Water Commission discusses voluntary agreements, Metropolitan looks at impacts on SoCal supplies
On Monday, the State Water Resources Control Board will hold the final day of a three-day public hearing on the Sacramento/Delta update to the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan. The focus of the hearing is the draft staff report, which analyzes the options for updating the plan, including the Board’s proposal and the highly touted and controversial voluntary agreements. As the state contemplates a new approach to managing the Delta, the voluntary agreements were on the agendas of the California Water Commission and Metropolitan’s One Water and Stewardship Committee.
California Water Commission
At the November meeting of the California Water Commission, Erik Loboschefsky from the Department of Water Resources was on hand to brief the Commissioners on the ‘Agreements to support healthy rivers and landscapes,’ or the voluntary agreements, as they are more commonly known.
The voluntary agreements are being proposed as an alternative to the State Water Resources Control Board’s update of the Sacramento/Delta portion of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan. The voluntary agreements are proposing to dedicate water to the environment, pursue habitat restoration to benefit native species, and provide increased water supply reliability for all the beneficial uses in the system, and the Bay Delta watershed specifically.
The agreements are intended to help provide some increased water supply reliability for all those beneficial uses in the system, as well as the Bay Delta watershed more specifically. They are crafted in a way to help align with other regulations, such as the biological opinions and FERC requirements on the tributaries.
Mr. Loboschefsky said the voluntary agreements are about the synergistic benefits of flow and habitat: Combining habitat and flow can create more species benefits rather than just flow or habitat by themselves. “By species resiliency, I’m referring to the ability to sustain populations through varying water year types and flow stressors,” he said. “California has a very dynamic system and a very dynamic hydrology, and the species populations fluctuate. So with increased species resiliency, we’re talking about the ability of a lot of those fish species to better weather droughts as well as floods.”
The voluntary agreements would provide:
- New flows of between 750,000-825,000 acre-feet in dry water years, below normal water years, and above normal water years. The new flows would be dedicated for instream flow benefits as well as flow through the Delta and outflow from the Delta. The water will come from water users on the tributaries, reduction of exports from the south Delta, and purchasing water directly for environmental benefits.
- 30,000 acres of new habitat restoration spread throughout the plan area, including spawning, rearing, and floodplain habitats in the upper reaches of the tributaries, as well as tidal wetlands and other floodplain habitats in the Delta. The new habitat restoration will be designed to function in tandem with the new flows to provide benefits to species.
- Shared governance, science, and monitoring to coordinate and synthesize information and planning, ongoing monitoring, and science activities to inform adaptive management.
The agreements will provide for flow operations and accounting to ensure that the flows are occurring in the rivers and protected as they move downstream and for transparency and accountability to ensure that the flow commitments made actually occur. Funding for the program will be shared between local, state, and federal funding, as well as significant funding from water users across the Bay-Delta system.
Mr. Loboschefsky closed by noting that the Water Board has taken no action to adopt the voluntary agreements; there is still a lot more to happen at the State Board before they reach that decision point.
Public comment
Two members of the public had comments. Ben King, a multi-generational farmer from the Colusa Trough, pointed out that the voluntary agreements ignore the west side of the valley and the historical relationship between the Sacramento River and Sycamore Slough. Habitat was lost in the 90s, but prior to that, the salmon used to make it all the way up to Delvin. There are 17 ephemeral streams and a project that’s about to file an application for that water. So why isn’t it on the map?
He also noted that the groundwater underneath the Colusa refuge is contaminated with mercury, and the groundwater underneath the Sacramento refuge is contaminated by mercury and chromium 6. He said these are indications of low dissolved oxygen and the result of poor drainage that became a problem after the installation of the Davis Weir.
Erin Woolley, Senior Policy strategist at Sierra Club, said the voluntary agreements were put together in backroom negotiations without the input of environmental organizations, environmental justice organizations, fishing groups, tribes, or other community leaders. The presentation at this meeting did not include a comparison to what the board has proposed. However, in their view, what the voluntary agreements are putting forth is not comparable to what the board has analyzed in their report. They wouldn’t provide the instream flow benefits that the ecosystem desperately needs.
“This Commission needs to be aware that the science regarding the Delta is pretty clear that fish need flows, and habitat is not going to be able to be an interchangeable replacement for the increased flows that the fish desperately need,” she said.
Discussion
During the discussion period, Mr. Loboschevsky was given the opportunity to respond to the comment that the voluntary agreements were put together without the input of environmental organizations, environmental justice organizations, fishing groups, tribes, or other community leaders. Mr. Loboschefsky said that they would welcome the participation of NGOs and tribes, and they just need folks to reach out.
Commissioner Sandi Matsumoto said that there’s a reason why the NGOs are not part of the conversation right now, and it goes back to the dueling hypotheses around the degree to which flows are a part of the solution set and the degree to which habitat in tandem with flows can offset increasing flows. “What the VAs are doing is a bet on the hypothesis that if we do habitat in place of those flow increases, that we can basically achieve better conditions for salmon. At the end of eight years, is there an opportunity to then test the alternative hypothesis if the current hypothesis is not working?”
Mr. Loboschefsky noted that there is a red/yellow/green light process tied back to the science and governance structure. “If we implement these acres of habitat, deploy these flows, do the right monitoring and science, what are we learning from all of that? Quite simply, is this conglomeration of components of flow and habitat working together actually producing benefits and improving species trajectories? Eight years is a short amount of time, maybe two life cycles of salmon. So, there’s only going to be so much we’ll be able to learn.”
Ms. Matsumoto noted that habitat restoration takes many years to mature and produce benefits and a corresponding ecological response. “My concern is that we say we just don’t know yet. And then that’s an automatic yellow light, let’s keep going and keep trying and make a few tweaks. And it’s a continued bet on this hypothesis that habitat without a significant increase in flows is actually a path forward. So, is there a way of making a different decision within eight years? I wonder, how do we make sure that we’re not pre-determining the outcome eight years from now?”
“I would hope that we don’t pre-determine what happens in year eight. We do need to put together the right science and monitoring infrastructure to the degree we can to best inform an understanding of what we are seeing through those installations of habitat and flows, understanding it can take time for the habitat to mature,” said Mr. Loboschefsky. “I think that’s where that strong component of science and monitoring in this program really needs to be used in full force to understand what types of science activities can occur, if they’re not already occurring, to best understand and inform that that eight-year decision. And I think equally on the other side, prescribing that we would switch to the other hypothesis with 100% certainty is also equally uncertain.”
Mr. Loboschefsky was also given the chance to address the comment about the west side of the valley being left out of the voluntary agreements. He said they have been talking to some representatives in the Colusa region. He also noted that it may have to do with the plan boundaries, which are specifically defined in the Bay-Delta Plan.
Metropolitan Committee discuss Southern California impacts
Metropolitan’s One Water and Stewardship Committee also heard a presentation on the ‘Agreements to support healthy rivers and landscapes’ that focused on the impacts of the Sacramento/Delta update to the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan on Southern California water supplies.
The chart below has a comparison of the flow-only alternatives in the State Water Board staff report that shows the impact on statewide water supplies originating in or diverted from the Bay Delta. The bars show the total statewide Bay-Delta supply under the various flow alternatives; the dark blue on top represents State Water Project supplies for SoCal, and the light blue represents the remainder of state supplies from the Bay-Delta.
“As the alternatives increase in the percentage of unimpaired flow, water supplies decrease by up to 4.5 million acre-feet in the high flow alternative, said George Nishikawa, Resource Specialist, Bay-Delta Initiatives. “Impacts to Southern California from the preferred alternative and 55% unimpaired flow equate on an average annual basis a supply reduction of 450,000 acre-feet equal to a percentage decrease to existing supplies of 27%. In the high flow alternative, Southern California supplies on an average annual basis decreased by over 900,000 acre-feet or by about 45%.
For alternative 6, the voluntary agreements, the graph below depicts the tributary-specific environmental flows to be provided by the voluntary agreements in different water types. The flows provided by the agreements are greatest in dry, below-normal, and above-normal water years and are intended to assist fish during critical migration periods and life stages.
When asked why the voluntary agreements and flow-only alternatives are not shown side-by-side, Mr. Nishikawa explained it this way: “Because the alternatives are the flow-only approaches, we put these on one slide together so that you could compare them equitably. It’s a little more challenging to do a comparison with the VAs because now you’re talking apples to oranges when you start taking the modular components that are looking at certain provisions on the watershed versus watershed-wide, and also the VAs which look at the habitat contributions, which are now providing additional benefits to species in particular. So we wanted to be very thoughtful about presenting the data and making sure we’re giving you apples to apples and not apples to oranges, which is why you see those collectively on one slide.”
Deven Upadhyay, Executive Officer/Assistant General Manager, said, “One way of considering the potential impacts of these alternatives, like the unimpaired flow being implemented and the VA is falling apart, really is the significant water supply impact. If you look at those graphics, it’s very difficult to use the analysis they produced to say this is the exact acre-foot impact, but we know broadly that we’d be losing water available to us in the State Water Project. And I would go further than that to say that over the years of work that has been presented to you in a context of looking at all the different stressors that are affecting the species. And as the species are affecting our supplies, the key lever is reduced exports. But there are other things affecting water quality, the food web, the Delta, and the habitat – only using flow and unimpaired flows as the measure to control, compared to an approach that is a more holistic set of tools to improve the conditions for the species, we believe that’s going to be better. And that’s why it reduces the supply impact to us.”
Adel Hagekhalil pointed out that the adaptive management approach is key. “There is an adaptive management approach which is not setting a number and living with it; it’s understanding what’s happening and adjusting to it, adapting to it. So I want to make sure that’s not lost as a major component of this. It’s active management, where if we see conditions getting worse, we have to figure out how we adapt to it, both in supply, environment, and fish and all the things. … That’s going to be a component to help us address this climate whiplash. You cannot have now a fixed number, knowing that the climate is changing so much, so we need to figure out how we adapt to it.”
Voluntary agreements: Make your voice heard
This is a pivotal moment for the voluntary agreements and our approach to managing the Delta. Whether you are for the voluntary agreements or opposed to them, now is the time to make yourself heard. The third and final day of public hearings will be on December 11, beginning at 12pm and stretching into the evening. Written comments are due by January 19, 2024. In my opinion, the more folks the State Water Board hears from, whatever their viewpoint might be, the better, so please consider adding your voice to the mix.
- Click here for the notice and instructions for making comments.
- Click here to register to give your comments at the hearing.
- Here is my write-up of the Board presentation on the staff report.
- Check out the archives for the voluntary agreements and the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan.
