy which in major part, is there
because of the strong Federal and State water development
programs.
Many, many years ago, the U.S. Senate developed a document
that was commonly called the Green Book that presented a set of
principles for identifying beneficiaries and allocating water
development costs to beneficiaries. All of us spent a lot of
time agonizing, maneuvering, discussing, and debating how to
apply the Green Book and it served us well. But it was not a
silver bullet. The CALFED package itself is certainly too
complex for us to arrive at some simple formula as to how to
allocate costs. The only real answer is to debate and negotiate
and probably arrive at a mix of payment strategies tapping both
beneficiaries and users. In the long run in most resource
issues in this country, we try to arrive at equity and equity
tends to drive the decision--not really economics.
In closing, I'd like to assure the Subcommittee that the
Wilson Administration is strongly committed to CALFED. Governor
Wilson supported Proposition 204 which provided moneys to jump
start some of the environmental content of this program.
Yesterday, the Governor met--this was mentioned earlier I
realize, but it's worth reminding ourselves--that the Governor
met yesterday with Secretary Babbitt. They agreed to a strategy
for moving ahead on CALFED this year. The Governor at the same
time announced that because of the healthy state of the State's
economy, in his May revisions, he was able to dedicate almost
another $30 million of the State's budget to the CALFED
process. He, at the same time, directed $170 million to the
flood control subventions in California--an area where we've
fallen behind in meeting the State's obligation.
The Governor has proposed a 1998 water bond which would
provide additional seed money to keep the CALFED process
rolling. I would assume that eventually a larger bond or
additional bonds will be required to implement the full $10
billion program that is evolving in the CALFED process.
In closing, I would like to submit for the record the
Governor's letter to Chairman McDade and I'm not going to read
the letter--I'd like to read two sentences from the letter.
``Dear Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to
share with you California's priorities among the programs
funded through the Energy and Water Development Appropriations
bill. My top priority continues to be full funding for the
$143.3 million requested in the President's budget as the
initial Federal contribution toward the restoration of San
Francisco Bay Delta.'' The letter goes on and identifies other
priorities of the Governor's, but I thought it was important
that you hear his first priority. Thank you.
[The information referred to may be found at end of
hearing.]
[The prepared statement of Mr. Potter may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness is Mr. David Yardas, senior analyst for
the Environmental Defense Fund from Oak--from California. Mr.
Yardas.
STATEMENT OF DAVID YARDAS, SENIOR ANALYST, ENVIRONMENTAL
DEFENSE FUND, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Yardas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify on the
issue of CALFED financing. I did submit a fairly lengthy
statement for the record, so I'll attempt to just touch briefly
on a couple of points from that now in my oral comments and
address specifically a couple of the issues that you identified
up front.
Just for perspective, I want to be clear that the
Environmental Defense Fund, both on its own part and working
through the Bay area-based Environmental Water Caucus is--takes
CALFED very seriously and is very much committed to CALFED and
the consensus that was--set CALFED in motion through the Bay-
Delta Accord to which we were signatory. That doesn't mean that
it's easy or that we always see eye-to-eye on some of these
matters as you heard on the first panel and no doubt as we'll
get into on this one and those that follow. That said, my
organization, in particular, views the issue of finance--that
is, who is going to pay for what out of CALFED as perhaps one
of the most, if not the most, fundamental issues to be
addressed.
I have personally spent the--better part of the last 3
years involved in the deliberations of the BDAC Finance Work
Group or subcommittee attempting to wrestle with at least two
of the issues that you asked: how will future needs be
financed, and what about the mix of beneficiaries versus
public. How will those issues be addressed? We have struggled
in attempting to come up with a consensus on how to proceed on
that front. I think it is correct to say that most folks agree
that a beneficiaries pays principle-based approach makes a lot
of sense. We have expressed some major concerns from the very
outset, however, that the fundamental problem with the
benefits-based approach taken literally is that it essentially
assumes a level playing field from the outset. We are mindful
of the criticisms that have been made that looking backward is
nothing but divisive and unproductive. On the other hand, we
feel that there is a need to take an honest look at how we got
to the need for a Bay-Delta Accord and a CALFED process in the
first place in order to meaningfully address the important
issue of finance and what defines an equitable allocation of
costs.
The BDAC Finance Committee, and the CALFED Phase II draft
to its credit, identifies an important question with regard to
the benefits-based approach, and that is whether or not any
adjustment for past impacts is appropriate prior to using the
benefits-based approach. This is a matter of ongoing work in
the Finance Committee discussions in particular and I know in
CALFED's efforts as a whole. The Environmental Defense Fund
certainly thinks that the answer is resoundingly yes--that any
reasonable accounting for the prior investments and prior
impacts of water development will and must acknowledge that the
playing field is not level, that the important funds that have
been provided or authorized to-date for ecosystem purposes are
a good start but are nowhere near to the point where we've
reached a quid pro quo kind of situation, as has been argued in
the context of the Governor's water bond proposal, at least
prior to yesterday's announcement. (I'm still trying to
understand exactly what was announced yesterday and what it
means for the pending water bond measure.)
But in any case, where we come out at this point, what we
would recommend as a way to move forward, and the position that
we've taken in the BDAC discussions can roughly be summarized
as follows: That partnership funding, public and user-based
funding, ought to be available to fund the common programs of
CALFED pretty much across the board. We would support that.
That seems like a reasonable way to proceed. However, when it
comes to the more controversial issues of new dams and
conveyance--large conveyance facilities through the Delta--we
feel quite strongly that those should be looked at as new water
projects and that they should be paid for by the
beneficiaries--the direct beneficiaries, the users--who will
benefit from those projects which are made necessary by all of
the water development primarily that we've done in the past.
We recognize that not only water development--and
particularly the State and Federal projects--can be assessed
blame for the past. That's why we supported, joined with our
urban, agricultural and business sector colleagues in a
somewhat controversial--in our community--push for public funds
to the exclusion of user mitigation funds under Proposition 204
and the Bay Delta Act. But that said, we will continue to
support partnership work and recommend that funding be provided
in that way for common programs, but that--I guess what it
comes down and what it reflects back on is the prior panel:
Somehow price really matters when it comes to how we perceive
moving forward in CALFED. CALFED's about a new way of doing
business, and we think that making sure that true cost-price
signals accompany newly developed water is a fundamental part
of the equation. I'd be happy to go into that more in a
question and answer, given that my time is up. So, thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yardas may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness is Dr. Tim Quinn, Deputy General Manager
of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY QUINN, DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER,
METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Dr. Quinn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee. Like everyone else, I very much appreciate the
opportunity to present some of my views here this afternoon.
My name is Timothy Quinn. I'm Deputy General Manager of the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. I would
also point out I'm one of five panelists appearing before you
today to sit on the Ecosystem Roundtable and have some
responsibilities for providing advice about the expenditure of
CALFED moneys.
Primarily, I am here, as Tom Berliner was, as a
representative of the Bay-Delta Urban Coalition and my
testimony has been reviewed by a committee, North-South, so
that it would reflect a broader spectrum of interests. I would
like to try to be responsive to the questions that you posed to
this panel by briefly describing four key principles that the
Urban Coalition believes will be important in developing a
successful financing plan. They're discussed in more detail in
my written submitted testimony.
The first principle is that the finance plan must be
founded on a CALFED solution that generates widespread value.
The concept is simple. First, create value so that you create
willingness to pay amongst the people who are going to be asked
to contribute financially. We believe that CALFED, for the
first time in a generation, offers the opportunity to create
value for the environment and for water users in California.
For the environment, we're talking about moving into the 21st
century and restoring health to the ecosystem through a
historically unprecedented ecosystem restoration investment
program. For urban California, substantial improvements are
possible in the source quality of our drinking water. We see
the possibility of creating a stable infrastructure upon which
we will build economic prosperity in the future. For
agriculture, we're talking about moving into a new era of
natural resource management in the 21st century in a way that
sustains and strengthens the largest agricultural economy in
the Nation. Those are values that we think people are willing
to pay for in California through one means or another. Just as
the benefits are widespread, we are firmly convinced that the
finance plan must have a diverse source of funds.
The Urban Coalition has long taken a position in favor of
user fees as a primary funding source for CALFED solutions, but
we also recognize that many of the benefits of a CALFED-
preferred alternative are going to be broadly spread and that
justifies some participation by State and Federal taxpayers.
Exactly how that mix comes together, we're going to have to
tackle that question over the next 6 months as we define a
preferred alternative consistent with the direction that we're
receiving from the Governor and from the Secretary of Interior
this week.
I also would emphasize the importance of acting favorably
on the appropriations request of the Clinton Administration for
keeping the ecosystem restoration elements forward moving.
The second principle is that CALFED must provide benefits
at the lowest possible cost. It's not enough to just look at
cost allocation. We think this Committee and all others
involved in this process have to look hard at the overall price
tag. Quite frankly, we believe the $9-$11 billion of estimated
costs is too high and the urban community is committed to
working with the CALFED agencies and others to find the lowest-
cost package that achieves the benefits that can be obtained
through the CALFED process.
Principle three: We believe the costs should be shared
consistent with the beneficiaries pays principle and that costs
should be allocated in a mutually agreeable manner. The
beneficiaries pays principle--it comes off the lips easily. We
believe there's a lot of devil in the detail here. We are
extremely concerned that an arbitrary or academic application
of that principle could backfire and upset the whole process.
For that reason, we're recommending that the beneficiaries pays
principle be implemented to the maximum degree possible by
coming up with mutually agreeable allocations of cost. We think
that approach will give those who are expected to help pay a
voice in defining whose benefiting and by how much. We think it
will produce the best alignment of benefits and costs. In the
end, it will underscore the importance of assurances to all the
parties as we move forward to a preferred alternative.
The final principle--somewhat in counterpoint to the point
made by Dave Yardas--is that we believe the finance plan must
be based on a prospective assessment of value and not on a
retrospective assignment of blame.
To be successful, CALFED has to look forward. We don't
think it's possible to agree on who's responsible or who should
be blamed for what problems are in the system today. More
importantly, we think the debate itself is counterproductive.
Blame does, we think, lead back to divisiveness and to the
gridlock that CALFED gives us the opportunity to leave behind
us. We would urge that financing decisions be made on the basis
of prospective assessments of who's going to gain value from
the implementation of a solution and who's going to help pay
for that solution.
Let me close on an optimistic note. We believe there's an
enormous opportunity here for creating value for California,
for agricultural and urban water users and for the environment.
We think that there's a lot of work to be done, but that by the
time we get to the end of this year, we will have an agreeable
financial plan that backs up a preferred alternative that's
going to benefit California as we move into the 21st century.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Quinn may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. So, Dr. Quinn, you actually believe you'll
have that by the end of this year?
Dr. Quinn. I think we'll have principles that define a
financial plan consistent with the direction we're getting from
the Governor and the Secretary of Interior. That they would
like to come to some agreement on a single preferred
alternative by the end of the year. I would point out that I'm
known in the water community as quite an optimist.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Dr. Quinn. My optimism has proven justifiable on many
occasions in the past, however.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Yardas. What we sometimes use is a slightly different
term--but that amounts to the same thing.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. Mr. Potter, what's the average shortage--in
an average water year--what's our shortage, according to your
department?
Mr. Potter. I believe you quoted the number earlier--that
about--I don't have 160 in front of me and I don't do a very
good job with numbers, but I think that number is right.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. I think the figure I quoted was 1.6
approximately and in a drought year, it's 5.2 presently. So
anyway----
Mr. Potter. Those are consistent with my recollections. I
don't--I didn't bring the bulletin with me.
Mr. Doolittle. OK, could you check on that and verify it--
--
Mr. Potter. Certainly, certainly.
Mr. Doolittle. [continuing] for the Committee?
Mr. Potter. Could I comment just a little bit on the 160
process itself?
Mr. Doolittle. Yes, that's a good----
Mr. Potter. You know, the State developed the California
water plan in 1957, published it and it was adopted by our
legislature. At the time it was agreed that it would be
periodically updated. The Bulletin 160 series is the series in
which we do those updates. If memory serves me correctly, the
first update was in the 1960's--some 35 years ago or so. I
think this is either the sixth or seventh update. It's easy to
go back and take a look at whether or not our crystal ball has
been any good. Sometimes we're high and sometimes we're low. In
the final analysis, we're guessing the future--there's an old
Arab proverb to the effect that he who foretells the future
lies even if he's proven correct. I mean, it's a real problem
to try to look ahead. Well, we did however, have a very
comprehensive process. We had a 30-member citizen advisory
committee. We had a public hearing process chaired by our
California Water Commission. We feel comfortable that we've
done the best job we can with the facts in front of us on
foretelling the future on California's water.
Mr. Doolittle. I guess this is getting to the third
question, but does the Wilson Administration support the
fallowing of land as you've heard it described in the CALFED? I
mean the estimates were from roughly 400,000 up to nearly a
million acres of land?
Mr. Potter. I'm going to try to give you two different
responses to that. First, certainly it's not department policy
or State policy to fallow land to make water with some
exceptions. I was one of the key administrators of the
Governor's 1991, 1992 and 1994 water banks. In 1991, we did
fallow extensive land to make water available in the drought
emergency. We paid farmers not to farm. For the farmer and the
water users, it turned out to be a good experience. For some of
those people that experienced third-party impacts, it wasn't
such a good experience. In 1992 and 1994, we did no fallowing.
I'm not saying that we wouldn't come back and fallow again in a
serious drought because we might well do that. But we are still
taking a tremendous amount of criticism throughout the
Sacramento Valley for some of the impacts of that first water
bank. There is no State policy that supports the concept of
fallowing to make water available. There is a Federal CVPIA
program in which the Federal Government can fallow land to
provide water.
Mr. Doolittle. So the State would only support that then--
if I understood what you said--is an extraordinary response to
an emergency?
Mr. Potter. In any specific point and time basis--not on a
permanent fallowing program.
Mr. Doolittle. Not on a permanent basis?
Mr. Potter. That's correct.
Mr. Doolittle. OK.
Mr. Potter. I should say in fairness, I think that the
CALFED program has taken a bum rap on the fallowing issue. In
reacting and working with their advisory council, they did some
exploratory analysis and evaluations of what might happen if
you fallowed a bunch of land. But they do not have in the
CALFED program fallowing to generate water per se. There's
nothing in there to that effect. There's some land conversion
to support their environmental restoration program and there's
some land--some agricultural land conversion to support some of
the levee setbacks in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. But
there is not an item in the CALFED package to fallow land to
generate water.
Mr. Doolittle. Have you been with the Department for a
number of--when--how long have you been with the Water
Resources Department?
Mr. Potter. If you were closer to the pen, you'd see a 40
on it----
Mr. Doolittle. Forty.
Mr. Potter. It will be 41 years in June.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, do you--are you proud of what has been
accomplished in those 40 years or do you feel guilt-ridden over
what has happened?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Potter. I'm certainly proud of what the Department has
accomplished over the 40 years. I'd like to avoid my personal
record here, if we could.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. Do you feel, Mr. Potter, that additional
surface storage is going to be necessary in order to meet our
present and long-term water needs in the State of California?
Mr. Potter. Well, one of the things that I think is that
the CALFED family--all 15 agencies have come to recognize as
they've tried to arrive at resolving the Delta problem. That is
their charge. Their charge is not to try to balance all of
California's water needs in the foreseeable future, but rather
to resolve the Delta problem. Just in that relatively narrow
view, they have concluded that there is no escaping some
additional storage if we're going to add to the water supply
pie.
Mr. Doolittle. OK, well my time is up. Mr. Miller, your
turn.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Potter, let me
just say I appreciate your comments about the annual--the 5-
year reviews under the process by which you--which people--the
State arrived at 160. But I think on a previous panel, Ms.
Davis raised some fairly concrete arithmetic questions here.
That either the water usage in South coast was 4.3 or it was
3.5. There's a world of difference between those two--
especially if that's what you're building a base on, you know.
As she pointed out, there are reasons we want to normalize some
of these figures and the process you go through. And the
question of whether in the South coast region, is there really
a .5 million acre feet of conservation to be developed there or
is it 90,000 acre feet? There's a world of difference between
those two when we start apportioning out what this plan should
contain, what it should look like and who pays.
It seems to me there has to be some attempt at resolution
of some of these issues. Just like, you know, sort of like
people ask for good science. If there's a mistake, we ought to
seek to correct it, or explain it or disavow it or whatever--
however that turns out. Again, I'm not suggesting that this is
all right and 160 is all wrong, but as we start to build on
these determinations, I think it becomes very important as to
where we stand with those.
Mr. Potter. I certainly agree. I don't really have the
information or the skills to get into detail here, but I had a
couple of reactions as Martha was talking and will certainly
talk more with her. But one of the things in 160 is we do two
things. I mean, we do say what's possible and then we arrive at
what's probable. It doesn't surprise me that there are
situations where we have estimated a large potential water
conservation piece and then ground into the program a smaller
number because we thought that was what was going to happen.
I believe in the 160 process, we have gotten plenty of
criticism in both directions in terms of our water conservation
program. Because of the controversy that has been stirred
recently by the bulletin, I've talked to the staff about their
public hearing process--which I was not personally involved in.
But they have been basically criticized in both directions.
``You've got more water conservation in here than anyone can
ever possibly accomplish, or hey you guys are ignoring water
conservation.''
If you go back to the Governor's water policy of 1992--when
Governor Wilson came in, we were overwhelmed with drought. In
terms of water--that's where his attention was focused for the
first year. By 1992 he turned to a long-term water policy and
if you look at that water policy, it is basically a policy that
has a broad menu of both demand management and supply
augmentation--concludes that we need to attack both menus. But
says in effect that over the next few years, our focus ought to
be on fixing the Delta. Fixing the Delta isn't just about
meeting the State's future demands, it's also about protecting
the estuary.
Mr. Miller. Well, thank you and I just want to raise that
because I think it's a point that has to be brought to some
resolution--you know, in the next coming months.
Mr. Yardas, let me go back to your testimony. On page eight
you describe what this combination as a public end use base
relationships between ecosystem restoration, new surface,
storage, conveyance facilities and so forth. Where are we--I
mean--I guess--you know, earlier last month, this Committee
heard from some people who were beneficiaries who said they are
paying about all they can pay for water in the agricultural
community. I guess, in my district, they might think that too
after they built Los Vacaros. City of San Francisco can say
well we're not--we're supportive of all this, but we have our
stream of supply for the time being. I mean, the description of
beneficiaries is going to be as difficult as apportioning the
cost--it seems to me. Because some people are going to say--
gee, you know that doesn't impact us. In San Diego, we're
paying all we can pay down here. This recharge up there--how do
you get through this thicket. I mean, that's why some people
say you just turn to general obligation bonds and everything is
on the calm here.
Mr. Yardas. Well, on this point, in some ways, Dr. Quinn
and I may not be so far apart in that kind of what's come out
of the deliberations of the Finance Work Group is that we're
going to need to figure out some way to move forward
recognizing that the question of bright lines between
beneficiaries will be difficult. That you have some financial
and a lot of nonmarket benefits that are difficult to compare.
That looking backward can be problematic whether you stop at
1992 or whether you go back a few years before that. So part of
what we're trying to put forward in our recommendations and the
ongoing discussions of the CALFED Work Group on finance is a
forward-looking alternative. I described a current draft
document at the bottom of page five and top of page six on my
written statement that's currently in progress and will be the
subject of review at the BDAC meeting--or at least discussion
and briefing--on Thursday of this week.
From our point of view, the bottom line is that in order to
move forward, the cleanest way to do it is in a sense to view
the common programs as a kind of mitigation and restoration
program for the existing system. Then to the degree that new
projects come online--OK, but those ought to be user-financed.
They ought to include all of the environmental and nonmarket
mitigations that have not been part of our conventional water
development system, that have helped to understate prices,
inflating demands, over building a system relative to what
would be affordable if those who--if we were really pricing the
next acre foot of water at what it costs broadly defined to
develop it and provide it. So did that make sense? [Laughter.]
Mr. Miller. Yes, in this room it probably makes sense.
[Laughter.]
I'll go back around when Mr. Doolittle's done.
Mr. Doolittle. I'm going to recognize Mr. Pombo who I think
is right outside the door there.
Mr. Miller. OK. Well in the interlude I would just say
that, you know, it's amazing when we started putting cost-
sharing on efforts here. All of a sudden the local demand for
some of these projects when the Federal Government was
providing 100 percent of financing, they just somehow weren't
as worthwhile the next year as they were when, you know, when
they had 100 percent financing. I mean, there is some market
test to some of this in terms of when you're windowing out--
what's in and what's out.
Mr. Yardas. Well, I think the point you made about the
comments that were made at the hearing in Fresno relating to
flood waters currently being too expensive because of the
environmental fees that are attached to it-- I mean, that's
water that's going to be available at a fraction of the cost of
newly developed water that would presumably have to capture
that same flood water. So, it kind of--those who are major
proponents of those alternatives are inherently saying I think
they're expecting someone else to pay for it--if in fact that's
a viable alternative for them. In the north valley, already we
have payment capacity waivers provided by the Bureau of
Reclamation on the environmental fees because they're not
affordable by the Bureau's calculations and policy. How do
those--where does the beneficiary-based payment come into play
there?
Mr. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Doolittle. Pending Mr. Pombo's arrival. Mr. Yardas, do
you recognize--it seems like we're almost talking about this
system as if it never changes. But, I mean, it is an ecological
system and those do change over time--don't they?
Mr. Yardas. I think all healthy systems are dynamic. Yes.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, if it is dynamic, can you tell us how
could one mitigate impact caused by a dynamic system?
Mr. Yardas. Mitigate impacts caused by a dynamic system?
Mr. Doolittle. Well, or happening to a dynamic system.
Mr. Yardas. I think that what we're trying to get at is
some effort to ensure that--I mean, there are clearly costs
associated with the use and development of water. There is
habitat that's no longer accessible. There is water quality
degradation due to pollutant runoff. There is depletion of the
system itself and its implications for the mixing zone, and so
on. I mean, there are lots of identifiable impacts associated
with water development and use that have impacts and costs on
the ecosystem.
Mr. Doolittle. But those are positive, as well as negative,
aren't they?
Mr. Yardas. Which are the positives?
Mr. Doolittle. Well, you'd have water available flowing
down the stream that wouldn't ordinarily be there if it were
just left up to nature.
Mr. Yardas. Like the cold water releases at Shasta?
Mr. Doolittle. Well, like having water available at say--to
name an example close to our home in the lower American River.
Mr. Yardas. Yes. I think any honest look at the indicators
of the health of the ecosystem--whether it be the extent of
habitat that remains, the amount of unfragmented habitat, the
status of the populations of fish or waterfowl species--
Waterfowl have improved substantially in recent years--thanks
to the CVPIA, in particular--but any honest assessment would
conclude that we've spiraled down pretty far, pretty quickly in
the last 20 to 50 years or so. For--in large part because of
the water development that's taken place. To say that the
system would be exactly as it was 50 years ago--no, I wouldn't
say that. But I think it would, absent water development, be
substantially similar.
Mr. Doolittle. But is there no positive benefit you
recognize from the projects that have been built?
Mr. Yardas. Oh, I think Central Valley agriculture is
incredible. I think the California economy is amazing. There's
absolutely--there are benefits associated with water
development.
Mr. Doolittle. So at least you'll acknowledge the human
species is part of the environment.
Mr. Yardas. Absolutely. I'm one of them and I enjoy those
benefits. I don't condemn them. [Laughter.] I'm merely saying I
think we ought to include the costs of our actions in the price
that we pay so that we know that we're fully accounting for the
impacts of our being here.
Mr. Doolittle. I'm going to recognize Mr. Pombo.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Potter, I want to
give you an opportunity to clarify the statement you made on
land conversions or land retirements. You said that there were
no water benefits associated with that. That it was the
position of CALFED that you weren't retiring land to create
water. Just clarify your answer.
Mr. Potter. Well, let me clarify my position for a minute
if I can. I represent one agency--15 of whom run CALFED and you
really ought to put this question to Lester when you get him up
here. But what happened--my understanding of what happened
sitting on the policy group now and not necessarily grinding
the mechanics of the process--but my understanding of what
happened is that the BDAC forum, the CALFED staff was asked to
generate how much water could be saved by retiring some
agricultural land. They threw out some big numbers--500,000 to
900,000 acres. There was sufficient reaction both within the
committee itself and in the general public that that concept of
retiring the land to make the water was withdrawn and is not a
part of the CALFED program. There are land conversions in the
program--in the environmental restoration program, and in the
physical works--some of the delta levees are proposed to be
straightening, some of it straightened, some of the channels
widened. That sort of thing does have an adverse impact on
agricultural land. Retire some agricultural land but not for
the purpose of generating the water, but rather for the purpose
of ecosystem restoration or having a more reliable levee.
Mr. Pombo. The low number I've heard is 250,000 acres. The
high number, as you've mentioned and has been testified to, was
close to a million acres. According to the CALFED document, the
land necessary for facilities ecosystem restoration and water
quality could range from approximately 75,000 to 140,000 acres.
So the difference--even if you take the low numbers--there's an
additional 100,000 acres that would be taken out of production.
Mr. Potter. This is a copout, but I'm going to ask you to
either drag Lester up here now or save this for Lester.
Mr. Pombo. Well, I'm going to ask him, too. I just--I mean,
you testified----
Mr. Potter. I'm not sufficiently informed--I'm not
sufficiently familiar with the specific numbers to have this
conversation. I'm not ducking. If I knew the answer, I'd
provide it. I simply don't know the answer.
Mr. Pombo. I appreciate that answer and I believe that
that's an honest answer. It was just in response to the
Chairman's question--you said that no land was being retired to
generate water and I believe that is an inaccurate statement--
even if you just read CALFED's documents only.
Mr. Potter. Just a comment. I attended a public hearing for
the CALFED program in Walnut Grove the other night. There is a
tremendous amount of upset and concern in the farming community
in the Delta. Because they feel that the ecosystem restoration
program and the levee work to some degree has them paying a
much larger portion of the hit on land conversion. It's
something that we're all going to have to better understand if
we're going to make it through the process. I don't think that
we gave--well I know that we did not give them good answers
that night because we simply didn't have them, but sooner or
later those questions have got to be answered.
Mr. Pombo. Well, that is a point that I will bring up with
Mr. Snow later is the answers to the questions at Walnut Grove.
I'm glad you had the opportunity to visit my district because
all of those people make a habit of calling my office and
visiting my office with their concerns about this process. To
go back--and since we started on that point--I would like to go
back just briefly and ask you about a development of new water
sources. Just asking you simply would--do you believe that any
plan that's looking at 20 or 30 years out in the future that
does not realistically identify new water sources, new surface
water availability is going to accurately deal with the water
problems that we have in California currently and where we're
going to be 20 to 30 years from now.
Mr. Potter. I guess the short answer is no, I don't believe
that. I do think though it is important to draw a distinction
between meeting the overall statewide water balance. The
charge--my understanding of the charge that Lester Snow has
been given which is basically to arrive at sufficient knowledge
and understanding to develop a program that will protect the
Delta estuary. We didn't ask Lester to solve all of
California's water problems. We asked him to see if he could
lead us through the Delta dilemma.
Mr. Pombo. Well, I understand that Mr. Potter. But I think
any plan that does not look at developing new water--surface
water resources for the future--is totally inadequate in
protecting the Delta. Because every time someone needs water,
they stick another straw in the Delta and they suck more water
out of it. I grew up out in the Delta. I can tell you----
Mr. Potter. Me, too.
Mr. Pombo. [continuing] just as well as anybody here about
the water quality problems that we have in the Delta today
versus what we had 20 years ago. There's a big difference. A
big part of that is that we keep sucking more and more and more
water out of there and we're not developing any new water. One
of my major concerns with this process is I believe that the
development of new surface water resources has been given the
short script in this development. We talk about all these
wonderful things of retiring 1 million acres of land and
creating these wetlands and doing all these things, but that's
not going to be enough to deal with the future. That's not
going to be enough to deal with the water quality problems that
we have.
Mr. Potter. I think CALFED has come to the same conclusion
that you have. There is storage in all three of our major
alternatives.
Mr. Doolittle. Mr. Miller has an additional question, I
understand. You're recognized for that purpose.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Yardas, let me again--as I understand
taking into account what the Governor and the Secretary--
correct me, Mr. Potter, if I--they announced to extend the
comment period and then come up with a draft proposal--a second
draft, obviously windowing out a lot of things that you've
heard here back and forth from across the State. Then there
would be an additional comment period--is that correct?
Mr. Potter. That's correct. That's correct. I wasn't there
yesterday. I was on an airplane trying to get here.
Mr. Miller. Yes. Apparently, none of us were, so we're
trying to figure out what that was. But if that's correct, Mr.
Yardas, let me ask you this. At some point, you decide some
approach to one of these three alternatives or probably a
hybrid of one of them given the comments and everything that's
learned in this process. But is there a point where we start to
attach when you think about the financing and the preliminary
discussions--I'm going to ask all three of you actually. Is
there a point where we start to attach beneficiaries to
particular projects in this thing? Or are they seen as, you
know, as part of the whole? If you look at the enlargement,
Millerton or Montgomery, possible expansion of Los Vacaros, and
what happens with the islands in the Delta, for what purposes--
is that drinking water or is that agricultural water or what
have you? Do we start to lock onto who the beneficiaries are
here at some point? If you choose, beneficiaries pay or in
combination with the public financing and then decide whether
there's a go or no go--or do we just sort of attribute
characteristics to these? Where's the apportionment? What's the
financing committee thinking about this?
Mr. Yardas. Well, again, it is difficult to draw bright
lines between these various beneficiary groups. I mean, in some
cases it's clear. If there's additional yield--I would say
there is no new water to be had in the system but there may be
additional yield to be developed--carried over from wet periods
into dry periods. That will go someplace. That's pretty easy to
track. On the other hand, water quality--a much more nebulous
concept and much harder to figure out exactly what's going on.
As you heard earlier, the ecosystem restoration program, there
are water supply benefits very much involved in what's going on
in implementation of that program right now. So, it's very
difficult in most cases to define very clear lines.
I think the focus of the Finance Work Group in recent
months has been to try and get beyond both the assignment of
blame and the strict definition or quantification of benefits
into a kind of more proactive or forward-looking approach. The
gist of that is that the common programs would receive
partnership funding, but that storage and conveyance would be
paid for by the users of those facilities. Now that would be
the recommendation that we would have. I don't think the
Finance Work Group is there yet, but that's the proposal that's
kind of----
Mr. Miller. But that's the process you sort of envision--is
that close to the process that you envision how to----
Dr. Quinn. Yes, that's why I'm pleased at how close it is
to the process I'm envisioning. Some cost elements will be
identifiable to a beneficiary. I don't think a lot of them
will, but some of them will. Metropolitan recently financed an
integrated resources plan where we're spending billions of
dollars on a combination of investments, including reclamation,
conservation, water marketing, and transportation and storage
projects. What we found to be a successful approach--in some
cases, there were clearly identifiable benefits which we just
put right into our regular rate structure. You paid for it if
you got the water delivered. In other cases, the way we
approached it was to focus on what kind of a package will
maximize the value for the region.
In this case, we were thinking only of southern California.
Here you're thinking of a much broader geographic area. Then we
started going to our member agencies as constituents--pointing
out the value that they would receive from increased
reclamation in Central and West Basin. Part of the value is we
could downsize our capital program. Everybody saved money if we
could reduce expenditures on the capital program, and we
eventually came up with the Local Resources Program where all
the member agencies pay $250 an acre foot to those member
agencies who are able to invest in local resources. In general,
for much of the financing of the IPR, we did not attempt to
draw lines from one specific piece to somebody that's going to
benefit. Instead, we focused people on a package that would
generate value, and then worked with them to make them
understand they're getting value. And eventually, people would
not want to argue so much over the pennies. They were willing
to stand back and look at the broader picture, and we were able
to get to a successful conclusion.
I think something very much like that needs to happen
here--to stand back and start focusing on a package that can
create value for each of the interests throughout California.
Where can you generate value and then start to generate
interest and willingness to pay, which, of course, was the
theme I tried to put in the Urban Coalition testimony I
presented today.
Mr. Miller. My time has run out, but there is a little bit
of a difference in your answers there.
Mr. Yardas. Well, I guess I would just say, though, where
this will get difficult is in the notion that the environment
needs new dams to get healthy, and we just don't agree with
that. I don't know if that's part of what Tim was saying in
code, or not. It's certainly part of the analysis that CALFED
is doing, and we just don't believe that that's properly--that
the environment needs it. Or, if there are so-called benefits
ascribed to the environment, that those ought be financed by
the public. Those are very much tied to water use and water
development and ought to be properly financed by those who
benefit directly from those facilities.
Mr. Miller But under Tim's answer, you could have--you
could ascribe those as benefits that the broader community
leaves, it gets, and lay them off in that fashion.
Dr. Quinn. Let me emphasize. I'm not trying to be opaque
here. We believe, not only Metropolitan, but pretty broadly in
the urban community, that the future lies in a combination of
investments and new infrastructure, new system capacity,
including both surface storage as well as ground water storage,
as well as better allocation mechanisms through more effective
water markets.
We don't think the answer lies at either polar extreme. At
one extreme, relying on zero percent storage and one hundred
percent reallocation through the market. Or the other extreme,
relying solely on new storage with no increased reliance on
market forces. The urban coalition believes we need to start
talking about what is the proper combination. Some of the
storage that's on the table is off-stream storage that we
believe could be very valuable to the environment as well as to
the water users. It's not as cheap as the storage we were
building 30 or 40 years ago, but it is relatively affordable. I
mean, if somebody walked in my door and said I've got a deal
for you--here's a block of several hundred thousand acre feet
that's going to cost you $200 an acre foot for protection in
dry years--I'm interested. And the fact is some of the storage
that's on the table in the CALFED process meets those economic
criteria. So, I stand back and I say, if you were designing the
whole system yourself, what makes the most sense as an economic
package? And I've changed my own views about storage. At one
point, I was not interested in storage. I thought it would cost
too much. The facts have changed my mind. It's very clear that
storage has a legitimate place in this debate, and we think
it's likely, in proper combination with the other elements, to
make sense in an overall package.
Mr. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Doolittle. So, Dr. Quinn, you would go for storage that
produced water at $200 an acre foot?
Dr. Quinn. I would certainly not throw somebody out who
proposed a water supply at that cost.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, there. That's what you just said. What
are you hedging for?
Dr. Quinn. Let me--let me--the answer----
Mr. Doolittle. You just said you would go for storage. Are
you standing by that statement or not?
Dr. Quinn. The answer is yes.
Mr. Miller. If you do, it's something he wants to sell you.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. The problem is we don't have any to sell. We
got to have it all for ourselves. But was it your testimony
that you would go for a deal that offered you water at $200 an
acre foot?
Dr. Quinn. I believe that storage--environmentally sound
storage that can make water available during dry times for $200
an acre foot----
Mr. Doolittle. Oh, no. I didn't hear all of that in that
first statement. What do you mean environmentally sound
storage?
Dr. Quinn. Well, I mean storage----
Mr. Doolittle. What's an example of environmentally unsound
storage?
Dr. Quinn. Well, can I turn that question around? An
example of environmentally sound storage is storage that can
survive the permitting process.
Mr. Miller. Ah, you want to go through the dance?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. Well, let's just leave it at that.
[Laughter.]
The figure of $200 an acre foot, you find, as did the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, to be an
attractive price. Is that right?
Dr. Quinn. It's competitive.
Mr. Miller. We ought not to--let's not make this a policy
statement of the Met at this stage. But I think, if I might,
Mr. Chairman, he was saying that if this--you say, yeah, you
might be interested. There are people who would be interested
in water at that rate if that could be done. You know. You show
me that it's equal to----
Dr. Quinn. Just for clarification, you can't throw storage
out on purely economic grounds, because it costs too much. It
does not. There may be other grounds for this project or that
project, but it clearly can earn its way into a lease cost
program from our perspective.
Mr. Doolittle. OK.
Mr. Pombo, would you like to ask some more questions. By
the way, the first vote is at 5:30 p.m., and all votes are
finished at 6 p.m. And we've got two more panels to go through.
I'm just telling me that as well everybody else.
Mr. Pombo. No further questions, Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. You can ask one or two. That's all right.
Mr. Miller. It's not that they weren't important.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. Well, we will have those supplementary
questions submit. I would like to thank the gentlemen on this
panel, and we'll hold the record open for what we hope will be
your prompt responses. And with that, we'll excuse you.
I'm going to propose an ad hoc change here. We're going to
ask panels two--three and four to come up together to form one
panel of five people.
OK, it's six people. In other words, all the members of
panels three and four. Have we got them all there? OK, when you
have got seats for everybody. All right. Sorry for that, but
that will expedite your planes, for those who have them, and
our needs here. Let me ask you. If you--let's see. We got
everybody there? If you six gentlemen, there we go thank you.
If you will raise right hands, please.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Thank you. Let the record reflect that each answered yes.
We appreciate your coming, and for these two panels, I'll
just review the questions and you can just answer the questions
you are asked to answer. OK, here's for the third panel. How do
you evaluate the effectiveness of the funding we are providing?
One. Two, what clear and unambiguous performance standards are
being adopted to determine if we are close to success or have
achieved success? And three, are we going to postpone any major
program decisions or alternatives until we have the results of
the early phases, or are we going to agree on a basic blueprint
and simply adjust it through adaptive management, as we move
along? And then, the fourth panel had one question: Is the
public given ample opportunity to participate in the CAL--
excuse me, two questions--CALFED process? And two, how have we
institutionalized a process to ensure that local landowners are
fully appraised of potential program impacts? Have we
institutionalized a process to assure that local landowners are
protected from government manipulation of property values as
part of the habitat rehabilitation program?
With that, let's begin with Mr. Lester Snow, executive
director of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program.
STATEMENT OF LESTER SNOW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CALFED BAY-DELTA
PROGRAM
Mr. Snow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee.
My name is Lester Snow, executive director of the CALFED
Bay-Delta Program, and my excitement to testify has grown
considerably over the last couple panels, so----
[Laughter.]
I actually would like to start off with a couple clarifying
points before I get to answering the specific questions because
I think they're important issues.
One, I want to make it very clear that none of the
proposals contained in the CALFED draft that is on the street
contains ag land fallowing for the purposes of demand
management or generating water supply. We have identified a
number of actions that have, as a consequence, ag land
conversion for the purposes of habitat restoration, water
quality improvement, levy improvement, and certain water supply
related facilities, but not as a demand management tool.
As a means of disclosure in our environmental document, we
have estimated a maximum footprint, or a maximum impact
associated with these activities; and that is approximately
380,000 acres. I do not know where a number of 1,000,000 acres
of ag land impact in the CALFED Program has originated. It is
not in our documentation.
Even with that maximum footprint, we are working with the
communities and affected parties to avoid impact, reduce impact
where it's unavoidable, and develop mitigation measures where
you must proceed with some impact. But I must make it clear: We
do not have ag land retirement as a water supply development
strategy or a demand management strategy.
The second issue that I think is important to clarify is if
we define the mission of CALFED as getting everyone to agree on
20- and 30-year projections, we will fail for two main reasons:
all projections are wrong. Some are just worse than others.
Getting all the parties to agree on 30-year calculations about
California water issues is a lifelong career. It will not get
us where we need to go. And where we need to go is developing a
strategy that will allow us to manage a complex natural
resource system in the face of uncertainty. If the issue was
one of selecting the perfect computer model to project where we
are going, we would not be here today.
Rather, the challenge is developing a package of actions
that address the diverse issues and that are tied together so
that you can't build a subsidized reservoir and abandon
conservation and reclamation. Or you can't restore ecosystem
and levies, and let water supply reliability continue to
deteriorate.
The challenge is in tying the package together and not
focusing on the single issues that have torn us apart in the
past.
In terms of beginning that effort, we are now proceeding
with ecosystem restoration, which is the critical issue before
us. The issue has been raised, how you monitor and how you
proceed to judge whether you are making progress, and how if--
if you are making the right choices.
The approach that we are taking in the CALFED Program is
twofold, and I will make reference to the briefing document
that we have provided you: the tab marked ``monitoring and
performance standards'' and the last page which is a figure
one, and shows the five levels of performance measures that
we've identified in the program. We've divided those into
project monitoring and ecosystem monitoring.
In project monitoring, which is at the bottom of the page,
there's basically two parts: implementation monitoring and
effectiveness monitoring. As we begin spending money, we have
implemented this stage of our monitoring program.
Implementation monitoring is straightforward. Has the
project done what it was supposed to do? If they were putting
in a fish screen, did they actually do it on time and on
budget?
The second component of project monitoring is effectiveness
monitoring? Did the fish screen allow the fish to pass? And in
the example that we use move up Butte Creek to spawning in the
number and at the time that's appropriate for salmon recovery?
And then we move to the issue of ecosystem monitoring. How
do each of these projects, whether it's coral dam or any
habitat restoration project or other screening projects in the
Sacramento system, how do they cumulatively affect the overall
ecosystem? We are developing indicators of ecological health,
and have developed some. They provide us perspective on
performance standards for overall ecosystem which lead up to an
overall goal. We have developed some specific indicators that
tie into the specific projects, such as counting the number of
returning spawning salmon, counting the number of out migrants
that go back out to the ocean, and seeing how they relate to
overall salmon population levels.
Again, we have developed the project monitoring level that
is being implemented on every single project that is awarded
and moves out. We are developing the longer term program that
will be able to provide us the assessment of the cumulative
impact of each of these individuals projects in improving the
overall health of the ecosystem.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Snow may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
The next witness is Mr. Richard Golb, the executive
director of the Northern California Water Association.
Mr. Golb.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD GOLB, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WATER
ASSOCIATION
Mr. Golb. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Members of the
Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify this
afternoon.
I am Richard Golb, the executive director of the Northern
California Water Association. In the interest of time, I'll
summarize my remarks as briefly as a I can. I would appreciate
the inclusion of my written testimony into the hearing record
today.
Mr. Doolittle. This is a full statement. It will be
included.
Mr. Golb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
At the outset, I think the simplest way to assess the
question of how can we determine whether CALFED has been
effective or not in allocating funds to the ecosystem is to
just look at CALFED's statement of goals, objectives and
principles. In terms of the definition of the program itself,
the goal is to improve the environment and, at the same time,
decrease regulatory mandates on water supply operations and the
water projects. And from a broad level, I think if we
accomplish those two goals, we have achieved a measure of
success.
Now, on a more specific level, as Lester indicated, I think
we can look at specific projects. For example, we can identify
clearly established problems in the system, such as water
diversions that harm threatened and endangered fish. If we
identify those diversions that are harming fish species and we
install a fish screen on that diversion, we've solved a problem
in the system. And we've basically been effective in at least
resolving one clearly identified problem.
At this point, there are nearly a dozen water suppliers,
agricultural water districts in the Sacramento Valley, that are
engaged in the study, design, or construction stages of
developing a fish screen or fish passage project. Several of
these projects are now complete. For example, as Lester
indicated, on Butte Creek, there's the Gary N. Brown Butte
Creek Siphon Project, which Western Canal Water District just
recently completed--an amazing project. The district completed
the construction of a siphon to carry water supplies underneath
Butte Creek, which allows spring-run salmon, now listed by the
State of California and proposed for Federal listing, unimpeded
access of Butte Creek. Just stop for a second and think about
it. You have farmers that voluntarily participated in a cost
share to remove several small dams. That's not happening in a
lot of areas of the country, and I think that case clearly
illustrates the benefits of these restoration projects and the
effectiveness, in that we did we achieve restoration at the
same time local farmers and the local community benefited
through a more dependable, reliable water supply, which is a
really a mutually compatible goal.
Now, in response to the performance standards that Lester
is now developing, we haven't had a chance to fully assess
them. When we do, we'll probably have additional comment. But I
think, as you indicated Mr. Chairman, developing performance
and monitoring criteria is extraordinarily difficult on a
complex and dynamic ecosystem like the California's Bay Delta.
It's continually changing. And, at the same time, because it's
not a static process, because it's dynamic, there are factors
in the entire watershed that create difficulties for us to
assess. For example, wildfires in the Sierra or the Shasta
watershed, drought, such as the 1986 to 1992 drought, or the
1997 floods, which was the worst flood in California history;
and a flood that swept millions of juvenile salmon prematurely
out to the Pacific Ocean.
Those kinds of natural effects make it extraordinarily
difficult for us to determine the type of standards we should
apply on whether or not the program itself has been successful.
An additional difficulty is that CALFED has ambitiously
defined some of its projects as an attempt to replicate natural
processes. The river meander is one. This project although,
from a theoretical perspective, has great value, there are
number of questions that arise from allowing the river to
meander. You know, rivers are beautiful until they meander
through your living room. And one of the things that we have to
be very careful about is that the river meander projects are
constructed in such a way that they're consistent with flood
control protection.
In conclusion, I would say that I think we can accomplish
some of these projects--ecosystem restoration projects--but
they have to be done carefully. We've recently encouraged
CALFED to focus its efforts on solving known environmental
problems, like fish screens. And, at the same time, when it
come to dealing with projects like the river meander to be very
careful and to consider the implementation of pilot projects so
that we deal with them in the right way. We complete NEPA and
CEQA certification process. We have representative processes
for landowners to participate, because this thing necessarily
will require land acquisition along the river. And finally, I
would say that the best way to look at this is, if CALFED
focuses on known problems and moves the unknown solutions to a
longer process of evaluation, what we'll implement ultimately
is more dollars up front for restoration projects that will
produce more quantifiable benefits, which I think is our goal.
So, in conclusion, we support the appropriation and would
urge you to continue your focus on CALFED. It's been helpful
throughout the process for all the stakeholders, ourselves
included.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Golb may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. Our next witness is Mr. Gary
Bobker, senior analyst with the Bay Institute, San Rafael,
California.
STATEMENT OF GARY BOBKER, THE BAY INSTITUTE
Mr. Bobker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee.
Like Rich, I'll try to summarize my statement and ask that
the written statement be incorporated in the record.
Although I'm representing the Bay Institute here today. I
also want to mention that I'm the co-chair of the Ecosystem
Roundtable, and the perspective that I want to cover reflects
work that I've been doing over the last few years in the
Roundtable and other stakeholder processes to try and build
greater consensus around ecosystem restoration and the broader
water management planning process. And I think that what's
amazing is the amount of success we've had in the extremely
difficult and often adversarial process. We have to look at the
relative amount of success, and I think it's impressive.
I think it's important to remember that in looking at the
Bay Delta and California's water-related environmental problems
that we have changed, altered, and assaulted the California Bay
Delta and the water environment to a scale that has really has
been seen in very few places in the world. And, as a result,
the program that we are now contemplating through the CALFED
process to correct those problems--restore the estuary, reduce
the conflicts--is on a scale never before attempted. And there
is no connect the dots, Cliff notes approach here. There is no
easy answer to this, which is one of the reasons why it's a
technically challenging, complex task. And we're going to learn
as we go along. We are going to make mistakes as we implement
this program. And what we have to make sure is that we learn
from those mistakes, which is why elevating the issue of having
monitoring--adequate monitoring regimes and performance
standards is an extremely important issue. The only way we're
going to learn from our mistakes is if we have a sense of where
we're going. And in adaptive management, which is the sort of
learning as you go approach, I think there are four key
elements there. One is you've got to have sense of where you're
going, define success in a measurable way with goals and
objectives and indicators.
Secondly, have an implementation plan. Design a blueprint
that you think, based on what you know now, will get you there.
Third, monitor how you do.
And then fourth, go back and revise your blueprint to get
you back on course toward your objectives.
What I want to touch on is how is the CALFED process
dealing with that kind of mid-course correction approach, both
in the near-term spending that's going on with the money that
Congress has provided, as well as in the longer-term planning
process.
In the near-term spending process, the Roundtable--the
stakeholders and the agencies involved in that process--
identified what we considered to be the most urgent priorities
for near-term spending, and that was to protect those
endangered species that are on the brink of extinction; to
reduce the most volatile conflicts in the system; and to start
learning from on the ground habitat restoration. And so we
identified a list of high priority endangered species. We
identified a list of those kinds of habitats that we think we
want to start doing demonstration projects on, so we can learn
from that on the ground implementation. And then we made sure
that for each of the projects that we considered funding, there
was a required monitoring process. And those monitoring regimes
focus on the obvious things related to the priorities we set.
How are endangered species populations fairing as a result of
the projects that are being funded? How is on the ground
restoration working? For instance, one of the projects that is
to be funded this year is gravel replenishment on the Tuolumne
and Stanislaus Rivers. The priority there was the need to
increase spawning habitat for fall run Chinook salmon, which
are in big trouble in the San Joaquin system. There's limited
spawning opportunities, so we're going to put more gravel into
the system. We're going to look at how it's spread out through
the stream. We're going to look at how fish use those new
gravel areas. We're going to have biologists splashing around
in the streams, checking all this. And then we're going to go
back and figure out how to improve the gravel replenishment
program so that's more effective next year and the year after
and the year after.
We've also dramatically increased the funding available for
a more comprehensive monitoring program, which is a cooperative
effort of the Federal Government and the Interagency Ecological
Program and the non-profit Estuary Institute.
In the longer-term, an independent scientific review panel
took a look at the CALFED process and said, ``you know, you
could really stand to sharpen up some of these goals and
objectives and indicators.'' As a result, most of the major
stakeholders who are involved in the CALFED process have been
working together over the last 6 to 8 months to try and
identify a work plan for revising the ecosystem element,
sharpening up these goals and objectives. And, in fact, I think
we've made a lot of progress. We've also sponsored a number of
technical workshops and conferences with the University of
California to identify a comprehensive suite of ecological
indicators--in other words, measures of success. I think there
has been a lot of progress on that. There's a lot of work to be
done, but I think we can say that we're well on the way toward
a good set of indicators.
Finally--the final point I want to make addresses the last
question that you posed, Mr. Chairman, and that is about this
sort of either or of--do you have a blueprint or you defer
decisionmaking. What I want to say is I think that might be a
false dichotomy--is that if you have a good blueprint, you make
appropriate decisions now and you postpone inappropriate
decisions. The example that I would give is that when it comes
to restoring habitat, there's pretty much widespread scientific
consensus that if you restore large blocks of habitat, that is
going to really work better to conserve species than most other
things. And so we need to go out and start doing it. We also
know that exotic species really, really can damage the
ecosystem, but we really don't have a very good idea of what to
do about it. And so we're going to have to defer making
decisions about how to deal with exotic species until we've
done more research and monitoring.
The one last point I want to make on that is that it's also
important to defer making site-specific decisions about
restoration. It's one thing to have a blueprint that sort of
connects our plan from one county to another, from one
watershed to another, but that plan is not the place to make
decisions about your specific land acquisitions or fish
management measures. That is something that is going to come in
the more detailed planning process that's going to have to
followup on CALFED.
In conclusion, the opportunity that's represented here is
an enormous one. It's an exciting one, and I think that we're
all committed to trying to carry through the very complex task
of rising to the occasion and fleshing out where we want to go.
But we cannot defer implementing it until we have it all
figured out. The only way we will figure it out is by learning
as we go.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bobker may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness is Dr. A. Alan Moghissi, president of the
Institute for Regulatory Science, Columbia, Maryland.
Dr. Moghissi.
STATEMENT OF A. ALAN MOGHISSI, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR
REGULATORY SCIENCE, COLUMBIA, MARYLAND
Dr. Moghissi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for inviting me to testify before this
Committee.
We in the scientific community are not used to be asked to
express our voices. Normally, it's the politician or advocacy
groups that appear before you. I certainly appreciate to give
us a chance to speak on this very important subject.
I'm Alan Moghissi, and I'm president, as you mentioned, of
the Institute for Regulatory Science. We are dedicated to the
idea that societal decisions must be based on best available
scientific information. I was a little confused during this
couple of hours about the word environment. I had been with the
Environmental Protection Agency for 20 odd years and I have
been a professor for some years. I was confused how the word
environment is being used. The word environment, as we defined
it, consist of people--humans--and other living things
supported by the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. So
when somebody says this is for the environment, I wondered
which part of the environment were they talking about.
I've include my biographical summary to this statement, and
I would appreciate if the entire statement would be made a part
of the record.
Mr. Doolittle. Yes, it will be.
Dr. Moghissi. I am not an ecologist. My perspective is that
of a research director who had to seek funds for ecological
research; a funder who had to provide money for ecological
research; and a scientific journal editor who has to accept or
reject papers dealing with ecological activities.
One of my most proudest time has been the sport of
ecological risk assessment. The method that was developed as a
result of funding that I provided at the time has become the
standard method for ecological risk assessment.
The CALFED program, and I'm going to use that word
describing the entire project, can be separated into two parts:
its goal--the societal objective; and the scientific part that
supports that objective. So, there are three questions that
need to be answered: How one knows the science is acceptable?
What is ecological health and how is it defined? And what--how
can ecological health be measured?
The acceptability of scientific information is based on
peer review. The information that was provided to me indicates
that CALFED did not have a peer review program as its defined
within the scientific community. Rather, it had a technical
advise. Peer review implies that the person that in groups that
are involved in the peer review that are having a stake in the
project have no hand in the selection of reviewers and must
formally respond to the recommendations of the reviewers.
My statement includes a classification of the scientific
information with decreasing level of acceptability, starting
from confirmed science--the laws--all the way to pseudo-
science. Some people call it junk science.
Now there is a consensus within the scientific community,
and I believe CALFED agrees with that too, that there is new
metrics for measuring the health of the ecosystem. You cannot
go and make some measurements, say this ecosystem is healthy,
the other one isn't. Therefore, one has to use ecological
indicators, and I guess they are using that too.
I'm surprised that one of the most powerful tools in the
ecology, namely ecological risk assessment, does not appear to
be a part of this program. This would be one method by which
one could identify benefits of action one takes. And this is
normally expressed by probabilities. How good is the chance
that this species will survive? How good is that the quality of
water can be improved?
Instead of answering the question that was raised, and I
would be--my statement includes answers to those, let me make
several recommendations.
First, CALFED should provide clear and objective measures
to demonstrate the status of its success. The success of the
program should be measured in terms of quantitative goals
achieved as compared to the funds expended. It's very important
to relate the goals to amount of money that you all are
providing and that in the name of taxpayers.
The entire program should separate science from societal
objectives. The scientific aspects of the project should
clearly and unambiguously avoid advocacy or the participation
of advocacy groups. If scientists from advocacy group
participate in that effort, they should do so as scientists and
not as representatives of advocacy organization. They must
follow the rules of the science, particularly the peer review.
CALFED should try to use science described as--in my
classification--should use higher class sciences. And if they
use lower class sciences, they should understand the
ramifications.
Finally, they should set up a project to independently peer
review the program, which I believe would benefit.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Moghissi may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our next witness will be Mr. Dick Dickerson, president of
the Regional Council of Rural Counties in Redding, California.
STATEMENT OF DICK DICKERSON, PRESIDENT, REGIONAL COUNCIL OF
RURAL COUNTIES, REDDING, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Dickerson. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
for the opportunity to testify before the Committee.
I am the president of RCRC. That's an organization of 27
rural California counties. Our membership encompasses a broad
geographic area, stretching from the shores of Mono Lake to the
shores of Clear Lake, from the valley floor of Yosemite to the
top Mount Shasta, and from the farmlands of Sacramento to the
San Joaquin Valley and to the Sierra forests.
Our members are located within the San Joaquin, Sacramento,
and Trinity watersheds. Collectively, our members are the
source areas for the San Francisco Bay Delta. It is from our
membership that over 80 percent of the water for the Delta
comes.
The forests from within our membership area include the
most significant snow pack areas in California. The water
storage in these snow packs dwarfs the capacity of all of the
reservoirs in the State. Snow melt during the spring and summer
months is what keeps the Delta ecosystem alive. The health of
the watersheds in our membership areas are, to a great extent,
the early indicators of the health of the Deco's ecosystem--or
the Delta ecosystem, not by any law of man or a map in a
Federal office, but by the laws of Nature. Any successful Bay-
Delta solution will depend upon actions in our membership area
to implement ecosystem restoration, watershed management, water
transfers, new water storage, facilities, and existing storage
re-operation.
RCRC is represented in the CALFED process at three levels.
Our water committee chairman, Mr. Meacher, from Plumas County,
serves on the Bay-Delta Advisory Committee. Our water natural
resource consultant, Mr. John Mills, serves on the Ecosystem
Restoration Roundtable. Mr. Meachum, Mr. Mills and other RCRC
elected officials and staff also participate in numerous BDAC
work groups, such as ecosystem restoration, water transfers,
assurances, and finance.
The expectation of adequate public participation within
CALFED is predicated on the ability of the public to understand
the subject matter. To have the opportunity to meaningful their
interests and concerns to those making decisions. And for those
making the decisions to evaluate and to respond to public
input. This is, when effective, an interactive and ongoing
process.
Mr. Chairman, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, if completed,
will be the most complex ecosystem restoration program ever
carried out within the United States. It will affect the laws
of tens of millions of Californians and the millions yet to
come. It will cost billions of dollars and involve the use of
significant portions of California land use area to achieve
this success. This process should not only involve water
managers and Federal State agency personnel, but also the
general public, whose lives will be affected by the CALFED
solution. The solution will be complex and should not--and
should involve, to the greatest extent possible, as much public
input as is practical. Notwithstanding the participation of
RCRC that I have referenced, we believe that there are very--
two very serious problems with the CALFED public participation
program.
Mr. Chairman, it is our experience that the CALFED schedule
is too short. It fails to allow for most the affected parties
to even become acquainted with the information being presented,
let alone provided meaningful input. While it is true that the
process has been underway for over two years, it is only the
past 6 months that clear projected features and components of a
solution have been assembled in any understandable manner. It
is only in the last two months that a draft environmental
impact statement has been released for public review and
comment. Unfortunately, during this time period--or this same
time period, the California Department of Water Resources
released their water plan update with an April 15 deadline for
comment. The Bureau of Reclamation set April 17 deadline for
comments on its own 5,000-page programmatic environmental
impact statement. Most local governments were simply
overwhelmed with the paper load. For the general public faced
with earning a living, the invitation to participate in this
process on that schedule was quite impossible.
In addition, providing meaningful comments was further
frustrated by the significant portions of CALFED solution
packages being incomplete at this time. For while we know now
what various alternatives are for the conveyance, there are
missing pieces to the puzzle. For example, there is no
assurance package. For our members, the issues of protections
and guarantees of performance is of paramount importance. There
is no water transfers package. Water transfers, while an
important component of any CALFED solution, pose the most
direct threat to our economies if not properly designed and
implemented. There is no complete watershed strategy. At best,
CALFED has put together a strategy on how to do a watershed
strategy. The watershed restoration and management component of
CALFED's solution is critically important to our members. There
is no clear direction on any new surface storage. Without new
storage of surface water, the chance of producing a CALFED
solution that could be--not be--not negatively affect our
members--is very slim. Therefore, we feel that we are being
forced to comment on a an incomplete CALFED package in an
unrealistic timeframe. We are not optimistic that our comments
would have any influence on the process, given the lack of time
for CALFED staff to evaluate and incorporate changes. We must
underscore that we do not feel meaningful public input can be
accommodated in the CALFED process given it is to be completed
in the next 7 months. That is a schedule that sets up
confrontation, not consensus.
I'll skip through some of the testimony to get to some
specifics in getting the participation of the public.
The CALFED ecosystem restoration plan, for example, was a
multi-volume plan to restore the environment of the Delta and
it was mailed out to only 550 recipients. And that's according
to CALFED's own mailing list. CALFED's choice of who the
documents went to was also of concern. In one of our State
senate districts in the Sacramento Valley, only two farm
bureaus one of those 250-550 copies. No copies were received by
the Women in Agriculture, or by any Chamber of Commerce.
However, more than 25 copies went out to environment groups,
such as the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, and Restoring
the Earth. Also on the A list of recipients were universities,
which received 20 copies, in places as far away as Riverside.
Federal and State agencies obtained over 40 copies. Those who
stood to be most affected by the plan, those whose lands might
have been retired or whose water rights might be acquired, or
those whose land might be converted to habitat were left in the
dark.
Public frustration expressed to us, the local elected
officials, was significant. They have asked us, and were are
asking you, to help expand and improve the public participation
process in a meaningful way.
The CALFED program has seemingly expected rural California
to supply the land, the water, job sacrifices to fix the Delta,
without question in the manner of traditional top-down agency
mandates. We believe that this much change. CALFED has
scheduled its own document releases and review periods in
apparent ignorance or oblivion to the actions being taken by
other CALFED agencies. We believe that this must change.
CALFED expects all California to step forward to help fix
the DELTA when it is convenient for CALFED, in a location
convenient for CALFED, in a manner convenient for CALFED, and
we believe that this much change.
Mr. Chairman, one of CALFED's own brochures read,
``ultimately, it is the active participation of the entire
public that will help fix the Bay Delta.'' And we believe that
that should not change.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dickerson may be found at
end of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you.
Our final witness is Mr. Bill Gaines, director of
governmental affairs for the California Waterfowl Association
in Sacramento, California.
Mr. Gaines.
STATEMENT OF BILL GAINES, CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL ASSOCIATION
Mr. Gaines. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Subcommittee. My name is Bill Gaines, and I am the Director of
Government Affairs for the California Waterfowl Association.
Thank you for the opportunity to come before you today to
discuss the private sector's role in the CALFED Bay-Delta
program.
California has lost over 90 percent of its historical
waterfowl habitat. Due to significant changes in our natural
hydrology and the lack of true seasonal flows, the ability to
provide high-quality wetland habitat today largely must be done
through managed wetlands. In other words, wetlands which are
artificially irrigated and intensely managed to create positive
wetlands values and functions.
The CALFED Bay-Delta program is a long-term effort to
address ecosystem health, water quality, water supply
reliability and levee system integrity in the Bay-Delta
watershed. Because the restoration, enhancement, and
maintenance of waterfowl habitat throughout much of this
watershed also depends upon these areas of concern, properly
implemented, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program represents a
tremendous opportunity to address the needs of wintering and
nesting waterfowl and other wetland dependent species.
Today, I've been asked to provide our association's view
regarding public participation in the CALFED Bay-Delta Program.
As a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, representing nearly
13,000 Bay-Delta stakeholders, the California Waterfowl
Association also has a significant interest in the private
sector's ability to contribute to the CALFED process.
Let me begin to address this question with a statement
that, although California's ``water wars'' and deteriorating
ecosystem health are well chronicled, the CALFED Bay-Delta
Program is far and away the most significant and positive
multi-interest effort ever undertaken to address water and
environmental concerns in California--or perhaps throughout the
Nation.
The sheer magnitude of this landscape effort results in
unintended barriers and natural disincentives to public
participation. At times, even those individuals or the
representatives of agencies and organizations who are fortunate
enough to be able to dedicate full-time to this sweeping
effort, struggle to obtain a comprehensive grip on the program
and its dynamic process. Clearly, providing for a program which
offers ample public participation and opportunities, as well as
real-time public awareness of its continual progress and
potential impacts is, in itself, a tremendous challenge for the
Bay-Delta program team. Irregardless of the stumbling blocks
associated with assuring full stakeholder participation in such
a mammoth program, the California Waterfowl Association
believes the CALFED team has made every effort to design a
process which facilitates and encourages important public
input, as well as return real time information flow.
Yes, our association, even as a member of the program's
Ecosystem Restoration Roundtable and BDAC, has experienced
times of serious frustration due to our inability to positively
influence CALFED program decisions. But we don't contribute
this frustration to a CALFED agency team set on implementing
the program ``their way,'' but rather, to the tremendous
difficulty associated with trying to address a myriad of Bay-
Delta concerns in a fashion which is palatable to each of the
many stakeholder interests which must be served.
The ability of the private sector to be heard in this
process ranges from high profile role of formal committees
established to provide direct advisory input to CALFED
agencies, to hands-on workshops in small rural towns throughout
the watershed, to other public outreach efforts which are
enough to choke even the hardiest of mailboxes.
As each of you is probably aware, CALFED agencies have
tried to facilitate formal public input and interaction by
establishing the Bay-Delta Advisory Council, or BDAC, a
committee which is chartered under the Federal Advisory
Committee Act and comprised of a variety of stakeholder
interests, including California Waterfowl Association.
In addition to BDAC, formal stakeholder interaction is also
provided by the CALFED Ecosystem Roundtable, which is a roughly
20 member BDAC subcommittee. In addition to the BDAC, and BDAC
subcommittee, there's also 13 technical panels. And, in
addition, an umbrella integration panel, which provides an
opportunity for specialists, if you will, in various areas of
stressed species, stressed habitats or regions, to help design
program priorities, as well as rank, if you will, and evaluate
the program projects which are offered for funding.
One of the main concerns that the California Waterfowl
Association has, however, is that, regardless of our ability to
dedicate a fair amount of time to the program and our seat on
the Bay-Delta Advisory Council as well as on the Ecosystem
Roundtable, we have been relatively limited in our ability to
fully address each of our concerns.
Our association fully appreciates and supports the goal of
the CALFED program to address water supply reliability and the
importance of addressing the habitat needs of listed fish
species in achieving this objective. Our ``managed wetlands''
will also benefit greatly from achieving this goal. Yet, if the
program is to make a sincere effort to restore the integrity of
the Bay-Delta ecosystem, it must also more fully consider the
serious habitat needs of native wildlife. Most notably,
wintering and nesting waterfowl, and other species which share
their habitats.
California's Central Valley, largely the same geographical
area which is being addressed by the CALFED Ecosystem
Restoration Program, is widely recognized as one of the most
important waterfowl regions in North America. It provides
wintering and nesting habitat for nearly a full \1/4\ of our
continental waterfowl population. Yet, this area has suffered
the significant loss of nearly 95 percent of its historical
waterfowl habitat.
In the mid 1980's, in response to serious reductions in
North America waterfowl populations, the North American
Waterfowl Management Plan was signed by the Federal Governments
of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This plan established
broad waterfowl population goals and identified seven
priorities areas on the North American continent in need of
habitat restoration and enhancement. California's Central
Valley was one of those initial seven priority areas.
Two years later, in 1988, a habitat restoration program, in
many ways like CALFED, was initiated to address North American
Waterfowl Management Plan objectives in our Central Valley.
This public-private conservation effort, known as the Central
Valley Habitat Joint Venture, carefully established
biologically based acreage objectives for the preservation,
enhancement, restoration, and maintenance of waterfowl habitat
throughout much of the CALFED project area. And, in your
packet, I have provided you with a matrix of exactly what those
habitat goals are.
Recognizing the importance of private landowner support to
the success of the joint venture to be able to obtain those
goals, a serious effort was made to minimize the changes to
existing land use necessary to meet waterfowl needs. As such,
the quantity of acreage targeted for wetland restoration was
somewhat limited, and heavy emphasis was placed upon leaving
land in agricultural production and simply working with the
landowner to increase it's wildlife values.
The tremendous loss of Central Valley wetland habitat, as
well as the critical importance of the region to migratory
waterfowl, is well documented. Clearly, the CALFED program
ecosystem restoration effort could, and should, play a
significant role in this critical conservation effort. Yet,
thus far, the best efforts of our association to elevate
waterfowl and their habitats to a high priority of the CALFED
program have been relatively unsuccessful.
Congress has already recognized the importance of the
migratory waterfowl resource through it's support of the North
American Waterfowl Management Plan, and it's authorization and
annual funding of the North American Wetlands Conservation
Act--the North American Waterfowl Management's Plan Federal
funding source.
Today, I ask for your assistance in creating a CALFED
program which not only helps to meet these waterfowl needs, but
also facilitates greater landowner support by providing full
Federal funding to the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration effort, and
earmarking a reasonable portion of these dollars for projects
which are entirely consistent with the accepted habitat
objectives of the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture.
In conclusion, the California Waterfowl Association would
like to state that it is highly committed to the CALFED program
and it's process, and would like to applaud the CALFED team for
what we believe is a more than reasonable effort to design a
program which maximizes the role of the private sector in the
decisionmaking process. We ask those who may disagree to
consider the tremendous difficulty associated with obtaining
complete public satisfaction with a program of this size and
scope. We also ask Congress to help us fully realize the
potential of the CALFED program to appropriately address the
needs of our North American waterfowl population and other
native plant and animal species who share their habitats.
On behalf of the members of the California Waterfowl
Association and waterfowl enthusiasts throughout the North
American continent, I thank you for the opportunity to come
before you today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gaines may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Doolittle. Thank you. There's so much material here,
it's hard to know where to begin. Mr. Snow, do you file your
documents electronically?
Mr. Snow. We have a web page, where I think we have most of
our documents. I'm not familiar exactly which ones are on that
web page, but a lot of our material can be downloaded from the
web page.
Mr. Doolittle. So would this--we happen to have this up
here, and I was listening to Mr. Dickerson's testimony about
coping with--reacting to all these multi-thousand page
documents. And this is the--I guess--the one that's out right
now for comment by CALFED. Would this be on a web site, do you
think?
Mr. Snow. That's what I don't know. There may be somebody
here who knows for sure. I know we have the phase 2 report,
which is a summary of everything that happened and is contained
in that--that is definitely on our web site. It can be
downloaded. I know we intended to get this on a web site. I
can't verify without checking.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. I just--we did that 2 or 3 years ago in
the Congress. I think every document that is generated is
generated electronically and it just seems like it would be so
much easier, because as Mr. Dickerson observed, I'm sure you
didn't want to print too many copies of these because of the
volume of it. And yet, for the public to be able to
participate, the Internet would offer a remarkable opportunity
for people to gain access to it. And I guess--I think--you
could have all your maps and everything included within that.
Just a thought.
Mr. Dickerson indicated that there's no clear direction on
new surface storage, which is a criticism I share. And he
indicates that without new storage of surface water, the
chances of producing a CALFED solution that would not
negatively affect our members is very slim. Could you comment
on the surface storage component of CALFED.
Mr. Snow. Certainly. As you know, we have developed three
alternatives and we have evaluated each of the three
alternatives with no additional storage and an additional 6
million acre feet of storage. And, so we've evaluated each
approach.
It's no surprise that, in order to get additional yield
water supply in the system, you must have additional storage.
Modification and conveyance, making the ecosystem more
resilient, while adding some certainty to operations, do not in
fact generate additional water supply. So the only way you get
additional water supply or additional yield in the system is by
adding storage.
And we have evaluated storage both north of the Delta, as
well as south of the Delta. We believe from our analysis that
an additional 6 million acre feet is just about the end of the
spectrum in terms of reasonable investment, because of the
yield curves, which are actually contained in the briefing
document if you want to followup on this.
Mr. Doolittle. So, you've done analyses of yields of
different proposed projects?
Mr. Snow. We've done it in a broad evaluation of adding
storage within the system and how much water you can move into
storage.
Mr. Doolittle. How did the proposed Auburn Dam fare on your
yield curve? Is it one that you considered?
Mr. Snow. We evaluated Auburn Dam. I do not recall, off-
hand, how it did on the yield curve. New additional on-stream
reservoirs do not fare well at all in our analysis. And, you
will see in our planning document much more emphasis on off-
stream, groundwater banking, and consideration of expanding
existing on-stream.
Mr. Doolittle. Why don't they fare well?
Mr. Snow. Well, it's because of the--we have identified
four co-equal objectives in terms of the CALFED purpose. We
have actually a fairly unusual purpose and needs statement.
We've developed where we hold water supply reliability, water
quality, levy stability, and ecosystem, as coequal objectives.
And when we look at the sites that you have available for new
on-stream, it does not pencil out as well as the opportunities
that you create with on-stream--or, excuse me--with off-stream
reservoir, groundwater storage, and raising existing
reservoirs.
Mr. Doolittle. So it's sort of by definition then, you
adopt that on-stream storage is less desirable than other
alternatives, because of the impact you feel it has on the
ecosystem?
Mr. Snow. It's not just ecosystem. It's also the issue of
how you tie it into the system. What are the benefits you can
get out of it, in terms of supplementing flows for fisheries
purposes. I think it's important to draw a distinction here.
From a technical standpoint, all potential reservoir sites, on-
stream or off-stream, are still on the table, because we have
not finished 404 analysis to exclude them.
However, I think it's important for me to stress that from
our planning purposes, the examples that we included in here
are a much more realistic expectation of what may be buildable
out there in the system that meets the four objectives of the
program.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, I just can't imagine that a facility
such as Auburn wouldn't pass your test. You heard Dr. Quinn say
they'd be interested in water at $200 an acre foot and this
would produce water at a $100 an acre foot. Not that we're
willing to sell any of it to Southern California, but in case
we were, it would be there.
Mr. Snow. Yes, certainly cost would not be a lone
consideration for us in evaluating whether it fits into the
CALFED mix or not. I think the difference from the way Auburn
has been discussed more historically, in terms of some specific
water supply benefits and certainly flood control benefits, is
different than the way CALFED is looking at storage
modifications to fit into the broader program. And it's in that
context that that reservoir, in particular, and new on-stream
reservoirs, in general, do not hold up well in our analysis.
Mr. Doolittle. You may not be able to do it today, but
could you refer me to that part of your analysis where that's
described.
Mr. Snow. Sure, I'll try to develop or send you
information.
Mr. Doolittle. OK, and then probably, based on that, I'll
have some further questions.
They have now called a series of votes, it looks like. In
the mean time, let's go to Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. I'll just have one question, and it
may that this question has to be resolved in writing. But,
Gary, I just wanted--is there a big inconsistency between your
statement of sort of how your proceeding in CALFED and
Professor Moghissi--between your two testimonies here?
Mr. Bobker. No, actually, I think they're quite consistent.
Some of the things that Dr. Moghissi referred to, the need for
independent scientific review or the need for quantitative
objectives--and these are things that not only the
environmental community, but agricultural and urban
stakeholders--involved in the process have been calling for. It
took a little while to get, I think, an adequate response from
the CALFED program, but the good news has been
that they have moved in the direction of bringing in scientific
review and the initial stages of developing quantitative
objectives.
Mr. Miller. Let me ask you this. But the screen that you
sort of describe about how you--when you look--at some of these
ecosystem restoration programs--do we apply the same screen to
facilities? Can we talk about--you talked about environmental
risk assessment--it's kind of peer review?
Mr. Bobker. Well, yes, I think it's fair to say that the
level of quantitative analysis, of definition of success, and
of independent scientific review, to which we've been holding
the environmental restoration program accountable, has not been
applied as rigorously to the other parts of the program.
The Environmental Water Caucus has, in some of our
communications with Mr. Snow and the program, identified that
as a need. We really haven't--we're waiting to hear a little
bit more about how it's going to be dealt with. But, there's
clearly a need, I think, for independent scientific review of
the water quality component, independent scientific review of
some of the water efficiency elements. I could go on and on. I
will provide the Committee with a longer list that we have
supplied to them of some of those needs.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Our apologies that we're now coming
up against these votes. But, Mr. Gaines, I want to thank you.
You're description of being involved in this process probably
should be mandated reading for all of us. But we hope that, as
we move into this next phase, that we narrow some--so people
aren't wearing so many hats and we can start to harden some of
these consideration. But, it's great reading. Thank you.
[Laughter.]
I'm not sure it's a great experience.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. I think at this point we're going to have to
recess and come back after the vote. There are four votes. It
will be half an hour before we make it back. I wish I had
better news.
Do any of you have to leave to make a plane?
Mr. Bobker. Too late now.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. All right. We'll get back as soon as we can.
[Recess.]
Mr. Doolittle. OK, thank you for your indulgence. I see it
took even longer than I was expecting. Mr. Pombo is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I'll start with
Mr. Snow. Two different areas that I'd like to go in with you.
We've discussed a lot of different things and you've heard all
of the testimony so far.
The first area I'd like to question you on is in terms of
process. The concern has been raised about public participation
in the process. The concern that I'm hearing from constituents
and from others is that you have done an admirable job of
pulling together what you consider the stakeholders and pulling
those people in and trying to make them part of the process.
I think that--and I understand you didn't attend the
hearing in Walnut Grove--but, I think what that hearing
represented was the general frustration, the lack of
information that was available, the lack of information that
has been distributed to those that are being impacted. I think
it's fairly obvious that none of those people that attended
that hearing, who live and work in the Delta, who's land and
water will be directly impacted by whatever final decisions are
made, are considered stakeholders in this process. At least,
they feel that they have been excluded from this process.
I think that's an old pattern that we have fallen into with
CALFED, and, as I've told you before, I don't oppose the CALFED
process. I think it's very important. But I think that one of
the things that we've fallen into with this process is, that
you look at the people who are on the panel that are considered
stakeholders, and you don't have a lot of people who own
property in the Delta or have water rights to the water that
flows through the Delta that are included in the process.
Would you like to respond to that?
Mr. Snow. Sure. I think there's two points that everybody
would agree with. And that is--and they seem contradictory, but
I don't believe that they are--that the CALFED process has done
more in terms of outreach than any other process has attempted.
The number of meetings, the number of workshops, our outreach,
has gone beyond that which has done for most projects like
this.
But at the same token though, I think there's agreement
that we need to do more. Because of the magnitude of the
potential impacts, we need to continue and even expand beyond
the traditional stakeholders. And I think the Delta, in fact,
is a good example of that, where we have, let's say, relied on
the easier representatives--the traditional folks, an Alex
Hildebrand or Pat McCarty, Jim and Sally Shanks, and Tom
Zuckerman, and Dante Nomalini--those people that have provided
us advice. We tried to reach out through the Delta Protection
Commission and attend some of those meetings, and some of the
rec board meetings.
But, I think the point that you're making--as we move
forward in this and start making clear decisions, we need to
get down to the community level. To the level where people are
actually impacted by land acquisition strategies. And I agree
with that. And I think we're trying to, at this stage of a
draft programmatic, to get clearer on where we're headed and
what the issues are. We have to do more outreach, particularly
in the communities that are to be impacted by these actions and
the Delta is the best example of that.
We've tried to listen to the different issues. I think
they've been very articulate at a lot of meetings, including
the Walnut Grove public hearing. There's a whole host of issues
that they're concerned about. Land retirement is only one of
them. They're concerned about isolated facilities. They're
concerned about commitment to maintaining levies. They're
concerned about getting ESA restrictions off their back, so
they can maintain the levies. We're listening to those points
and I think we need to do a better job of communicating that.
Mr. Pombo. In terms of the Walnut Grove hearing, one of the
most often shortcomings that I heard was that each person was
allowed to make a statement for 3 minutes. Many of them were
cutoff mid-sentence, when their 3 minutes were up. No questions
were answered. Many people came there with questions and walked
away with the same questions.
I get the feeling that you're going through this process so
that, at the end, we can say we had 17 hearings throughout
California with the general public. And if all of the hearings
are the same as this particular one was, you may end up with 17
hearings with the general public, but you will end up with
everyone who went to those 17 hearings walking away without one
question being answered that they walked in with. And I think
that something needs to change in the way you are conducting
these hearings, so that people at least feel like they got some
answers.
Mr. Snow. There's two different--there's many different
kinds of meetings, but there's basically two types that we're
pursuing in CALFED. The one is the legal hearing process, which
has very specific legal requirements on how we conduct
ourselves. And the other is the open meeting with full exchange
and dialog between the parties.
We have even modified our hearings, so that we start a
public meeting an hour before the formal hearing, that allows
people who wish to come to actually meet with individuals in
the program and discuss different issues and get answers to
those questions. We also have been conducting--you know, in the
past 2 years, over 350 community meetings and outreach efforts,
whether it's a formal CALFED public meeting or a meeting
cosponsored with a local reclamation district, where we have
the full exchange.
But we are conducting very formal public hearings to comply
with law and case law to make sure that everybody has equal
access and equal opportunity to provide comments into the
official record.
What I would propose in this case, is that if we need to
hold a public meeting for the purpose of the dialogue, not the
official hearing record, we'd be glad to do that. And we've
done that.
Mr. Pombo. I know, in my area, there's definitely a need
for that. I don't know if in Riverside or some of the other
areas where hearing's are proposed there is a need for that
kind of hearing. But I do know that the people that I represent
probably will be more impacted by whatever decision than
anybody in the State in California, and they feel like they've
been cut out of the process.
Mr. Chairman, my time's expired. I have a number of other
questions I would like to ask. But, I don't know exactly how
you're going to handle the time.
Mr. Doolittle. Well----
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Miller said he would give me his time.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Doolittle. Go ahead. Proceed.
Mr. Pombo. Second, in terms of process, and this takes off
of something that Dr. Moghissi was talking about. I have a real
concern about how we end up with a final product. I feel that
there is definitely a lack of peer reviewed science that is
being done at this point.
And you may debate me on that, but from my perspective,
there's a lack of honest science being done at this point in
the process. I don't feel like you have gone to outside people
who don't have a stake in this end product and said, is what we
are doing accurate, scientifically. Does it hold up? I don't
think that that's happening, one.
Two, I have a list of proposed projects that I believe came
from your office. These are not the projects that we are
approving as part of the appropriations process. We're being
asked for $143 million, and no congressional committee is
having oversight hearings into approving these projects. To my
knowledge, no committee and the State assembly or State senate
is holding hearings into whether or not we should spend
taxpayer money on these projects.
What we are being asked to do is to approve a bulk amount
of money to go to CALFED. Who is ultimately responsible if you
waste money? Who is ultimately responsible if you put together
something that is full of fraud and abuse, that benefits the
people that are sitting on the board, who are participating in
the process? Where is the taxpayer accountability for the end
result? Who--and don't take this personally--but, who voted for
you? Who put you in to make you king to decide where we spend
taxpayer dollars?
Mr. Snow. Let me start by saying that being king is grossly
overrated, if that's what I am in this process.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Pombo. And I don't want your job. I'm just asking.
Mr. Snow. Do you have any positions open?
[Laughter.]
That's an excellent question and let me start by saying we
think we have put a process in place that guards against those
types of abuses. We subject people on panels to conflict
requirements, disclosure statements. We work our way through
that, and certainly Gary Bobker and Rich can attest to what we
require of even the advisory panel in terms of disclosure of
interest and remote interest associated with any projects that
may be coming forward.
The answer your question--actually, in terms of where the
responsibility lies--actually is in the same place as how did I
get this job. And basically that is, I'm accountable to the
secretary of Interior and to Governor Wilson through the
secretary for resources for the State of California. And in
terms of the two funding sources--two primary funding sources
we are utilizing now in funding these projects--Proposition 204
specifically puts the secretary for resources for the State of
California as the fiduciary agent for those moneys. He must be
responsible that they are expended in compliance with State law
and all the provisions of conflict of interest, contract law,
et cetera.
On the Federal side, it is, of course, the secretary of
Interior responsible for making sure that those moneys are
expended in an efficient and effective fashion under Federal
law. Now we have a very elaborate process set up to move
projects forward through many levels of screening and review
and peer review, before those lists move forward for their
recommendations. But in terms of----
Mr. Pombo. You say peer review, but you don't mean outside
peer review.
Mr. Snow. Well, I do mean----
Mr. Pombo. It's within the group.
Mr. Snow. [continuing] outside peer review in the sense
it's not just agency folks reviewing it. When we have technical
teams, for example, where they're evaluating the merits of
screening projects to achieve the objectives on screening and
fish passage problems, that includes technical experts from the
agency, as well as stakeholder community. And so that is a
broader based science review and it's not simply an agency
deciding this is what we would like to do next year.
Mr. Pombo. Dr. Moghissi, would you like to respond to that?
Dr. Moghissi. I don't believe that qualifies for peer
review. That is technical advise they are receiving. Peer
review would imply that Mr. Snow or anybody else who is
involved in it would have no hand in selection of the reviewers
and he would have to respond formally to the recommendation of
those.
No--this problem has been around, particularly with the
Federal Government, for a number of years and there is numerous
reports from the General Accounting Office, from the National
Research Council, which as you know, is the research arm of the
National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of
Engineering, and so on--there is a fairly broad--from American
Association of Engineering Society, American Medical
Association--there's a broad consensus of what constitutes peer
review.
That is a very worthy thing he's doing in which he
basically determines the relevancy of the project, but this is
not peer review.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Gaines, you and I have talked on innumerable
occasions about waterfowl habitat protection throughout the
Central Valley of California. One of the issues that you have
brought up to me, in the past, was the value of farm land in
providing waterfowl habitat. Would you like to share with the
Committee the impact of the retirement of vast number of
acreages in this particular area?
Mr. Gaines. Sure. Let me reiterate a little bit of what was
in my testimony earlier. The Central Valley Habitat Joint
Venture, which, of course, is the public-private effort under
the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, is implementing
waterfowl conservation efforts in California--the Joint Venture
is one of many, but that's one of the main bodies that's moving
forward.
When we pulled together our waterfowl population goals for
California and the Pacific flyway, we started out with bird
numbers, and we worked that down into what their energetic
requirements would be, and then ultimately, what type of
habitat changes we had to make on the ground. We knew that the
best we could probably do would be to get possibly 300,000 to
400,000 acres of true managed wetlands, or good wetlands, in
the Central Valley. And somehow, some way, we were going to
have to do something else, because even if that block of
habitat--400,000-450,000--acres was managed to be the absolute
best it could possibly be for waterfowl, it wasn't going to be
enough.
And so, what we did is we also established a goal that we
call our agricultural enhancement goal, which is actually
443,000 acres of ag land, Central Valley wide, that we want to
see farmed, but farmed in a wildlife friendly manner.
In the Delta, which is one of the areas where, of course,
because of flood control projects and other changes in our
natural hydrology, we've lost a whole bunch of naturally
occurring wetland habitat, the corn fields, wheat fields, and
other agricultural production that takes place in the Delta
now, provides a real critical component, if you will, of that
443,000 acre agricultural enhancement objective. Specifically
in the Delta basin itself, the Central Valley Habitat Joint
Venture has established a goal of annually enhancing about
68,000 acres of farm land. And without that block of 68,000
acres, whether it be winter corn or what have you, we'd be
really in deep, deep trouble.
One of the things that you hear about when you talk to
folks about the CALFED Bay-Delta program is all these wonderful
wetlands that are going to come about as a result of the
program. Well, there's wetlands and there's wetlands. Tidal
wetlands, for example, are what we would consider very marginal
waterfowl habitat--great for fish, great for a lot of other
species, not real good for ducks--but it depends upon the
species of ducks, some species like them. But, by and large,
the ones that are the most popular game bird, so to speak, in
California, the mallard, pintail, teal, and so forth, tidal
wetlands don't give them much, if anything.
Seasonal flood plain, because we don't have the seasonal
flows that we used to have anymore, we basically have seasonal
flows only when we have no more carrying capacity in the dams
and we've got to let some water go--provides very minimal
waterfowl habitat as well.
So, if we're going to get there--and we're going to get
there in the Central Valley, and specifically in the Delta,
because that really is ground zero for our waterfowl effort--we
really need to maintain a serious block of agricultural land
and we need to do the best we can to keep it as duck friendly
and wildlife friendly as we can.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Snow, on the land that would be necessary to
be retired under your plan, the amount--whatever that amount
ends up being--do you intend on paying for it, or do you intend
on just putting it on a map and leaving the restrictions on the
use of that property?
Mr. Snow. It's our intent that any land that's necessary is
acquired in the marketplace.
Mr. Pombo. Using your figures, it's somewhere between $1.5
and $2 billion for the purchase of the land that you said was
necessary. Do you--have you included that in the budget in the
financing of this?
Mr. Snow. I'm not sure how you're arriving at that number,
but we would have those numbers accounted for in some fashion
in our total cost estimates.
Mr. Pombo. Do you think that the elected representatives
that have a responsibility to the taxpayers should know that
they are committing to a $1.5 to $2 billion land acquisition
cost as part of this program?
Mr. Snow. But I don't think that's the way to characterize
this. When we show the cost----
Mr. Pombo. You said you were going to pay for it.
Mr. Snow. That's correct. But I guess the point I'm
making--if you look at the numbers, you'll notice that we show
as much as 35,000 acres of ag land conversion, primarily in the
Delta region, as a product of stabilizing the levies. And we
show those kinds of costs as part of the levy process.
Mr. Pombo. But you would have to pay for that land.
Mr. Snow. But it's part of the levy project. I guess that's
my point. Some of the strategies of stabilizing levies is that
you buildup on the interior side of the levy, and also to try
to arrest subsidence. That strip of land around the levies that
you're now having to manage in a different way to stabilize the
levy has taken up some of the ag land, and----
Mr. Pombo. You still have to pay for it.
Mr. Snow. That's correct.
Mr. Pombo. My point is--whether you take it for seasonal
wetlands, or tidal wetlands, or you just leave it fallow, or
whatever you decide to do with it--you still have to pay for
it.
Mr. Snow. Correct.
Mr. Pombo. And, if it takes the 250,000 to 400,000 acres--
and I believe your figure was 380,000, that you testified to
here today--it's between $1.5 and $2 billion in current market
value. And that's considering that it's all farm land; and that
there's no speculative value on that land as well; and that
you're not taking out permanent crops; that you're not taking
out home sites; that's just on straight farm land.
That is a considerable amount of money that I don't believe
is going to be in the budget in the very near future. And, once
you adopt this plan, and you've set aside that land, at least
on the map, you've impacted the value of somewhere between
250,000 and 400,000 acres, depending upon what the final plan
is.
And I don't--I've got to tell you that I don't believe
there's anyone in Congress that's going to stand up and tell
you, honestly, that you're going to get that money. I have a
real problem with doing that. I have a real problem with us
going into this knowing that we're going to devalue several
hundred thousand acres of land, and knowing that we can't pay
for it, at least not in the near term.
The final issue that I would like to go over with you deals
with the water storage component of this. I do not believe that
the documents--the draft documents--that we have sitting in
front of us right now, adequately address the need for surface
water in the future. I don't believe that it addresses the need
for surface water for California. I don't believe it addresses
the need for surface water to take care of water quality issues
in the Delta.
I believe that, with what you've included in here, you are
guaranteeing that we will have that train wreck. And that train
wreck will be these guys that are demanding water quality as
part of this, and those that are demanding reliability on their
water sources. And you're going to have to take water away from
someone, because you're not going to provide the amount of
water that's necessary to provide the water quality goals and
the reliability goals that you've outlined for yourself--with
the surface water provisions that you have included in this.
I believe they are wholly inadequate to take care of your
stated goals. It may avoid a fight on your committee--it may
avoid a fight within the so-called stakeholders that are
participating in the process right now, but when reality hits,
and you've told these people that we're guaranteeing certain
water quality and you've told these people we're guaranteeing
certain reliability, in exchange for getting them to sign off
on the whole program, the reality is, you don't have enough
water to do it.
And you're going to be back looking at trying to develop
surface water in order to meet those goals. And going into this
process, I think you have completely short shirted that part of
the document. There may be a reason for doing it, but I think
that, in the long run, you're going to be sorry that we did--or
that we all will be sorry that we did.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, thank you. I must say, I join in Mr.
Pombo's sentiments. And I got to tell you, I'm not happy about
a process that this favors surface water, and especially on-
stream surface water, especially like we've got--there's a
possibility at Auburn. And I would be very interested in your
material that you are going to send me on that point.
You talked about levy stabilization, Mr. Snow. Is there any
possibility that somehow the city and county of Sacramento or
their flood control agency is going to qualify for CALFED
moneys or prop 204 moneys to do it's levy enlarging project?
Mr. Snow. The way we have defined the problem area and the
way we have approached the levy program, or the component of
CALFED, the levy program is focused on the legal Delta,
continued out to Carcinas Straight. And that would not include
the American River Levy.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. Thank you. Ecological risk assessment
was mentioned by Dr. Moghissi. Is that--and he indicated in his
testimony that wasn't part of your analysis--do you concur in
that?
Mr. Snow. We have developed--well, maybe I should caveat
this--maybe I'm not familiar with the precise definition of
peer review as presented by the doctor here. However, we have
initiated a process to bring in outsiders not associated with
CALFED or it's members. We started it first with a science
panel review of our program and one of their recommendations
was to set up ongoing science review, which we have started
working on with the stakeholders--to set up a long term process
to ensure a science review.
So, maybe I should use that term--that we have brought in
independent science review, whether that fits the precise
definition of peer review, as presented by Dr. Moghissi--I'm
not familiar with that definition.
Mr. Doolittle. But, I think the--and I was interested in
the peer review too, but the ecological risk assessment, as I
understood it, would enable you to, I guess, quantify what it's
going to cost to achieve certain objectives and measure the
biggest bang for the buck. Am I mis-characterizing it, Dr.
Moghissi?
Dr. Moghissi. Right.
Mr. Doolittle. OK.
Mr. Snow. So, I answered the wrong question, is that----
Mr. Doolittle. Well, that's OK, because I was going to ask
you that--that was my next one. So----
Mr. Snow. That was the next one.
Mr. Doolittle. That's all right.
Mr. Snow. We have not done that type of analysis at this
point in our programmatic evaluation. That type of risk
assessment comes up in specific applications. The place where
we are doing it now, is trying to get a risk assessment on the
fish entrainment issue, which is a major issue in the Delta.
The effect of the two large diversions in south Delta, and when
you modify the pumping pattern and you modify the location of
pumps, whether you add screens, we are attempting to get a
handle on the percent benefit or probability of improving
specifically, the endangered species in the Delta. And given
different configurations and different patterns, what are the
probability you can recover the species, which is the
objective.
So we're now introducing it on a specific issue like that.
And I think the concept of being able to address the
probabilities that actions will achieve the designed result, is
something that comes along with our program as we get focused
on a preferred alternative at a programmatic level and start
moving to specific actions.
Mr. Doolittle. I guess what I don't understand--I really
don't mean to harp on this--but, it seems--I don't know how you
could rank like you said, using your criteria, on-stream
storage would not fare well. But I don't know--that seems odd
to me--that ecological risk assessment wouldn't be part of that
first tier. Because otherwise, things are going to fall off
that may never get subjected to ecological risk assessment. And
yet, that to me, is so fundamental, in terms of allocating
scarce resources.
Mr. Snow. Well, I can't answer that precise question in
terms of risk assessment and how it applies to that. I mean, I
think the issue that we've looked at with respect to storage is
trying to overlap as many issues as we can.
And so, for example, looking at the difference between on-
stream storage on the American River and a popular off-stream
site that's often discussed, Seitz Reservoir in the Sacramento
Valley. When you look at a Seitz Reservoir, you can do a lot of
things with that, including make a joint investment to clean up
the red bluff diversion structure, which is a problem with
fisheries and a problem for ag users in the Sac Valley. And in
doing that, you fix current problems with the Tahama Calusa
Canal Diversion.
At the same time, you prepare a diversion structure for an
off-stream reservoir. Also, it gives you flexibility to provide
water to the backside of some of the irrigation districts,
thereby reducing their take off the river and further reducing
fish entrainment problems.
So, we'd look at those types of linkages and start building
and compounding the joint benefits that we can get. And that's
why I make the comment, in a general sense, that off-stream
reservoirs, particularly, moved away from the system and the
other problems--on-stream reservoirs don't provide the benefits
that we've seen with some of these classic off-stream
reservoirs.
Mr. Doolittle. I guess the thing that I find strange is
that you're one governmental entity--you're made up of a
consortium of governmental entities--and yet, members of that
consortium, like the Corps of Engineers, in the State of
California, Department of Water Resources, have clearly stated
in testimony, the only solution for the grave flood threat to
the city and county of Sacramento that protects them, is an
Auburn Dam. I mean, the Corps of Engineers has spent millions
of dollars recently, coming up with that conclusion, and
they're a member of your CALFED--are they not?
Mr. Snow. Yes, they are.
Mr. Doolittle. And the State of California Department of
Water Resources is another entity involved with that. They've
both come to that conclusion, and yet, CALFED, which is getting
hundreds of millions of dollars in funding--State and Federal--
has developed criteria that puts blinders on itself. I mean,
this just seems very, very strange to me--that something where
we already have the need for flood control--I mean, why
shouldn't that be, because of that other reality, shouldn't
that be reflected in your consideration with reference to a
project like Auburn?
Mr. Snow. Well, I think it is a consideration and I can
only surmise that if the CALFED objective was flood control,
and was our No. 1 objective, and then we had incidental
benefits from it, we might look at Auburn differently. I might
also expect that if the Corps had the four coequal objectives
that CALFED does, that they might look at Auburn differently. I
do not know.
Mr. Doolittle. But my point is--I understand that flood
control isn't one of your objectives, but nevertheless, it's a
key governmental purpose and yet you don't seem to add in that
as part of your mix in the analysis. It's like it's just ruled
out. And that seems--because since there is the flood control
component, which moves toward an Auburn Dam, if you added to it
your consideration of adding more high quality water to the
system, those two could work synergistically. Instead, they're
forced to remain in isolation from one another. That's the part
that seems very strange to me.
Mr. Snow. Well, we're not attempting to have them in
isolation. And to make sure that I'm not misleading--we have
not ruled out those options. I'm sure you're familiar with
section 404 and the requirements you must go through and we
must demonstrate that we have evaluated sites and screened
sites properly, and they are all, as we speak, still on the
table.
Now, the point I'm making, so that I'm not misleading you
or this Committee, is that in our planning efforts, as we try
to put these pieces together, on-stream storage--new on-stream
storage--does not stack up as well as putting this
comprehensive package together, as some of the opportunities
with off-stream storage does.
Mr. Doolittle. OK. In the abstract, I can understand that.
I may not agree with it, but I can understand it. But, I mean,
this isn't the abstract. I guess that's my point. This is
something that's a very real thing. There are efforts right now
to figure out what to do about the problem in Sacramento. Could
I at least ask of you that you will take a look at this and let
me know what you think?
Mr. Snow. Yes, I will.
Mr. Doolittle. I can see it's different than if I were just
asking you to build a dam in the American River, where flood
control was not a great concern. But it is a great concern.
It's a driving concern.
Do you have further questions? Go ahead.
Mr. Pombo. Just quickly, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Snow, are you
coordinating the activity between the proposal under CALFED to
buy land for retirement, the proposal under the Delta wetlands
project, the proposal that BLM and Nature Conservancy have--
have you, at any point, sat down and looked at a map and
started putting all of those different things together and
looked at the impact that would have?
Mr. Snow. We have attempted to make sure that our numbers
are the total accumulative numbers of these activities, to make
sure that, when we are expressing what we believe may be
necessary to restore Delta smelt and salmon species and the
kinds of habitats that are necessary, that those numbers are
not additive to another HCP effort or BLM effort. So we believe
that we have put the marker down for the totals. And, I believe
that we've included in that the Delta wetlands project.
Mr. Pombo. So your number includes the Delta wetlands?
Mr. Snow. That's my recollection. I will have to check on
that and get back to you.
Mr. Pombo. If you could answer that for the record for me,
I would appreciate that.
Mr. Golb. Mr. Pombo, if I might add one point. One thing
that we've encountered with the land acquisition and the
conservation program CALFED has undertaken is as you know, the
State of California and the Federal Government owns nearly half
the State. And State agencies, such Caltrans and others, own a
tremendous amount of acreage, some of it in small tracks, some
of it in large tracks. One thing that we've only briefly talked
with Lester about is the concept of trying to utilize public
lands first, before we acquire private land. It just seems to
make sense from a cost perspective.
Mr. Pombo. Forty-nine percent is owned by the Federal
Government; if you include State and local governments, you're
up to about 56 percent.
Mr. Golb. Well, it's a lot of land. Now some of it may not
have the same ecological characteristics.
Mr. Pombo. Five hundred sixty million acres.
Mr. Golb. OK. They may not have the same characteristics
that CALFED is considering. But from an efficiency standpoint,
it may be worth looking at.
Mr. Pombo. I would agree with you and that's something that
this Committee has looked at in great detail--is the impact of
the lands that are already owned by the public and this effort
to take what--you know, less than half of California that's
privately owned and make that public land as well. It has an
impact on our cities, our counties, a huge impact on the
economy of California. And I think everybody should realize
just what an impact that would have.
Mr. Doolittle. I did send you a letter, Mr. Snow, on the
26th of March, asking for certain information. And you wrote
back and indicated that CALFED anticipates that significant
changes will occur to the hydraulic capacity, physical
features, water quality, and ecosystems at Bay-Delta.
What I was trying to get at--I mean, you recognize that you
have some anticipation--I would like to know what are those
significant changes and how will they be monitored? I mean, do
you know what those are now, or is this something you simply
believe there will be changes, but you don't know what they
are?
Mr. Snow. I don't recall the specific context that the
sentence is in, but I think perhaps the context is simply in
terms of the proposals--the three basic alternatives that we
have--that would change the way the system functions. In terms
of monitoring, there's two things.
One, there is a fairly extensive monitoring system that has
been in place for nearly 20 years, collecting data. And it's
the data base that has served to indicate that there are
endangered species and water quality trends. We are building on
that data base with the work that has been referenced here
today, in terms of developing additional indicators so that we
have a better yardstick to measure the changes and the progress
on overall ecosystem restoration.
Mr. Doolittle. Well, let me do this. Let me just send you
and give you a chance to clarify this in writing, if I may.
I'll give you the background, the letter, and everything. But
I'd like to get a more specific answer, if I can.
Mr. Snow. OK.
Mr. Doolittle. I'd like to thank all of you for appearing
today. It's been a long day for you and you've been patient for
us to vote here at the end. I think we've developed a lot of
very interesting information at this hearing. We will, I'm
sure, have further questions--we'll tender in writing and ask
you to please respond expeditiously.
With that, the hearing will be adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 7:27 p.m., the Subcommittee adjourned
subject to the call of the Chair.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
Response of Thomas M. Berliner, General Counsel, San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission to the ``Disclosure Requirements'' required by
House Rule XI, Clause 2(g)
1. Name: Thomas M. Berliner
2. Business Address: City Attorney's Office, 1390 Market
Street, Suite 250, San Francisco, CA 94102
3. Business Phone: (415) 554-295
4. Organization you are representing:
The ``Bay-Delta Urban Coalition'' and the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission.
5. Any training or educational certificates, diplomas or
degrees which add to your qualifications to testify on our
knowledge of the subject matter of the hearing:
Doctor of Jurisprudence
6. Any professional licenses or certification held which
add to your qualification to testify on our knowledge of the
subject matter of the hearing:
Member, State Bar of California, District of Columbia
Circuit, Ninth Circuit, United States Supreme Court.
7. Any employment, occupation, ownership in a firm or
business, or work related experience which relates to your
qualifications to testify on or knowledge of the subject matter
of the hearing:
Nineteen years of legal practice on behalf of the City
and County of San Francisco, most of which has focused on
water, energy, natural resources.
Represented the San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission before the State Water Resources Control Board,
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of the
Interior, and other regulatory agencies and legislative bodies
concerning water and energy matter.
Active member of the Bay-Delta Urban Coalition, the
California Urban Water Agencies, and other industry
organizations.
8. N/A
9. N/A
10. N/A
11. N/A
______
Statement of Bill Pauli, President, The California Farm Bureau
Federation
The California Farm Bureau Federation appreciates the
opportunity to provide comments on the future water needs of
California and the Cal-Fed process for a long-term Delta
solution. On behalf of its more than 75,000 member families
throughout California, Farm Bureau is committed to solutions
that will assure a reliable and affordable water supply for all
Californians.
The California Department of Finance has projected that
California's population will increase from the present 33
million people to nearly 50 million people by the year 2020.
These additional 17 million people will not only need new water
supplies, but they will also need a safe and reliable food and
fiber supply. And, with more people, California will
increasingly appreciate the open space provided by the farms
and ranches that grace California which account for more than
$25 billion in direct revenues and generate $12 billion in
exports.
The Cal-Fed process provides an important opportunity for
California to craft a collaborative plan that will satisfy a
significant portion of the state's expected water demands for
the next 30 years. Unfortunately, the Cal-Fed plan to date has
fallen short of this goal. Most notably, Cal-Fed has been based
largely on redirecting agriculture's two most fundamental
resources--water and land--to satisfy other uses, rather than
efforts to assure reliable and affordable supplies for farms,
cities and fish. Even so, we remain cautiously optimistic that
Cal-Fed can turn the corner and forge a plan that will benefit
all of California, including its farmers and ranchers. To do
this, we believe additional attention must be given to several
key issues that will be critical to California in the 21st
century, including increased surface water storage, minimizing
the fallowing of agricultural land, and strengthening water
rights.
Surface Water Storage
The California Department of Water Resources estimates that
of California's total water use in 1995, 46 percent was
dedicated to the environment, 42 percent to agriculture, and 11
percent to urban use. Additionally, millions of acre-feet of
water flow out to the ocean above and beyond this water
dedicated to the environment, farms and cities. Rather than
redirect water from productive urban and agricultural uses,
California must fully utilize and conserve water that now flows
through streams to the ocean. By focusing on conserving
outflow, California can minimize the risk of flooding, and save
this water for other times, particularly for dry year use when
cities, farms and fish need the water. The most effective way
to conserve outflow is to to increase surface water storage in
an environmentally sensitive manner. Increasing the capacity of
existing reservoirs, such as Lake Shasta, Millerton Lakes, and
Los Vaqueros are good examples of programs that can be used for
the benefit of farms, cities and fish.
Agricultural Land Fallowing
Cal-Fed and other governmental programs have proposed to
fallow more than 250,000 acres of prime agricultural land
holding senior water rights. The overall fallowed acreage could
easily approach one million acres. Agricultural land in
California is a resource of global significance that, as a
matter of good public and social policy, should not be
converted to any other use. We recognize that new conveyance
systems and reservoirs will require a certain amount of
agricultural land to be taken out of production. In these
cases, landowners must be justly paid and given adequate notice
and opportunity to assure that their property rights are fully
protected. The fallowing of agricultural lands for levee
setbacks, shallow water habitats and other environmental
purposes should be a limited part of the Cal-Fed solution, due
to the effects on local communities and government revenue.
Instead, non-agricultural lands should be used for this
purpose.
Water Rights
Assurances and particularly the protection of agricultural
water rights are the key to the ultimate Cal-Fed solution. In
many cases, old promises must be fulfilled before new promises
to protect rural areas will have any credence. California's
farmers and ranchers depend upon well-established water rights
to maintain their livelihoods and way of life. Cal-Fed must
assure farmers and ranchers that both their surface and
groundwater rights will not only be protected, but will in fact
be enhanced and strengthened by the Cal-Fed process. Most
notably, Cal-Fed and the individual agencies should abandon
plans to use groundwater in areas feeding the Delta as the
future source of urban and environmental supplies under the
guise of a conjunctive use program. Area of origin rights must
also be fully recognized and strengthened by Cal-Fed.
Federal Appropriations
We cannot support the continued investment of public money
in the Cal-Fed process as long as California's farmers and
ranchers bear a disproportionate burden of a long-term Delta
solution. Farm Bureau supported Proposition 204 as a down
payment to secure major improvements in water management in the
Sacramanto-San Joaquin Delta. Unfortunately, to date, both
Proposition 204 and Federal appropriations have been used in
large part to fallow agricultural land and set the stage to
redirect agricultural water to other uses. This means that
California agriculture is moving backward, not forward, as we
have all been promised in the Cal-Fed process.
We continue to support the need for a long term Delta plan,
but we are losing confidence that the ultimate Cal-Fed solution
will contain meaningful components, such as water storage, that
will benefit farmers and ranchers in all parts of the state. We
are also very concerned about Cal-Fed's proposal for large-
scale fallowing of our state's valuable farmland and the
associated effects on rural communities. It is therefore
impossible for us at this time to support a continuing Federal
appropriation for Cal-Fed until we see marked improvements in
the program to benefit California's farmers and ranchers.
In closing, the California Farm Bureau Federation will
submit detailed and constructive comments to the Programmatic
EIS/EIR for the Cal-Fed program as well as the associated
documents. We are optimistic that the Cal-Fed process will turn
the corner and begin to focus on efforts that will benefit
California's farmers and ranchers and will make significant
strides toward satisfying California's water demand for the
next 30 years. We look forward to working with you in this
process.
------
Statement of Martha Davis, Board Member, Mono Lake Committee and the
Sierra Nevada Alliance
Good afternoon, Chairman Doolittle, and Subcommittee on
Water and Power Resources. Thank you for your invitation to
speak before you today.
My name is Martha Davis. I have worked for over fourteen
years on California water issues. For thirteen of those years,
I was the executive director of the Mono Lake Committee, a
17,000 member citizen's group dedicated to the protection of
Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra. A major component of the
Committee's work focused on helping the City of Los Angeles to
develop local conservation and water recycling programs so that
saving Mono Lake would not impact the San Francisco Bay Delta
or the Colorado River. As a result of this experience, I have a
working familiarity with the urban water needs of California
and, in particular, those of Southern California.
I stepped down from this position last year, but have
continued to work on California water issues in various
capacities. I currently serve as a member of the CALFED
program's Bay Delta Advisory Committee (also known as BDAC) at
the recommendation of Governor Wilson. In addition, I serve on
the board of directors for the Mono Lake Committee, the Sierra
Nevada Alliance and the Bay Institute of San Francisco.
I strongly support the CALFED process for seeking a
solution to California's complex water issues. It is a process
that is profoundly reshaping the way in which the State is
thinking about its water future.
CALFED's task of laying out a blueprint for that future is
far from complete. The draft CALFED program elements and
environmental assessment documents have just recently been
released for public comment. We are all sifting through
thousands of pages of text and charts, trying to decipher if
the assumptions and technical evaluations performed by CALFED
are valid and whether the program elements contained in each
alternative are adequate to ensure the best water future for
California.
My State is not the only potential beneficiary of the
CALFED program. States from the Pacific Coast to the rocky
mountains, along with Canada, Alaska and Mexico, will benefit
from improved fisheries, enhancement of the habitats within the
Pacific Flyway, and increased water availability which will
come from better management of the California's water supplies.
One of the major and potentially most troubling technical
``gaps'' in the CALFED analysis is the assumptions it uses
about ``how much'' water California used in 1995 and ``how much
more'' California will need by the year 2020 to meet the
State's future urban and agricultural water needs. CALFED
embeds these core assumptions into the ``no action'' scenario.
And it is this scenario which serves as the baseline in the
environmental analysis against which both the impacts and the
benefits of the proposed Bay-Delta programs and alternatives
are measured.
To estimate the 1995 and 2020 water needs, CALFED relied
heavily upon the urban and agricultural water demand
projections presented in the draft California Water Plan.
Usually referred to as Bulletin 160-98, this document is
prepared and updated by the State Department of Water Resources
every five years.
The most recent version of Bulletin 160 was only released
for public review four months ago, and now the accuracy of the
DWR projections are being questioned by many people in
California. Pages upon pages of comments and concerns have been
sent to DWR seeking clarification and correction of Bulletin
160-98. Some have even called for an independent evaluation by
outside experts. I have attached to my testimony examples of
comments provided by several organizations.
Bluntly, the concern is that DWR has greatly overstated the
State's urban and agricultural demand projections and
substantially underestimated the potential for urban and
agricultural water conservation and opportunities to recycle
water. If this is true and the assumptions are not corrected in
the CALFED analysis, then facilities may be proposed for
construction that may not be needed in the next two to three
decades--if ever. Further, if the proposals proceed as drafted,
taxpayers could be facing costs as high as $8 to $14 billion
dollars--and it is assumed that the CALFED program can not go
forward without significant new Federal funding.
I have reviewed DWR's Bulletin 160-98 urban water demand
projections and they do raise some troubling issues. Let me
focus on the South Coast region as an example:
B160-98 estimates that urban water usage in the South
Coast region was approximately 4.3 million acre-feet in 1995.
Yet the actual urban water usage for this region in 1995 was
about 3.5 million acre-feet. This means that for 1995--the
baseline year for the CALFED analysis--DWR overestimates urban
demand by almost one million acre feet--and this is for just
one of ten regions included in Bulletin 160-98. Inexplicably,
DWR chose to use estimates of water demand for 1995 rather than
the real data from 1995 that should have been readily available
at the time of the analysis.
B160-98 assumes that few additional urban conservation
measures, above what is being done now, will be implemented in
the South Coast region by 2020. DWR's explanation for is that
the South Coast region has already ``achieved'' the goals set
by DWR for conservation and so more does not need to be done.
This assumption flatly contradicts the positions of the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power and other water agencies
in the South Coast who are committed to continued
implementation of urban demand management programs. As a
result, B160-98 effectively overstates future water needs in
the South Coast region.
B160-98 drops from the final water accounting a
substantial amount of water from its own estimates of the
potential savings that could be achieved through through these
measures. For example, DWR identifies over 500,000 acre-feet of
potential conservation for the South Coast region, but only
includes 90,000 acre-feet of this water in its final 2020
demand projections. Similarly, DWR identifies the potential to
develop over 800,000 acre-feet of new water supplies from
recycling and desalinization projects, but only ``counts''
200,000 acre-feet in the final water balance. As a result,
demand management programs for the South Coast region appear to
be underestimated by at least one million acre feet for the
year 2020.
B160-98 includes the assumption that the CALFED
program will be fully implemented by the year 2020, but then
uses this assumption to limit the potential contribution of
conservation and recycling measures in meeting California's
2020 water needs. Inexplicably, DWR incorporates into the
analysis its own idea of what the CALFED Bay Delta preferred
alternative is likely to be, (even though one has yet to be
selected) but fails to provide a description of what this
alternative is. Further, DWR assumes that the CALFED program,
along with other options, will provide more water to the South
Coast at less cost than many conservation and recycling
projects.
Finally, B160-98 assumes that there will be no
technological improvements in water efficiency programs in the
South Coast region over the next twenty years. This is
assumption is inconsistent with our experience over just the
last five years where major improvements in urban conservation
technology have been coming on line every year. To underscore
the point, it is hard to believe that just ten years ago, the
Las Virgenes Municipal Water District in the South Coast region
had to import low flow toilets from Sweden for its conservation
program because none were produced in the United States. Today,
low flow toilets are federally required and manufactured by all
major plumbing suppliers in the country.
These are examples of some of the problems with B160-98. But the
concerns that have been expressed by others go far beyond these points,
and include criticism of the economic assumptions incorporated in B160-
98, its planning methodology, and DWR's use of outdated technical
assumptions in evaluating water efficiency programs.
The bottom line is that B160-98 appears to present in part a
distorted and inaccurate picture of both current and future California
urbanwater needs. It does this by artificially inflating urban demand
figures for 1995 and 2020 and, paradoxically, minimizing the water
efficiency measures that could help to meet projected State water
needs.
Prior to 1990, many people were not familiar with water efficiency
programs and were understandably skeptical about how reliably these
programs could meet growing population needs. But the world has changed
substantially since 1990, and most regions of the State have gone
beyond talking about water efficiency programs and started implementing
them.
The results are impressive. Let me give you three quick examples of
success stories:
1. The City of Los Angeles. In the 1970's, Los Angeles used
approximately the same amount of water as it is using today--
only we are now serving almost 1 million more people. How did
we do it? As recently as 1990, LA declared that it needed every
drop of water from Mono Lake to meet the city's growing water
needs. Since then, with support from title 16 Federal funds and
AB 444 State monies, Los Angeles has invested millions of
dollars in the distribution of hundreds of thousands of ultra
low flow toilets and the development of other water efficiency
programs. In addition, Los Angeles agreed to dramatically
reduce its diversions from the eastern Sierra, and plans to
meet its future growth through local conservation and recycling
programs.
2. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
MWD and its member agencies have experienced similar success
with their conservation programs. At the peak of the drought,
MWD sold 2.6 million acre feet in imported water supplies
(calendar year 1990). Since then, MWD developed its integrated
resources plan, refocused its efforts on developing a more
balanced mixture of local and imported water supplies, and
helped the region to start to aggressively implement
conservation, recycling and groundwater management projects.
The result: MWD has reduced its imported water sales down--
somewhat to its dismay--to 1.8 million acre-feet. This year is
wet and MWD's imported water sales are likely to be even
lower--possibly below 1.6 million acre feet. This dramatic
reduction in MWD imported water sales means that Southern
California using currently using only about 25 percent of its 2
million acre-feet contractural State Water Project supplies.
The South Coast region, through MWD and its member agencies,
has taken a leadership role in the State on urban conservation.
It is a model for other parts of California to follow. Now, the
primary challenge facing MWD is to stay on this successful
path. There are already signs that MWD is beginning to pull
back on its current conservation commitments, paradoxically
because the water is not seen as now being needed.
3. Panoche Water District. Urban water agencies are not only
ones that are making substantial investments in improved water
management. I recently visited Panoche Water District, which is
located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and is part
of the San Luis Unit of the Central Valley Project, to see the
fine work they are doing in their drainage reduction program.
In less than two years, the district has eliminated tail water
flows, installed water efficiency irrigation systems and
substantially modified its water management practices. The
result: the district has reduced its drainage by 50 percent
from dry year flows and is saving applied water. The program is
impressive, demonstrating how valuable water efficiency
measures can be to the agricultural community.
In closing, I want to underscore the obvious point: we all need to
have good quality information about California's current and future
water needs if we are to make the right decisions for California's
water future. B160-98 does not appear to meet this test.
Too much is at stake, here in California and throughout the West,
to accept less than an accurate, well documented presentation of the
State's water demands. We, in California, need this quality information
in order to assess and identify the right combination of measures to
include in the proposed CALFED program. The mountain counties need it,
Southern California needs it, Northern California needs it, the farmers
in the Sacramento River Valley need it, the commercial and sport
fisherman need it, the farmers on the east and west side of the San
Joaquin Valley need it, the environmental community needs it, the
business community needs it, the delta farmers need it, and the
affected land owners need it.
Congress, too, needs this information in order to decide what level
of Federal funding for future CALFED programs may be appropriate.
The potential implications for the CALFED program are profound. The
assumptions of B160-98 are embedded in the analytical framework of the
environmental documents. B160-98 must be critically evaluated so that,
if needed, the CALFED technical evaluations can be redone. Only then
will we be able to draw a conclusion about what is the best water
alternative for California's future.
______
Statement of Stephen K. Hall, Executive Director, Association of
California Water Agencies (ACWA)
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
providing me an opportunity to appear before you today and
submit this statement regarding CalFed's progress. I am the
Executive Director of the Association of California Water
Agencies (ACWA). As you likely know, ACWA is a statewide, non-
profit association which represents more than 440 public water
agencies who collectively manage and deliver 90 percent of
California's urban and agricultural water.
California's water resources are finite, while its
population and economy continue to grow. At last week's ACWA
Spring Conference, Governor Pete Wilson announced that
California grew by an additional 580,000 people last year;
putting our population at 33,250,000. The State is projected to
continue this growth spurt, which is why the Department of
Water Resources recently projected a 3 to 7 million acre-foot
annual shortfall in water supply by 2020.
No single demand side management or water supply
development option can be implemented to address that pending
shortfall and the attendant reliability concerns facing all
stakeholders. Water conservation alone cannot address the
shortfall, water reuse alone cannot, new dams and reservoirs
cannot, water transfers cannot. Parties can quibble about the
details, but the bottom line is that in the very near future we
are going to have too many demands on a system already
stretched to the limit, and it will take a package of measures
to fix the problem. That is why ACWA is participating in and
strongly supports CalFed and its approach, which calls for a
balanced package of additional storage, improved Delta
conveyance, water conservation, reclamation transfers,
environmental restoration and other measures. Clearly though,
additional storage has to be among the elements that has high
priority.
Our current system includes key projects like the Federal
Central Valley Project (CVP) and California's State Water
Project (SWP). The CVP has a storage capacity of 11 million
acre-feet and delivers about 7 million acre-feet of water to
agricultural and urban uses. The SWP delivers about 2 million
acre-feet annually to farms and cities. The single most
important aspect of California's complicated water system is
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Its channels through
the state and Federal projects provide drinking water for two-
thirds of the state, in addition to irrigation water for more
than 4.5 million acres of the nation's most productive
farmland.
This is an impressive system, but it is far less than what
we see on other river systems. According to the California
Department of Water Resources, total storage on the Sacramento
River system with average annual runoff of 22 million acre-feet
is less than one-year, or 16 million acre-feet. In comparison,
the Colorado River system, with an average annual runoff of
only 15 million acre feet, boasts a storage capacity of 60
million acre-feet, or enough for a four-year supply.
The lack of storage capacity has led to the tension between
operating the system for flood control, the protection of life
and property, and operating the system for water supply to meet
the needs of the nation's largest economy. And the problem is
growing worse. Since the last major element of our water
management system was added in the early 1970s, the state's
population has essentially doubled. Local water managers have
done a good job in balancing this tension. Urban water managers
have managed to meet the needs of the rapidly growing
population through conservation, reclamation, and innovative
water transfers and exchanges. Meanwhile, California
agriculture is today producing 50 percent more in food and
fiber with the same amount of water that it was using 20 years
ago. We are also doing a better job of protecting lives and
property. The floods that have occurred in recent years could
have been far more devastating had it not been for strong
efforts to coordinate the local, state, and Federal flood
control operations. This remarkable record is testimony to the
strides California's water professionals have made in managing
the state's most important resource.
We can do more in the way of water management, and we will;
however, the experience of 1997 has shown the deficiencies in
our system that not even innovative management can overcome.
The devastating floods of January 1997, followed by water
delivery cutbacks later in the year, point out that our
existing system must be improved and expanded in order to
protect California from floods while maintaining a healthy
environment and a strong economy.
That is why the California water community is strongly
supporting a major water bond issue supported by Governor
Wilson and carried by the two chairmen of the water committees
in the state legislature. The bond issue will provide badly
needed funds to study specific storage proposals, focusing on
conjunctive use and off-stream storage. It will also provide
funds that are way overdue for additional flood control. It
will provide funds for investments in safer drinking water,
source water protection, and water conservation. In summary,
this bond issue promises to give us a running start on some of
the most important elements of the CalFed program.
Some may say it is premature to discuss storage at this
point in the process because specific storage projects have not
yet been selected by CalFed. However, those same people argued
strongly two years ago that ecosystem improvements needed
immediate funding, even though there were no specific ecosystem
proposals at the time. Nevertheless, that funding was made
available through a statewide bond issue and matching federally
authorized funds. Now, it is time to move forward on water
supply and water quality measures, which are equal in
importance to ecosystem restoration.
Another issue raised by critics of this bond measure is
that a general bond measure that pays even for studying storage
constitutes a subsidy to water users. The argument has already
been addressed, since the bond issue provides that the
beneficiaries will pay the full cost of any water supply that
is ultimately generated. It should be noted that storage has
public benefits and therefore should be--in part--paid with
public funds.
The conclusion we have drawn is that we must move forward
soon on improvements in water supply and water quality, and
that this bond measure provides an excellent opportunity to
begin that forward movement. If we fail to act now, it will be
two years before we can bring another bond measure before the
voters, and that will put us two years farther behind in
meeting our needs. We believe Californians should have the
opportunity now to tell water managers and policy makers
whether they support public investment in promoting improved
water supply and quality.
Virtually all parties agree that CalFed is an historic
opportunity to address critical water problems in the state,
both for the environment and our quality of life. In order for
CalFed to deliver on that promise, it has to produce a balanced
plan that truly provides for California's present and future
needs. That will mean the plan has to contain all of the
elements listed in the opening paragraphs of this testimony.
Every credible projection of California's water demands and
supply show this to be the case.
In decades past, California met its water needs by simply
adding more storage or conveyance. For the past three decades,
we have focused on managing demand to stretch existing
supplies. Now, maybe we can strike a balance between the two,
and address them in tandem rather than to the exclusion of one
or the other. CalFed is the vehicle to strike this balance. The
current water bond issue is an excellent way to fuel that
vehicle. We support both and we are urging others to do the
same.
------
Statement of Robert G. Potter, Chief Deputy Director, Department of
Water Resources
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
providing me an opportunity to submit this statement regarding
financing the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. My name is Bob Potter. I am the
Chief Deputy Director for the California Department of Water Resources.
The Department of Water Resources operates and maintains the State
Water Project and prepares and updates the California Water Plan. I
represent the Department on the CALFED Policy Group.
It's too soon to get too specific about financing the CALFED
program given that we haven't yet identified a preferred alternative,
much less gained agreement to proceed on implementation. Nevertheless,
there are a number of factors and principles that should be considered
as we prepare for implementation.
BACKGROUND FACTORS
The Central Valley Improvement Act of 1992 took
800,000 af of CVP yield away from CVP farms and cities and
allocated it to the environment.
The Delta Accord of 1994 took 1,000,000 af of combined
CVP/SWP yield away from California cities and farms and farmers
and allocated it to the environment.
Thus far, there has been no compensation provided to
ag and urban water users for these reallocations.
At this point in time there is no clear picture of how
much water supply will be provided by the CALFED program or how
those supplies will be allocated.
SOME PRINCIPLES
There is support for the concept of user pays. There
is also support for the concept of beneficiary pays. Generally
in California we all use water and we all benefit from our
states healthy economy which is supported in no small part by
reliable water supplies provided by State and Federal water
development programs.
Many years ago when I was just beginning my career in
water the U.S. Senate published its famous ``greenbook'' which
provided detailed procedures for allocating costs in
recognition of beneficiaries gains. Water planners struggled
mightily over the years to implement these procedures. Given
the complexity of the CALFED package sorting out the
beneficiaries will prove to be a real challenge.
Generally speaking on public policy we return to
equity not economics in arriving at who pays.
CLOSING
The State of California has been and remains committed to the
CALFED process. The Governor supported Proposition 204 which provided
nearly $400 million for CALFED environmental programs. The Governor has
proposed an additional water Bond measure for this fall. This Bond
measure would provide additional ``seed money'' to finance the first
phase interim CALFED programs. It would appear that there will
eventually need to be a larger Bond measure to finance some or all of
the roughly $10 billion CALFED package.
Letter from Hon. Pete Wilson, Governor, California
May 4, 1998
The Honorable Joseph M. McDade,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development,
Committee on Appropriations,
U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Chairman:
I would like to take this opportunity to share with you
California's priorities among the programs funded through the energy
and water development appropriations bill.
My top priority continues to be full funding of the $143.3 million
requested in the President's budget as the initial Federal contribution
toward the restoration of the San Francisco Bay-Delta I appreciate the
$85 million provided for this program by Congress in fiscal year 1998.
We will spend that money wisely and expeditiously. The watershed
feeding the Bay-Delta is the source of nearly half the nation's fruits
and vegetables, as well as drinking water for 22 million Californians.
Environmentalists, farmers, and urban water users have all banded
together with numerous state and Federal agencies in an unprecedented
coalition to find a non-litigious solution to the water disagreements
that have long plagued our state.
I have a number of other priorities funded through your bill that I
encourage you to support:
Corps of Engineers
a $49 million increase to the $11 million budget
request for the Los Angeles County Drainage Area Project. This
authorized project is exceedingly well justified from an
economic perspective, and is vital to protect lives in this
burgeoning area of the country. The small amount requested in
the budget would significantly delay completion of the project
and pose unacceptable risks to public safety. Non-Federal
sources will contribute 25 percent of the cost of the project.
a $56 million increase to the $20 million requested
for the Santa Ana River Mainstem project, for continued
construction at Seven Oaks dam, work on the Santa Ana River,
and beginning construction of Prado Dam. Three million people
live in the area that will be protected by this project, where
a major flood could cause $15 billion in damages and threaten
countless lives. Non-Federal sources will contribute 35 percent
of the cost of the project.
a $4 million increase to the budget request for the
Corps of Engineers, under section 206 of the Water Resources
Development Act of 1996, as the Federal half of the costs of
completing the environmental restoration at the abandoned Penn
Mine in Calaveras County, California.
a $500,000 increase to the budget request for the
Corps of Engineers as a Federal contribution to cooperative
efforts with California local governments to control the
invasive non-native plant arundo. Arundo is a giant reed that
is established in the San Gabriel River watershed and is
rapidly invading the Santa Ana River watershed. It destroys
native fish and wildlife habitat, consumes great quantities of
water, and clogs water channels to the point where flood damage
is greatly increased. Arundo is among the increasing number of
invasive species posing significant economic and ecological
problems in California and around the country. The increase
would be divided between the intergovernmental Team Arundo that
operates in the Santa Ana watershed ($100,000), and its
counterpart Team Arundo Angeles that would use $400,000 to
eradicate arundo from the Whittier Narrows area of the San
Gabriel River watershed.
Bureau of Reclamation
an increase of $5.2 million in Bureau of Reclamation
construction funding for continuing work on a permanent pumping
plant to increase water supply reliability for the Placer
County Water Agency and reduce Federal costs over the long
term. This funding would be in lieu of the up to $1 million
that has been annually spent for more than thirty years by the
Bureau to install a temporary pump to fulfill its contractual
obligation.
an increase of $5.2 million above the Bureau of
Reclamation's $12.3 million budget request for the Colorado
River Salinity Control Program, funded through the Water and
Related Resources account. This increase, coupled with the non-
Federal cost share, would begin to work down the backlog of
worthy proposals needing funding.
a $3.1 million increase to the $1 million request for
environmental and engineering studies, and flood easements in
the area of Arroyo Pasajero. This work is necessary to protect
the vitally important California Aqueduct against flood damage,
and to protect lives in the communities in the immediate
vicinity of Arroyo Pasajero.
an increase of $600,000 to the budget request for the
Bureau of Reclamation's Regional Wetland Development Program,
to be highly leveraged by state and local matching funds, for
wetland restoration and floodplain management at Trout Creek
near South Lake Tahoe, California. Although the Clinton
Administration generated much press activity with respect to
Lake Tahoe last summer, the budget request for programs to
actually restore the lake is disappointing. My state budget for
the coming fiscal year contains $11.5 million in new funding,
contingent on new matching Federal funding.
an increase of $3.7 million to the disappointing and
token $250,000 budget request to continue work on fish screens
at Rock Slough for the Contra Costa Canal. These screens are
required by the Central Valley Project Restoration Act, and
will address endangered species issues facing Contra Costa
County. Interior has never requested the necessary funds for
the project, although non-Federal funds are available to cover
the 25 percent match. Thank you for providing $1.5 million for
this project in fiscal year 1998. I urge you to provide $4
million in fiscal year 1999 so the project can stay on
schedule.
a $400,000 increase to continue the Sacramento River
Winter-Run Chinook salmon captive broodstock program, which is
in its seventh year and has demonstrated biological and
technological successes that will contribute to salmon
conservation in other regions.
I also urge you to support the $49.5 million requested in the
Bureau of Reclamation's budget for the Central Valley Project
Restoration Fund. These monies are for environmental restoration in the
area affected by the Federal Central Valley Project, and are actually
funded by payments from water and energy users.
Finally, I urge you to significantly increase funding for the Corps
of Engineers for navigation, port, and harbor projects, including
navigation studies, engineering and design work, construction, and
operations and maintenance. The large cut in the President's budget for
the Corps of Engineers is economically unjustifiable, and if enacted,
would severely hamper America's competitiveness in international trade.
Thank you very much for your consideration of California's
priorities.
Sincerely,
Pete Wilson,
Governor.
______
Statement of Dr. Timothy H. Quinn, Deputy General Manager, Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California on behalf of The Bay-Delta Urban
Coalition
Introduction
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
providing me an opportunity to submit this statement regarding
financing the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. My name is Timothy
Quinn. I am a Deputy General Manager for the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California, although I am appearing today
on behalf of the Bay-Delta Urban Coalition. The Bay-Delta Urban
Coalition (Urban Coalition) represents urban water agencies
from northern and southern California that supply drinking
water to over 20 million Californians.\1\
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\1\ Representatives of the Bay-Delta Urban Coalition include the
Alameda County Water District, Coachella Valley Water District, Central
& West Basin Waters, Central Coast Water Authority, East Bay Municipal
Utility District, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California,
Municipal Water District of Orange County, San Diego County Water
Authority, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Santa Clara
Valley Water District, and Solano County Water Agency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The members of the Urban Coalition have been active
participants in the CALFED Bay Delta process since its
inception and are committed to working though CALFED to hammer
out the best solution package. The next six months will be a
critical decision-making period for the CALFED agencies and all
the interested stakeholder groups. The challenge will be to
craft a solution that provides broad benefits throughout
California--for the environment and for urban and agricultural
water users.
This brief statement is intended to answer the questions
raised in the letter of invitation to this panel by enunciating
several key principles which the urban community believes will
be central to the development of a viable financing package for
a preferred CALFED alternative.
1. The finance plan must be founded on a CALFED solution that
produces widespread value.
With California expected to grow in population to nearly 49
million people by the year 2020, one of the major challenges we
face is how to provide a sufficient, safe, reliable water
supply to meet the needs of households, industries, farms, and
the environment. Although still a work in progress, the CALFED
process has made more progress and has a greater chance of
ultimate success than any of the previous efforts to tackle
this problem during the last three decades. After years of
conflict and a shrinking water resources pie, for the first
time in a generation, California has the opportunity this year
to make major decisions that will create value for a wide range
of interests. Any successful financial plan must, first and
foremost, have the foundation of a preferred alternative that
generates value for those who will be asked to pay a portion of
the costs, whether through increased water rates or higher
taxes.
For the environment, the CALFED ecosystem restoration
program will be historically unprecedented anywhere in the
nation. Already underway with state and Federal funds provided
by California Proposition 204 and the 1996 California Bay-Delta
Environmental Enhancement Act, the habitat improvements of the
CALFED ecosystem restoration program will fortify our efforts
to achieve the restoration goals of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act. For urban California, an effective CALFED
solution has the potential to substantially improve source
drinking water quality and provide a stable transportation and
storage infrastructure that will be required to meet the needs
of a growing economy. (In a 1996 public opinion poll, 9 out of
10 Californians stated we need a sufficient, reliable and
affordable water supply to maintain a strong economy. For
agricultural interests, the CALFED program can provide
assurances that we will sustain the largest agricultural
economy in the nation while transitioning to a new regime of
natural resources management that will meet the environmental
and economic needs of the twenty-first century.
Beyond California, improvements in the Bay-Delta estuary
will favorably impact aquatic and avian ecosystems in other
western states. The Bay-Delta system provides the largest
wetland habitat and estuary in the West. It supports 750 plant
and animal species, some found nowhere else in the nation. It
is a critical part of the Pacific Flyway over which hundreds of
migrating birds travel each year from Mexico to the Canadian
border.
Just as the CALFED program must generate widespread
benefits, funding must be made available from diverse sources.
Members of the Urban Coalition have long supported user fees
paid by those in urban and agricultural areas who use water as
a primary source of funds to pay for a CALFED solution. The
benefits to water users from improved water quality and
reliability will be substantial and, accordingly, they should
be willing to pay an appropriate share of program costs.
Similarly, many of the benefits of a CALFED solution will be
broadly enjoyed by the public at large, and state and Federal
financial resources should be available to pay a portion of
program costs. Of course, no specific allocation of costs can
be identified until the CALFED preferred alternative is
selected later this year.
2. CALFED Must Aggressively Pursue Cost Containment While
Maintaining Benefits.
A second fundamental principle is that the CALFED program
must provide benefits at the lowest possible cost. Current
estimates of the overall costs of the CALFED program range from
approximately $9 to $11 billion. Quite frankly, we believe
these cost estimates are considerably inflated and the
potential value of a CALFED solution can be obtained at a
substantially lower cost. The Urban Coalition is committed to
work with the CALFED agencies and other stakeholder interests
to aggressively pursue cost containment strategies which will
assure any preferred alternative is implemented at the lowest
possible overall costs.
3. Costs Should Be Shared Consistent With the Beneficiaries
Pays Principle and Allocated in a Mutually Agreeable Manner.
The Urban Coalition is committed to the principle that
beneficiaries must pay for the value received from a CALFED
solution. At the same time, we are concerned if this principle
is implemented in an arbitrary manner it could result in
imposed costs on some water users which are not matched in
their view by commensurate benefits. For this reason, we
believe that as part of the broad negotiations required to
define and implement the CALFED Bay-Delta program, costs should
be allocated on a mutually agreeable basis. This approach would
provide all parties who have a significant financial stake with
a voice in the determination of who benefits and how they are
expected to pay. This principle should be applied equally to
water agencies and to taxpayers, and be implemented through
appropriate regulatory and legislative procedures and/or a vote
of the citizens.
The purpose of this third fundamental principle is to
assure all interests which provide major financial support can
determine for themselves that they expect to receive benefits
which justify their costs. This principle also creates a strong
linkage between cost allocation and the CALFED assurances
package. No interest group will be inclined to pay a portion of
the costs of the CALFED program unless they believe the
assurance package guarantees a flow of benefits commensurate
with their cost allocation.
4. The Financial Plan Should be Based on a Prospective
Assessment of Value and Not a Retrospective Assignment of
Blame.
The goal of the CALFED program is to realize both early-
start and long-term benefits to the environment and economy of
California. To be successful, the CALFED process must be
forward looking. For this reason, the Urban Coalition believes
that basing financial decisions on perceptions of past
responsibilities for mitigation or damage payments is counter
productive. Human activities and social policies have affected
the Delta ecosystem for over 100 years, beginning with
hydraulic mining processes and reclamation in the 1800's, as
well as many other natural processes. While water diversions
from the watershed have undoubtedly affected the ecosystem,
many other human activities have also affected the Delta. We
believe that it is impossible to prove the level of damage
attributable to individual factors to the satisfaction of all
parties. Focusing on blame for past acts will not lead to
solutions; it will only lead us back into divisiveness and the
regulatory and political gridlock that CALFED has allowed us to
escape.
Conclusion
Ultimately, CALFED financing decisions must be based on a
prospective assessment of anticipated value from the proposed
solution and a willingness to pay as expressed by all the
financial participants. Although program costs will be
substantial, so too will be the value for California and the
nation of a successful CALFED program. We in the urban
community are dedicated to working with you, Mr. Chairman,
members of the Subcommittee, and all others in the process to
identify a feasible financial plan which will allow us to
implement an affordable CALFED plan that generates enduring
value for the environment and for the urban and agricultural
economies of California.
------
Statement of Richard K. Golb, Executive Director, Northern California
Water Association (NCWA)
Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, my name is
Richard Golb, I am the Executive Director of the Northern
California Water Association (NCWA). NCWA is a non-profit
association representing sixty-six private and public
agricultural water suppliers and farmers that rely upon the
waters of the Sacramento, Feather and Yuba rivers, smaller
tributaries, and groundwater to irrigate over 850,000 acres of
farmland in California's Sacramento Valley. Many of our members
also provide water supplies to state and Federal wildlife
refuges, and much of this land serves as important seasonal
wetlands for migrating waterfowl, shorebirds and other
wildlife. I would appreciate the Subcommittee's inclusion of my
written testimony in today's hearing record.
The Subcommittee's interest in the CALFED Bay-Delta Program
(CALFED) and specifically the allocation of Federal funds for
ecosystem restoration is appropriate given the importance of a
successful resolution to the environmental and water supply
problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San
Francisco Bay (Bay-Delta). The Bay-Delta is a tremendous
economic and environmental resource to California and the
Nation, and there is much at stake in how CALFED implements its
ecosystem restoration actions. CALFED's response to the
Subcommittee's questions will also be useful for private
interests participating in this process.
I appreciate the opportunity to provide NCWA's perspective
on CALFED. NCWA has actively participated in the CALFED
process, as a signatory to the 1994 Bay-Delta Accord and a
participant in the development of California's Proposition 204
and the Federal Bay-Delta Security Act (Public Law 104-333).
Two representatives of NCWA's Board of Directors, Chairman Tib
Belza and Director Don Bransford, serve on CALFED's Bay-Delta
Advisory Council, and I am a member of the Ecosystem
Roundtable--the entity chartered to allocate state and Federal
ecosystem restoration funds.
The specific questions the Subcommittee has posed focus
directly upon evaluating the effectiveness of Federal funds
appropriated to partially finance CALFED's ecosystem
restoration programs and projects, some of which are years
away, and some of which are now underway. The Subcommittee has
also requested our perspective on whether CALFED should
implement its plan as designed or amend it based upon the
principle of adaptive management. Similar questions have been
raised by California's Legislature, local governments, by
CALFED's Ecosystem Roundtable and by public and private
interests with an immediate stake in efficiently achieving
environmental restoration with limited resources.
1. How do we evaluate the effectiveness of the funding we are
providing?
CALFED's draft Ecosystem Restoration Program establishes
specific objectives, targets and programmatic actions designed
to accomplish CALFED's overall mission ``. . . to develop a
long term comprehensive plan that will restore the ecosystem
health and improve water management for beneficial uses of the
Bay-Delta ecosystem.'' If successful, the plan should
rehabilitate native fish and wildlife species and their habitat
in the Bay-Delta system, and increase water supplies and
reliability for California's cities, businesses and farms. One
measure of success of the overall program is an improving
environment, achieved in part by implementation of restoration
projects that resolve known problems. For example, the
installation of fish screens on agricultural diversions to
prevent the entrainment of fish species. Program success will
also be indicated by decreasing regulatory disruption of water
project operations, and reduced regulations on individual
agricultural water suppliers and farmers.
Many of the private interests following CALFED, such as
Sacramento Valley agricultural water suppliers and farmers, are
financially participating in cost-share arrangements with
CALFED agencies on specific restoration projects. Nearly a
dozen water suppliers throughout the Sacramento Valley are
engaged in the study, design or construction a fish screen or
passage project to protect candidate, threatened and endangered
fish. Some of these projects are now complete, such as Western
Canal Water District's Gary N. Brown Butte Creek Siphon
Project. This unique project resulted in the installation of a
concrete siphon to convey agricultural water supplies under
Butte Creek, allowing the removal of several small dams that
historically hindered spring-run salmon migration to spawning
habitat. Completion of this project illustrates the
effectiveness of restoration actions in providing immediate
benefits to the environment--in this case for spring-run
salmon, presently listed as a threatened species under
California law and proposed for Federal listing--and for the
local community and area farmers who benefit through
development of a more reliable water supply.
As with Western Canal's farmers, other agricultural water
users in the Sacramento Valley have a vested interest in
ensuring state and Federal funds are effectively managed to
ultimately improve the fishery, and alleviate regulatory
mandates. Their participation is based on the belief the
projects will succeed, and are an effective way to restore
salmon species and protect landowners from burdensome
regulations. Their financial stake in these projects means they
will actively oversee the government agencies carrying out the
projects.
2. What clear and unambiguous performance standards are being
adopted to determine if we are close to success or have
achieved success?
As this Subcommittee is well aware, it is difficult to
establish performance and monitoring standards on complex and
dynamic ecosystems, such as California's Bay-Delta. State and
Federal resource agencies, and private interests, have
encountered similar difficulties in assessing the effectiveness
of restoration in the Pacific Northwest and the Florida
Everglades. Moreover, CALFED will attempt to apply its yet to
be developed standards on specific projects, and the entire
program, in an ecosystem that has sustained natural and human
damage; which continues to change. Complicating this task is
task is a lack of full biological information of the effects
these continuing natural and artificial processes have on fish
and wildlife, and their habitat. Additionally, natural events
can overwhelm our best efforts and mask success. Wildfires in
the Shasta or Sierra watersheds, drought, or damaging winter
storms--such as the 1997 storms that produced the worst flood
in California history which swept millions of young salmon
prematurely to the Pacific Ocean--can devastate fish and
wildlife and their habitat.
An additional difficulty in assessing this program's
success, and its individual actions, is CALFED's plan to
implement projects that will replicate natural processes
associated with instream flows, stream channels, watersheds and
floodplains. CALFED proposes to accomplish this objective
primarily by the acquisition of farmland and water supplies to
create river meander corridors, riparian forests, and increased
instream flows. The proposed implementation of these particular
actions raises legitimate concerns for upstream and downstream
communities, landowners and water suppliers.
CALFED's Ecosystem Restoration Program recommends the
implementation of nearly 700 actions over a thirty year period,
however, work has already begun on several of the program's
main elements. For example, CALFED's draft environmental impact
report and impact statement, released in March, recommends the
acquisition of roughly 200,000 acres of Central Valley farmland
(30,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley) to meet certain goals
outlined in the Ecosystem Restoration Program. CALFED proposes
to allocate $14 million in fiscal year 1998 Federal funds to
acquire private property in order to create meander corridors
along the Sacramento, San Joaquin and other Central Valley
rivers.
CALFED's staff acknowledges the scientific uncertainty
underlying the potential benefit to fish and wildlife from
these actions. River meander and riparian forest projects
necessarily require the acquisition of land along a river or
stream in order, for example, to allow the river to inundate
land during high flow periods. There are numerous consequences
that may arise as a result of these projects, including river
level and flow fluctuations and increased sediment and debris
loading, which threaten existing water diversions and fish
screens. Due to the unpredictable nature of these projects, and
the risks they present, NCWA encourages CALFED to initially
focus on restoration actions that fix known fish and wildlife
problems. We recognize, however, a limited number of actions
that attempt to replicate natural processes may be necessary to
restore habitat for at-risk species.
There are several specific steps CALFED should consider
before embarking on a large-scale river meander plan in order
to avoid adverse social, economic or environmental affects to
local communities, landowners, and water suppliers. This is
consistent with CALFED's stated principle of implementing
actions and a long-term plan that does not result in the
redirection of adverse impacts.
NCWA has encouraged CALFED to consider adoption of a pilot
program that may serve as a model for its future projects
involving land acquisition. Although the specific principles of
our recommendation are still under development, our goal is to
accomplish restoration actions compatible vith economic
activities, including farming, water district operation and
flood control protection.
A first step is to attempt to utilize public lands with
similar ecological characteristics prior to acquiring private
property to achieve restoration measures. If public lands are
unavailable, conservation easements, rather than outright fee
title acquisition, should be a priority, and all acquisitions
must be voluntary. Completion of California Environmental
Quality Act and National Environmental Policy Act requirements
should be initiated before the acquisition of private property.
In cases where California Environmental Quality Act compliance
is not required, such as the acquisition of rights to allow an
existing levee to degrade and fail, a representative public
process should be developed to determine the selection and
implementation of specific actions. Establishment of a
representative public process to ensure local involvement must
be a cornerstone of any land acquisition program. Finally,
CALFED must adopt clear assurances, or legal guarantees, that
address issues of liability for future damage resulting from
project implementation, as well as local tax and assessment
responsibility.
3. Are we going to postpone any major program decisions or
alternatives until we have the results of the early phases? Or
are we going to agree on a basic blueprint and simply adjust it
through adaptive management as we move along?
It is our understanding CALFED intends to utilize adaptive
management in its implementation of the overall plan, including
the staging of various program elements such as new storage
projects--which will provide additional instream flows. Certain
features of CALFED's Ecosystem Restoration Plan should be
implemented now, especially projects that will resolve known
problems and provide immediate environmental and economic
benefits.
California's recent response to the declining spring-run
salmon population is a good example of the benefit of
implementing broad based restoration actions before the species
is listed under Federal law, and the ensuing regulatory
gauntlet hampers all voluntary recovery efforts. The United
States' recent listing of the steelhead as threatened, and the
proposed listing of the fall-run, late-fall run and spring-run
salmon are further incentive to initiate restoration actions
now that will hopefully alleviate punitive Federal regulations
later. Adaptive management is a useful tool to guide project
selection and implementation given dynamic natural conditions,
such as drought and floods. Projects that require additional
analysis to determine their merit should be delayed, or
implemented on a pilot project basis, until CALFED has
established a better biological baseline, and expectation, of
their potential benefit.
In conclusion, NCWA supports additional Federal funding for
the CALFED program consistent with the Federal Bay-Delta
Security Act, and we offer our continued assistance to Congress
and the Subcommittee on Water and Power to respond to these
issues in the future.
------
Statement of Dick Dickerson, President, Regional Council of Rural
Counties
MR. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE SUBCOMMITEE:
I want to thank you for the opportunity to provide
testimony on behalf of the Regional Council of Rural Counties
(RCRC) to the Subcommittee with regards to the CALFED Bay-Delta
Program's, public participation program.
I am the President of the RCRC, and organization of twenty-
seven rural California Counties. Our membership encompasses a
broad geographic area stretching from the shores of Mono Lake
to the shores of Clear Lake, from the valley floor of Yosemite
to the top of Mount Shasta, from the rich farmlands of the
Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley to the dense Sierra forests.
Our members are located within San Joaquin, Sacramento and
Trinity Watersheds. Collectively, our members are the
``source'' areas for the San Francisco Bay-Delta. It is from
our membership that over eighty percent of the water for the
Delta comes. Our twenty-seven member counties number nearly
half of all of California's fifty-eight counties.
The forests from within our membership area include the
most significant snow pack areas in California. The water
storage in those snow packs dwarfs the capacity of all of the
reservoirs in the state. Snow melt during the spring and summer
months is what keeps the Delta ecosystem alive. The health of
the watersheds in our membership areas are, to the great
extent, the early indicators of the health of the Delta's
ecosystem not by any law of man, or map in a Federal office,
but by the laws of nature. Any successful Bay-Delta solution
will depend upon actions in our membership area, to implement
ecosystem restoration, watershed management, water transfers,
new water storage facilities and existing storage re-operation.
The Congressionally ordered Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project
Report, completed in 1996, concluded that the most valuable
resource in that mountain range was water. Water accounted for
sixty cents of every dollar of all natural resources values
including timber, mining, recreation and grazing. Water is not
only the lifeblood of the Delta ecosystem it is also the liquid
gold of California's economy.
RCRC has participated in the CALFED Bay-Delta program since
early 1996. Through the past two years we have actively
supported a CALFED solution and willingly worked to achieve a
balanced solution. We have worked very hard to assure that
there would be a watershed restoration component in the CALFED
Common Program Elements. We strove to develop an Ecosystem
Restoration Program Plan, which would be grounded in reality
and site specific--taking advantage of local expertise. We have
advocated an open public process not only in the current CALFED
program, but also in actual implementation actions and
governance.
RCRC is represented in the CALFED process at three levels.
Our Water Committee Chairman (Robert Meacher, Plumas County),
serves on the Bay-Delta Advisory Committee (BDAC). Our water
and natural resources consultant John S. Mills, services the
Ecosystem Restoration Roundtable. Mr. Meacher, Mr. Mills and
other RCRC elected officials and staff also participate in
numerous BDAC work groups such as; ecosystem restoration, water
transfers, assurances, and finance.
The expectation for adequate public participation within
CALFED is predicated on the ability of the public to understand
the subject matter. To have the opportunity to meaningfully
express their interests and concerns to those making decisions
and for those making the decisions to evaluate and respond to
public input. This is, when effective, an interactive and
ongoing process.
The CALFED Bay-Delta Program, if completed, will be the
most complex ecosystem restoration program ever carried out
within the United States. It will affect the lives of tens of
millions of Californians now and hundreds of millions yet to
come in the future.
It will cost billions of dollars and involve the use of
significant portions of California's land area to achieve
success. This process should involve not only water managers
and Federal and state agency personnel, but also the general
public whose lives will be affected by a CALFED solution. The
solution will be complex and should involve, to the greatest
extent possible, as much of the public as is practical.
Notwithstanding the participation of RCRC I have
referenced, we believe that there are two very serious problems
with the CALFED public participation program and that they are
inextricably linked.
It is our experience that the CALFED schedule is too short.
It fails to allow time for most of the affected parties to even
become acquainted with the information being presented let
alone provide meaningful input. While it is true that the
process has been underway for over two years, it is only the
past six months that clear project features and components of a
solution have been assembled in any understandable manner. It
is only in the past two months that a Draft Environmental
Impact Statement has been released for public review and
comment. Unfortunately, during this same time period the
California Department of Water Resources released their Water
Plan Update (Bulletin 160-98) with an April 15 deadline for
comment.
The Bureau of Reclamation set an April 17 deadline for
comments on their own 5,000 page Programmatic Environmental
Impact Statement. To comply with CVPIA. Most local governments
were simply overwhelmed with the paper load. For the general
public, faced with earning a living, the invitation to
``participate'' in these processes on that schedule was quite
impossible.
In addition, providing meaningful comments was further
frustrated by significant portions of a CALFED solution package
being incomplete at this time. For while we now know what the
various alternatives for conveyance are, there are missing
pieces to the puzzle. For example:
There is no Assurance package. For our membership the
issue of protections and guarantees of performance is of
paramount importance.
There is no Water Transfers package. Water transfers,
while an important component of any CALFED solution, pose the
most direct threat to our source areas economies if not
properly designed and implemented.
There is no complete Watershed Strategy. At best
CALFED has put together a strategy of how to do a watershed
strategy. The watershed restoration and management component of
a CALFED solution is critically important to our members.
There is no clear direction on new surface storage.
Without new storage of surface water, the chances of producing
a CALFED solution that would not negatively affect our members,
is very slim.
Therefore we feel that we are being forced to comment on an
incomplete CALFED package in an unrealistic time frame. We are not
optimistic that our comments would have any influence on the process
given the lack of time for CALFED staff to evaluate and incorporate
changes. We must underscore that we do not feel meaningful public input
can be accommodated in the CALFED process given it is to be completed
in the next seven months. That is a schedule for confrontation not
consensus.
We believe that the public involvement in the CALFED process has
been structured in such a manner as to make it very difficult for
meaningful participation. For example, Mr. Meacher, our BDAC
representative has at times received his meeting agenda packet less
than 24 hours before a BDAC meeting. He cannot be expected to read,
assimilate and provide meaningful suggestions on a two-inch thick
document in such a short period of time.
Most CALFED meetings take place in Sacramento. While this is
convenient for the agency personnel, most of the interested public are
located elsewhere. CALFED's recent regional meetings throughout the
state for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement are an improvement.
However, they are too little too late.
Regular CALFED regional workshops, on specific subjects, should
have been held throughout the solution area, not just in Sacramento.
This latter problem has resulted in increasing landowner concerns in
our member counties regarding just what it is CALFED is doing and how
it will affect their way of life.
The CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program Plan, a multi-volume plan
to restore the environment of the Delta, was mailed out to only 550
recipients--according to CALFED's own mailing list. CALFED's choice of
who the document went to was also of concern. In one State Senate
District in the Sacramento Valley, only two farm bureaus received
copies. No copies were received by Women in Agriculture or by any
Chamber of Commerce. However, more than twenty-five copies went out to
environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy
and Restoring the Earth. Also on the ``A'' list of recipients were
universities which received twenty copies in places as far away as U.C.
Riverside and Berkeley. Federal and state agencies obtained over forty
copies. Those who stood to be most affected by the plan, those who's
land might have been ``retired'' or those whose water rights might be
acquired, or those whose land might be converted to habitat, were left
in the dark. Public frustration, expressed to us, the local elected
officials, was significant. They have asked us, and we are asking you,
to help expand and improve the public participation process in a
meaningful way.
The CALFED program has only rarely been able to take the time to
address specific concerns of local landowners and examine ways to
mitigate specific changes to their program. We believe that this must
change.
The CALFED program has only rarely been able to hold ``field''
meetings with local conservancies, landowners and local government to
find innovative ways to restore the environment without new regulations
and takings. We believe that this must change.
The CALFED program has seemingly expected rural California to
supply the land, water and job sacrifices to fix the Delta without
question in the manner of traditional top down agency mandates. We
believe that this must change.
CALFED has scheduled its own document releases and review periods
in apparent ignorance or oblivion of the actions being taken by other
CALFED agencies. We believe that this must change.
CALFED expects all California to step forward to help fix the Delta
when it is convenient for CALFED, in a location convenient for CALFED
in a manner convenient for CALFED. We believe that this must change.
One of CALFED's own brochures read, ``Ultimately, it is the active
participations of the entire public that will help fix the Bay-Delta.''
That Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, we believe will not
change.
------
Statement of Bill Gaines, Director, Government Affairs, California
Waterfowl Association
Good afternoon. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee,
my name is Bill Gaines, and I am the Director of Government
Affairs for the California Waterfowl Association. Thank you for
the opportunity to come before you today to discuss the private
sector's role in the CALFED Bay/Delta Program.
Historically, the Bay/Delta watershed provided over 4
million acres of naturally occurring wetland habitat for
Pacific Flyway waterfowl and other wetland-dependent species.
Over the course of the last century, largely due to
agricultural conversion, urban expansion, and flood control
projects, nearly 95 percent of this once vast wetland base has
been lost. Yet, our little remaining habitat must still provide
critically important nesting and wintering habitat for nearly
25 percent of our continental waterfowl population, as well as
an estimated 50 percent of California's threatened and
endangered species.
Recognizing this serious threat to our natural resources,
the California Waterfowl Association was established in 1945
with the mission of conserving California's waterfowl,
wetlands, and sporting heritage. Over the course of the last
half-century, our Association has worked cooperatively with
Legislators, State and Federal agencies, other organizations
and private landowners to actively seek water supplies for
wetlands, and to develop, influence, fund, and implement
wetland programs which facilitate the preservation,
enhancement, and restoration of California's waterfowl habitat.
Today, fifty-three years later, the California Waterfowl
Association is largely recognized as the leader in California's
wetland and waterfowl conservation effort. As Federal and State
agencies, private organizations, landowners, and individuals
move forward with the implementation of the CALFED Bay/Delta
Program, the California Waterfowl Association has, once again,
assumed the role of lead voice for public and private wetland
and waterfowl interests.
Due to significant changes in California's natural
hydrology, much of our remaining interior wetlands must now be
``managed''--artificially irrigated and intensively managed to
create marsh conditions. As a result of this very unique
condition, the quantity and quality of waterfowl habitat
available in California in any given year is largely dependent
upon the availability of wetland water supplies. For many
years, the lack of a firm water supplies for California's
managed Central Valley wetland areas resulted in limited
habitat of minimum quality in all but the absolute wettest of
water years. In the fall of 1992, a significant positive step
was taken toward addressing these critical annual wetland water
needs when the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA)
was passed by Congress and signed into law. By guaranteeing
firm annual water supplies to Central Valley public refuges and
private wetlands within the Grassland Resource Conservation
District, this landmark legislation marked a critical positive
milestone in the California waterfowl conservation effort. But,
with still less than 10 percent of our historical habitat
remaining, much remains to be done.
The CALFED Bay/Delta Program is a long-term effort to
address ecosystem health, water quality, water supply
reliability, and levee system integrity in the Bay/Delta
watershed. Because the restoration, enhancement, and
maintenance of waterfowl habitat throughout much of this
watershed also depends upon these areas of concern, properly
implemented, the CALFED Bay/Delta Program represents a
tremendous opportunity to address the needs of migratory and
nesting waterfowl, and the other wetland-dependent species.
Today, I have been asked to provide our Association's view
regarding public participation in the CALFED Bay/Delta Program.
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization representing nearly 13,000
Bay/Delta stakeholders statewide, the California Waterfowl
Association also has a significant interest in the private
sector's ability to contribute to the CALFED process.
Let me begin to address this question with the statement
that, although California's ``water wars'' and deteriorating
ecosystem health are well chronicled, the CALFED Bay/Delta
Program is, far and away, the most significant and positive
multi-interest effort ever undertaken to address water and
environmental concerns in California, or perhaps throughout the
nation. The sheer magnitude of this landscape effort results in
unintended barriers and natural disincentives to public
participation. At times, even those individuals or the
representatives of agencies or organizations who are fortunate
enough to be able to dedicate ``full-time'' to this much needed
effort struggle to obtain a comprehensive grip on this sweeping
Program and its dynamic process. Clearly, providing for a
Program which offers ample public participation opportunities,
as well as real-time public awareness of its continual progress
and potential impacts, is, in itself, a tremendous challenge
for the Bay/Delta Program team.
Irregardless of the stumbling blocks associated with
assuring full stakeholder participation in such a mammoth
program, the California Waterfowl Association believes the
CALFED team has made every effort to design a process which
facilitates and encourages important public input and returns
real-time information flow. Yes, our Association--even as a
member of the Program's Ecosystem Restoration Roundtable--has
experienced times of serious frustration due to our inability
to positively influence CALFED Program decisions. But, our
Association does not contribute this frustration to a CALFED
agency team set on implementing the Program ``their way,'' but
rather to the tremendous difficulty associated with trying to
address a myriad of Bay/Delta concerns in a fashion which is
palatable to each of the many stakeholder interests which must
be served.
In trying to achieve this difficult goal, the California
Waterfowl Association believes that CALFED agencies have made
every reasonable effort to design a Program which allows Bay/
Delta stakeholders to contribute to the Program's
implementation, as well as its problem-solving/decision-making
process. The ability of the private sector to be heard in this
process ranges from the high profile role of formal committees
established to provide direct advisory input to CALFED
agencies, to hands-on workshops in small rural towns throughout
the watershed, to other public outreach efforts which are
enough to choke even the hardiest of mailboxes.
As each of you is probably aware, CALFED agencies have
tried to facilitate formal public input and interaction by
establishing the Bay/Delta Advisory Council, or BDAC. This
body, which is chartered by the Federal Advisory Committee Act,
is comprised of a variety of stakeholder interests--including
the California Waterfowl Association, water districts and
utilities, environmental and fishing organizations, the
California Farm Bureau, and others. Combined, this regularly
meeting group of more than thirty diverse private interests
provides an on-going medium for direct top-level public
participation in the Program's decision-making process.
In addition to BDAC; formal stakeholder interaction is also
provided by the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Roundtable--a
roughly 20 member BDAC subcommittee. Similar to BDAC, this
multi-interest team meets regularly in a public setting to
discuss the concerns of individual interest groups, to ensure
the coordination of CALFED Program activities with other
restoration programs in the Bay/Delta watershed, and to help
define priorities for on-the-ground CALFED projects.
In addition to our seat on BDAC, the California Waterfowl
Association is also active on the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration
Roundtable, and I fill this role. As a direct result of our
involvement at the Roundtable level, we have been able to
positively influence a small, but important, selection of
Program decisions--most notably the addition of waterfowl and
their habitats as a secondary priority of the Program.
In addition to the ability of the private sector to
influence CALFED policy decisions via BDAC and the Ecosystem
Roundtable, the public is also offered an opportunity to direct
the Program's biological priorities, and the actual selection
of restoration projects. Thirteen species, habitat, and/or
region specific technical panels, as well as an umbrella
Integration panel, have been created by CALFED agencies. These
technical teams--which consist of a mixture of agency,
academic, and stakeholder specialists--not only provide input
on the types of restoration actions needed to address targeted
Program concerns, but also play a lead role on the review and
selection of proposals submitted for CALFED funding.
The formal opportunities for private sector input that I
have outlined are supplemented by the sometimes seemingly
overzealous effort of CALFED agencies to reach out to those
organizations, landowners, and individuals who have shown an
interest in the Program. In our opinion, a tremendous amount of
time, expense and effort has been put forth by the CALFED team
to arrange, announce, and attend regional workshops, scoping
meetings, and other public outreach efforts, as well as to
continually bombard those on the massive mailing list with
Program updates and other information. I can assure you that,
as one of those on CALFED's ever growing mailing list, delivery
of the daily mail can be, at times, a depressing event.
It is important to note that, in addition to the care taken
to facilitate private sector participation in CALFED decision-
making, other important precautions are included in the
proposal selection process to protect against unintended
negative impacts to any individual landowner or interest-group.
First, and perhaps most importantly, restoration projects are
only done on a willing landowner basis.
Clearly, certain specific parcels may, for whatever reason,
be identified as critical for a certain habitat type or
species. But, no project will be initiated without full,
willing landowner participation. Second, efforts are being made
to leave land in private ownership by giving preference to
permanent conservation easements over fee title acquisition.
Finally, the latest Request for Proposal (RFP) includes local-
public involvement as part of the formal proposal evaluation
criteria.
Nevertheless, regardless of the sweeping efforts to address
public concerns in the CALFED Program, the role of the private
sector will be forever limited by several unavoidable factors.
First, as I mentioned before, due to the staggering sheer size
of the effort, few private organizations--much less
individuals--have the time or aptitude to become sufficiently
knowledgeable on the Program and its process, to know when,
where, and how to ``weigh-in'' to best serve their concerns.
Perhaps most frustrating, even those who are fortunate enough
to understand the process are limited by the Program's charter
to address so many differing concerns while avoiding unwanted
impacts to the many diverse stakeholder interests.
I believe the California Waterfowl Association is a good
example of a private interest who has a relatively thorough
knowledge of the Program, yet has been limited in its ability
to fully address each of its concerns. Today, I am here to ask
for your help.
Our Association fully appreciates and supports the goal of
the CALFED Program to address water supply reliability, and the
importance of addressing the habitat needs of listed fish
species in achieving this objective. Our ``managed'' wetlands
will also benefit greatly from achieving this goal. Yet, if the
Program is to make a sincere effort to restore the integrity of
the Bay/Delta ecosystem, it must also more fully consider the
serious habitat needs of native wildlife--most notably
wintering and nesting waterfowl, and other species which share
their habitats.
California's Central Valley--largely the same geographical
area being addressed by the CALFED ecosystem restoration
program--is widely recognized as one of the most important
waterfowl regions in North America. Yet, as I mentioned
earlier, this area has suffered the significant loss of over 90
percent of its historical waterfowl habitat--the greatest
percentage decline on the continent.
In the mid 1980's, in response to serious reductions in
North American waterfowl populations, the North American
Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP) was signed by the Federal
Governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This Plan
established broad waterfowl population goals and identified
seven priority areas on the North American continent in need of
habitat restoration and enhancement. California's Central
Valley was one of these identified priority areas.
Two years later, in 1988, a habitat restoration program--in
many ways like CALFED--was initiated to address NAWMP
objectives in our Central Valley. This public/private
conservation effort--known as the Central Valley Habitat Joint
Venture--carefully established biologically based acreage
objectives for the preservation, enhancement, restoration, and
maintenance of waterfowl habitat throughout much of the CALFED
project area. Recognizing the importance of private landowner
support to the success of the Joint Venture, a serious effort
was made to minimize the changes to existing land use necessary
to meet waterfowl needs. As such, the quantity of acreage
targeted for wetland restoration was somewhat limited, and
heavy emphasis was placed upon leaving land in agricultural
production and simply working with the landowner to increase
its wildlife values.
The tremendous loss of Central Valley habitat, as well as
the critical importance of the region to migratory waterfowl is
well documented. Clearly, the CALFED Program's ecosystem
restoration effort could, and should, play a significant role
in this critical conservation effort. Yet, thus far, the best
efforts of our Association to elevate waterfowl and their
habitats to a high priority of the CALFED Program have been
relatively unsuccessful.
Congress has already recognized the importance of the
migratory waterfowl resource through its support of the NAWMP,
and its authorization and annual funding of the North American
Wetland Conservation Act (NAWCA)--the Plan's Federal funding
source. Today, I ask for your assistance in creating a CALFED
Program which not only helps to meet these needs, but also
facilitates greater landowner support by providing full Federal
funding to the CALFED ecosystem restoration effort, and
earmarking a reasonable portion of those dollars for projects
which are entirely consistent with the expected habitat
objectives of the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture.
In conclusion, the California Waterfowl Association would
like to applaud the CALFED team for what, we believe, is a more
than reasonable effort to design a Program which maximizes the
role of the private sector in the decision-making process. We
ask those who may disagree to consider the tremendous
difficulty associated with obtaining complete public
satisfaction with a program of this size and scope. We also ask
Congress to help us fully realize the potential of the CALFED
Program to appropriately address the needs of our North
American waterfowl populations and other native plant and
animal species who share their habitats.
On behalf of the members of the California Waterfowl
Association, and waterfowl enthusiasts throughout the North
American continent, I thank you for the opportunity to come
before you today, and I would be happy to answer any questions
you may have at this time.
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