By Michelle Paul, California Farm Water Coalition
From the moment California’s earliest residents called the vast, fertile soils of California’s Central Valley home, efforts began to solve one of the state’s oldest challenges: harnessing the water. With rainfall and snowpack varying dramatically year to year, and because most people and farms are in the state’s arid regions, water must be carefully managed and transported long distances to ensure all communities can thrive.
California’s water infrastructure has developed over more than 220 years, beginning with the construction of a stone dam on Mission Creek in 1807. Since then, countless projects have been added to meet the evolving needs of each region. Today, nearly every part of the state’s engineered water supply system is interconnected, either through hydrology or connections between physical infrastructure.
The most obvious examples of this are the federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project, mostly built between 1940 and 1979 to meet agricultural, urban, and now, environmental water supply needs. They both share the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and both systems need upgrades and repairs after, in some cases, 80 years of water deliveries.
That’s why SB 872 by California Senator Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) is so important for California. Titled, “Protecting California’s Water,” McNerney’s bill aims to fund major repairs and resilience projects for the State Water Project. There are two major areas identified to receive funding, if the bill passes and is signed by the Governor.
First, funding would go toward Delta levee repair, channel maintenance, and other improvements, which are a critical part of the Bay-Delta system that protects populated areas and farmland from tidal flows and flooding. Levees also play an important role in protecting “through-Delta” water conveyance, the system of rivers and channels that serve to deliver water to water rights holders in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
The devastation in Jones Tract from a 2004 levee break west of Stockton flooded about 12,000 acres of farmland with 150,000 acre-feet of water, displacing 70 farmworkers and leaving a $90 million repair bill paid for by government and private funding. Disasters like this threaten the livelihood of local farms and the jobs they support, often in disadvantaged areas. This kind of disaster is what the Delta levees are there to prevent.
The other big part of SB 872 is to restore conveyance capacity on the California Aqueduct and other state infrastructure. Improvements like these are intended to protect the reliability of the State Water Project delivery system.
But the State Water Project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It works in coordination with the federal Central Valley Project, each providing operational benefits to the other in a variety of locations and at varying times of the year. It’s for this reason SB 872 should be expanded to include the opportunity for funding to be allocated for infrastructure facilities owned by the federal government that improve the state’s overall system reliability.
Many parts of our water supply system depend on other, seemingly unrelated parts, yet they’re important to the overall reliability and efficient operation of the system. Expanding the opportunity to fund federally owned infrastructure upon which the state is reliant through SB 872 can resolve issues on a larger and more efficient scale than what is currently being considered.
SB 872 has support from the State Water Contractors, a collection of public water agencies who receive State Water Project water, as well as members of the environmental community that have advocated strongly for the kind of Delta levee improvements the bill intends to deliver.
SB872 is an opportunity to improve the Delta and south-of-Delta conveyance, particularly if amended to expand the efficiency of conveyance benefits.
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Michelle Paul is the Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition; a nonprofit organization committed to helping the public understand the connection between water and the food grown in California. She can be reached at mpaul@farmwater.org.
COMMENTARY: Protecting California’s water – SB 872
By Michelle Paul, California Farm Water Coalition
California’s water infrastructure has developed over more than 220 years, beginning with the construction of a stone dam on Mission Creek in 1807. Since then, countless projects have been added to meet the evolving needs of each region. Today, nearly every part of the state’s engineered water supply system is interconnected, either through hydrology or connections between physical infrastructure.
The most obvious examples of this are the federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project, mostly built between 1940 and 1979 to meet agricultural, urban, and now, environmental water supply needs. They both share the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and both systems need upgrades and repairs after, in some cases, 80 years of water deliveries.
That’s why SB 872 by California Senator Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) is so important for California. Titled, “Protecting California’s Water,” McNerney’s bill aims to fund major repairs and resilience projects for the State Water Project. There are two major areas identified to receive funding, if the bill passes and is signed by the Governor.
First, funding would go toward Delta levee repair, channel maintenance, and other improvements, which are a critical part of the Bay-Delta system that protects populated areas and farmland from tidal flows and flooding. Levees also play an important role in protecting “through-Delta” water conveyance, the system of rivers and channels that serve to deliver water to water rights holders in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
The devastation in Jones Tract from a 2004 levee break west of Stockton flooded about 12,000 acres of farmland with 150,000 acre-feet of water, displacing 70 farmworkers and leaving a $90 million repair bill paid for by government and private funding. Disasters like this threaten the livelihood of local farms and the jobs they support, often in disadvantaged areas. This kind of disaster is what the Delta levees are there to prevent.
The other big part of SB 872 is to restore conveyance capacity on the California Aqueduct and other state infrastructure. Improvements like these are intended to protect the reliability of the State Water Project delivery system.
But the State Water Project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It works in coordination with the federal Central Valley Project, each providing operational benefits to the other in a variety of locations and at varying times of the year. It’s for this reason SB 872 should be expanded to include the opportunity for funding to be allocated for infrastructure facilities owned by the federal government that improve the state’s overall system reliability.
Many parts of our water supply system depend on other, seemingly unrelated parts, yet they’re important to the overall reliability and efficient operation of the system. Expanding the opportunity to fund federally owned infrastructure upon which the state is reliant through SB 872 can resolve issues on a larger and more efficient scale than what is currently being considered.
SB 872 has support from the State Water Contractors, a collection of public water agencies who receive State Water Project water, as well as members of the environmental community that have advocated strongly for the kind of Delta levee improvements the bill intends to deliver.
SB872 is an opportunity to improve the Delta and south-of-Delta conveyance, particularly if amended to expand the efficiency of conveyance benefits.
# # #
Michelle Paul is the Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition; a nonprofit organization committed to helping the public understand the connection between water and the food grown in California. She can be reached at mpaul@farmwater.org.