Water Rationing Nears — We’re D-O-N-E, says Farmer: 2 Trillion Gallons of Water Delivered from California Delta to East Bay Cities Each Year (ContraCostaTimes)

Feb.21, 2009 in Drought, Public Works, Water Crisis, Water Industry, Water Management

(Feb. 20, 2009, Contra Costa Times)

The Contra Costa Water District’s 500,000 customers likely will face mandatory water rationing in the coming months and some of the biggest farms in the state may get no water at all, water managers said Friday.

The cuts to water supplies across the state are in response to what is shaping up as a third consecutive dry year, said the heads of state and federal water projects, which deliver up to 2 trillion gallons of water each year from the Delta to East Bay cities, San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California.

“We would expect almost all of the major communities in California to go to some form of mandatory conservation,” state Department of Water Resources director Lester Snow said at a Sacramento news conference Friday.

Elsewhere in the Bay Area, the Santa Clara Valley Water District will consider a rationing plan next month and the East Bay Municipal Utility District has been rationing since last summer. The Alameda County Zone 7 Water Agency in the Tri-Valley is relying on groundwater to avoid mandatory rationing but is asking its customers to voluntarily cut water use by 10 percent.

In the nation’s largest agricultural water district, the Westlands Water District said more than half of the 600,000-acre district would be fallowed this year.

Friday’s grim news was based on an early estimate of Delta water supplies and was the first official word this year from Contra Costa’s major water supplier, the federal Central Valley Project.Contra Costa was told to expect half of its contracted supply, the least since the last major drought ended in 1992, water officials said.

San Joaquin Valley growers were told they should plan on no water at all.

The State Water Project, which serves Southern California and some parts of the Bay Area, has maintained since last fall that it would probably be able to meet 15 percent of its customers’ requests.

That figure has held steady despite recent storms.

Though increases are possible, water supplies are unlikely to go up by much. If the rest of the year sees average rain and snow, San Joaquin Valley farmers would get 10 percent of their contracted amount and Contra Costa’s water 50 percent allocation would rise to 60 percent.

“We will very likely be asking for some form of mandatory rationing,” said Contra Costa Water District assistant general manager Greg Gartrell, who said a board decision on rationing could be made in April.

The Concord-based district, which serves 500,000 people in east and central parts of the county, will buy water from east county farmers and draw on Los Vaqueros Reservoir. Still, it has a draft rationing plan that asks customers to meet conservation goals and imposes monetary penalties for those who do not.

Customers who routinely use more water will be asked to cut their use by a greater percentage than those using less.

The bigger pain will come in the San Joaquin Valley, where farmers were warned they could get no Delta water at all and if the rest of the year sees average rain and snow, they will get 10 percent of their contractual amounts.

“We’re done. D-O-N-E,” said Shawn Coburn, who farms 1,500 acres in the regions that will be cut off.

“Last year, I took every man in my west-side operation who doesn’t have a family and let him go,” Coburn said,

The last time San Joaquin Valley farmers were told they would get no water was February 1992. Heavy storms the following month increased their allocation that year to 25 percent.

Despite recent storms, a bone-dry January has left the winter snowpack 25 percent below average. Much of the moisture from this month’s storms soaked into the ground and relatively little ran down streams, water officials said.

The state’s major reservoirs are about one-third full — half of where they normally are this time of year.

Even if big storms materialize, water managers will be under pressure to refill reservoirs to provide enough cold water for spawning salmon later this year and to ensure the state doesn’t face even worse shortages next year.

If storms do arrive, new endangered species measures in place to protect the extinction of Delta smelt will make it more difficult to pump large amounts of water out of the Delta.

Snow and the region’s top federal water manager in the region said the problem so far is the weather and not a suite of new environmental restrictions.

“This is not a regulatory problem. This is a hydrology problem,” said U.S. Bureau of Reclamation regional director Donald Glaser at Friday’s news conference in Sacramento. The Delta water cutoff will translate into a roughly $2 billion hit to the San Joaquin Valley economy with about 70,000 lost jobs, mostly low-wage, affecting farm workers, food processing plant workers, and packing house employees, said UC Davis economist Richard Howitt.

“That’s a big deal,” he said.

Howitt said the effect on food prices will likely be minimal because most of the crops that will go out of production, such as cotton, wheat and alfalfa, are available in large commodity markets.

“Most of the fruits and nuts and vegetable, there might be sporadic shortages but I don’t think we’re going to see big price increases,” Howitt said.

Snow warned that California’s droughts could get worse as the planet warms. The state’s water managers have seen earlier spring runoff and other changes.

“Our hydrology has become more uncertain,” Snow said. “Droughts are going to be worse in the future than in the past.”

Mike Taugher covers the environment. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or mtaugher@bayareanewsgroup.com.

(Original Article Here)