State water board considers drought-response actions
as specific requirements for flows and temperature management. Project reservoir storage levels have reached or neared historical lows, cre- ating significant concerns for salinity control, municipal water supplies (par- ticularly from Folsom Reservoir), tem- perature management and other envi- ronmental needs. Fredrickson saidwatermanagers need to control salinity in the delta while pro- tecting public health, water conveyance and beneficial uses of water, including irrigation. He said the project must also
protect some carryover water for next year, and use available conveyance to move transferred water “from users in a position tomake some available toothers inmore desperate need.” “California needs to prepare for the terrible possibility of a potential third dry year next year and, at the same time, continue to meet minimum basic needs during the summer and into the fall,” he said. (Chr i s t ine Souza i s an ass i s tant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)
ByChristine Souza More signs of drought and tightening water supplies have arisen, in filings with the StateWater Resources Control Board. The board received a request last week fromoperators of the StateWater Project and the federal Central Valley Project, to temporarily modify permits and license conditions for the two projects. The state water board received a “temporary urgency change petition” filed by the operators of the SWP and the CVP, the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Justin Fredrickson, environmental policy analyst for the California Farm Bureau, said the petition allows a wa- ter district or water purveyor to request a variance from the state water board, which relaxes standards that typically apply in any other year under its water rights Decision 1641. Finalized in 1999, Decision 1641 established rules govern- ing most water quality standards cur- rently in place for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Fredrickson said a temporary urgen- cy change order, if granted, would allow modification of rules normally in place on a temporary basis under an urgent circumstance. In the petition, the proj- ect operators say critically dry conditions mean there will not be enough water for the projects tomeet their obligations un- der Decision 1641. Any change allowed by the board as a result of the petition “cannot affect other water right holders or fish and wildlife, and it has to be in the public interest,” Fredrickson explained. DWR and the Bureau of Reclamation requested changes to outflow require- ments for the delta and agricultural water quality requirements on the Sacramento River from June through Aug. 15. The project operators said the changes are needed to conservewater supplies in upstream reservoirs for later in the year, and to allow them greater operational flexibility in response to the second con- secutive year of critically dry conditions. The deadline to file an objection to the petition is June 4. In addition, the state water board held a public workshop last week to receive public comment on proposed method- ology for determining water unavailabil- ity in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed. Currently, themethodology focuses on evaluating water unavailability for post- 1914 appropriative users during the dry season. The board said it plans modifi- cations to the methodology to evaluate water unavailability during the wet sea- son, and said the methods could also be modified to evaluatewater unavailability for pre-1914 appropriative and riparian water right claimants at a later time. Due to cr i t ical ly dr y condi t ions throughout the delta watershed and the
projectionof insufficient supplies tomeet water demands, the water boardwarned it is likely to issue notices of water un- availability to all post-1914 appropriative water right holders in thedeltawatershed as early as June. The SWP and the CVP are responsible for providing salinity control andmeeting environmental flows in the delta, as well
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May 26, 2021 Ag Alert 5
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