Super soaker 'Pineapple Express' organizing for heavy rain in California this weekend – as much as 20 inches in some areas

dbstealey,
I will join you in hoping that we actually get walloped by a big soaker. Our reservoir’s have room for lots of run off and any snow pack would be good snow pack. However, your description of the water issue as “people vs. fish” is a gross oversimplification that I repeatedly see both on the internet and in the MSM. I present the following from the perspective of an old fashioned “wise use conservationist” who has lived in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, and who now lives near Sacramento. I am an attorney who has followed both the legal and environmental water issues in Central California for the last 10 years, and I have represented farmers and small water districts, worked with attorneys who represented the big water districts who are fighting to take more water from the Delta, and dealt with the California Department of Water Resources.
IMNSHO, a much better perspective is to recognize that the dispute is between groups of people who want to put the water to alternative uses, and the disputes are as nasty as they are because the allocations are made by political and legal processes rather than by markets. I.e., we’ve got water supplied by government agencies subject to the pressure groups, lobbyists, and lawsuits instead of water being supplied by private parties selling to the highest bidders according to the principles of supply and demand. As always, this results in what economists call misallocation / uneconomic uses of the resource–and all the nasty behavior is as predicted by public choice economics (or any experienced observer of human events).
In other words, surface irrigation water from California’s extensive system of reservoirs is supplied at artificially cheap prices to users who are chosen in part based on riparian property rights and in part by contracts with government agencies, which contracts are subject to alteration–within various limits–by bureaucratic, legislative, and judicial action. Any new dams or other facilities–such as the proposed Delta diversion tunnels or the proposed Sites or Temperance Flat reservoirs–would also be built by the State government, although who would bear how much of the very expensive cost of each is still up in the air.
The particular group of 600 farmers in the San Joaquin valley who lead the constant litigation over protection “for that little fish” are growing subsidized crops with subsidized water that is pumped with expensive electricity (that they don’t pay for) in soil naturally high in toxic salts–including Selenium–irrigation of which creates a drainage problem that their deal with the U.S. government for the construction of the dam and canals to irrigate their land required them to solve to the tune of several hundred million dollars–which they never have. The toxic run off from their land created a huge problem with deformed baby birds, etc. at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge about 20 years ago that caused that refuge to be drained and closed. They are now trying to get Senator Feinstein to ram through a bill relieving them of that obligation and giving them a higher priority for water than they currently have. As of now, they have the lowest priority water rights. In dry years, they are the first ones to have their allocation cut. It’s been that way for fifty years. Before Lake Oroville and the canals were built, they didn’t have that water supply in any year, but they’ve grown pretty rich as ag welfare queens, and they’d like to secure their position, and get richer if possible. If they secure their rights, they may even turn around and sell some or all of their water rights to users who would put a higher value on the water (think Southern California urban users, who use a fraction of the total amount that Central Valley agriculture uses). Other water districts near Bakersfield have already done that.
The competing water users are: 1) several hundred less wealthy farmers located in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta who draw their irrigation water directly from the Delta; 2) several thousand recreational fisherman and pleasure boaters who bring millions of dollars of economic activity to the economies of the numerous towns in and around the Delta; 3) groups of bird watchers and other nature lovers who flock to the Delta during the winter migration. (Don’t laugh. Incredible numbers of waterfowl winter here, including Sandhill cranes, which are very impressive birds, and significant numbers of folks come down to see them.) If the Delta tunnels are ever built, all these folks will suffer because the diversion of high quality fresh water from the Sacramento River north of the Delta will likely result in a severe deterioration of water quality in the Delta. This will include increased salinity where the local farmers draw their irrigation water and an acceleration of the ongoing decline in the populations of most species of fish in the Delta, including the most popular sport fish.
And then there are certain environmental groups who may or may not just hate the thought that people are making money and doing something productive with the water. While several of them are involved in the lawsuits over water diversions from the Delta, local fishing groups are also involved and very active in trying to limit–not stop–the amount of pumping from the Delta. The ecosystem of the Delta and the rivers that flow into it has been greatly altered from what it was in the 1840’s and will never be that way again. (I don’t think any rational person would even want it that way if it could be made that way costlessly. But man, the fishing must have been great… but I digress.)
While the environmental lawsuits were first filed by several environmental NGO’s and used the status of the Delta Smelt to force reductions in pumping, the point is not just to protect a few thousand “little baitfish.” The point is to stop the tremendous declines in the populations of almost all of the fish in the Delta. (I’m talking 95-99% declines over 25 years for several as revealed by trawl surveys.) While water exports for agriculture are not the only issue, they are clearly a major one. The second set of pumps in the Delta was turned on in the early 1970’s after numerous dams were completed in previous decades. During the 1990’s, water exports were around 4 million acre-feet per year and most of the populations were (relatively) stable, if lower than previously. In 2002, the Schwarzeneggar administration increased the exports to over 6 million acre-feet per year, and fish populations quickly plummeted, which led to the recent spate of lawsuits that resulted in a cut back to a level that is still above 4.2 million acre-feet per year (but which I don’t recall at the moment) and restrictions on pumping at certain times and under certain conditions.
With regard to dams: Unfortunately, we have already put dams in all the good places to put them in California. None of the current dam proposals make economic sense–too much cost, too little extra storage–and all of them will have significant impacts on river habitats. I liver fairly close to the Auburn dam site and have listened to the arguments for and against it for a decade. Even if you don’t consider the earthquake fault in the dam site to make it a non-starter, the current dam won’t provide any additional storage because the water is already spoken for, and the flood control benefits have mostly been addressed by the improvements that are almost done at Folsom Dam downstream.