It’s now five weeks since Governor Newsom’s Delta tunnel plan was unveiled in a Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Time enough for the main ideas to sink in; time enough for familiar players to strike their familiar positions; and time enough for some of us to burrow deep into its tables, figures, and appendices.
To recap briefly: water taken from new intakes near Hood on the Sacramento River would enter a tunnel and flow 45 miles underground before being lifted again to charge up the California Aqueduct at Bethany Reservoir. The tunnel capacity would be 6,000 cubic feet per second, which, if operated full time, could provide 4.3 million acre-feet a year for export to San Joaquin Valley farms and to cities from San Jose to San Diego. At a glance, that amount is in the ballpark of historic annual export levels.
Some important points are not obvious at a glance.
1: The attractions of a tunnel
From DWR publicity, you might read the tunnel as a replacement for the existing “Delta conveyance”: the route the water destined for export now travels, wandering through Delta channels and feeding state and federal pumps near Tracy. Nobody likes the present system, which damages the ecosystem in well-known ways and is notably hard on salmon and other valued fish. If sea level rise and salt intrusion proceed as expected, the old waterworks will someday have to be retired, anyway. “Someday” could come much sooner if levee failures were to alter the basic Delta architecture. The new tunnel has the size to substantially replace the unloved old system. Its intake locations near Hood are better, its fish screens superior. To the extent that it takes over the job of the old arrangement, it would certainly be an improvement.
Tunnel boring machine.Photo: DWR
2. The limited role of the tunnel, for now
Good riddance? Not so fast. For the DEIR makes clear that this is a plan to supplement—not replace—the old plumbing. For the period studied in the document, the tunnel is to carry only some 16% of the total export flow. It would permit the harvest of water when the old pumps are shut down for the sake of fish, and it would reap Sacramento River water that now escapes in periods of very high flow. Compared to historical averages and to 2020, the base year for comparisons, exports are slated to increase, in dry years as well as in wet ones.
The choice of “dual conveyance” was expected. It is meant, among other things, to reassure Delta people that salinity from the Bay will not be allowed to intrude too far into their domain. As long as the old pumps draw from the old channels, salt can’t be allowed to triumph—it would pollute the export water. What surprised this reader, however, was the heavy continued reliance on the old route, the small share entrusted, for now, to the new.
Would having two conduits to draw on help savvy managers reduce the effects on fish? Possibly. The DEIR lists various fish-friendly measures. But it considers only the effects of the new facility, not those of continued reliance on the old, finding in the end merely that significant further harm to sensitive species would not be done.
Intake dam with fish screens similar to those proposed for the tunnel project. Photo: DWR
3: What about the CVP?
Another striking thing about the new plan is the absence of the federal Central Valley Project, some of whose customers declined to share in the massive expense. In the proposed new infrastructure, SWP water could be boosted to a level safe from sea level rise: CVP water could not.
Because the two projects are essentially operated as one, the federal distribution system would benefit from the state’s planned investment, for a while. Its yields, too, are projected to climb in the short term. But as sea level rise speeds up, and water at the Old River pump intakes grows saltier more often, how are the feds to cope? What happens to CVP’s mostly agricultural customers in the San Joaquin Valley? This question is not in the scope of the new DEIR.
4. Tying the regulators’ hands?
The hundred-year history of Delta conveyance is the story of two processes. One is the development of water systems and ever smarter engineering. The second is growing ecological knowledge and the setting of rules to limit the ill effects of water withdrawals. The second process has always lagged far behind the first.
In the DEIR, the DWR repeatedly emphasizes that it would follow all the applicable rules, and there is no reason to doubt this. The rules themselves, however, are old and, in the view of many, far too weak. The State Water Resource Control Board’s Decision 1641, governing Delta outflows and salinities, dates to the year 2000, before the latest phase of the Delta’s ecological decline.
In 2010, following instructions from the Legislature, the water board released a study on flows and fish: in order to halt the decline of many species, flows into the Delta and on toward San Francisco Bay would have to be greatly increased, especially in the spring. Exports, correspondingly, would have to decrease. Though advisory, that conclusion was meant to feed into an early revision of D-1641. Twelve years later, the board has made little headway—not due to lack of effort but due to fierce resistance from the water world and from leading politicians, including the present governor.
Once again an engineering plan is unveiled in isolation from the question of needed flows in historic channels. The familiar fear arises: that a commitment to the latest-model water export machinery would make it still more difficult to limit water export volumes.
Top photo: Historic planning document. Image courtesy: California Water Library
John Hart is an environmental journalist and author of sixteen books and several hundred other published works. He is also the winner of the James D. Phelan Award, the Commonwealth Club Medal in Californiana, and the David R. Brower Award for Service in the Field of Conservation. For ESTUARY, he writes on groundwater, infrastructure, and California water politics and history.
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.