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San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority

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San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority Governing SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY WATER Board INFRASTRUCTURE AUTHORITY TULARE COUNTY SUPERVISOR STEVE WORTHLEY, President SUPERVISOR ALLEN ISHIDA, Alternate May 13, 2016 FRESNO COUNTY SUPE RVISOR BUDDY MENDES, Vice President SUPERVISOR BRIAN PACHECO, Alternate The Honorable Sally Jewell MADERA COUNTY SUPERVISOR DAVID ROGERS, Secretary Director SUPERVISOR RICK FARINELLI, United States Department of the Interior Alternate 1849 C Street NW MERCED COUNTY Washington, DC 20240 SUPERVISOR JERRY O’BANION, Director SUPERVISOR JOHN PEDROZO, Alternate KINGS COUNTY Dear Secretary Jewell: SUPERVISOR DOUG VERBOON, Director SUPERVISOR CRAIG PEDERSEN, On behalf of the San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority Alternate (Authority) in Central California, I am writing to express our deep and EASTERN CITIES MAYOR VICTOR LOPEZ, growing concern over an activity by one of the federal agencies you oversee. Director CITY OF ORANGE COVE The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposal to designate a portion of MAYOR NATHAN MAGSIG, the San Joaquin River in Fresno and Madera counties as “Wild and Scenic” Alternate CITY OF CLOVIS would represent an action that would be highly detrimental to our Valley WESTERN CITIES and the people we represent. MAYOR PRO TEM ALVARO PRECIADO, Director The San Joaquin Valley is already being hit hard by severe reductions in CITY OF AVENAL MAYOR SYLVIA CHAVEZ, Alternate water supplies. Many smaller communities in our region are disadvantaged CITY OF HURON economically and are struggling with issues of damaged groundwater WESTERN WATER AGENCIES quality. A number of Valley cities now have depleted supplies of water. A STEVE CHEDESTER, Director few towns and many hundreds of individual rural residents have lost all SAN JOAQUIN RIVER EXCHANGE CONTRACTORS WATER AUTHORITY water availability. Harmful economic and social impacts of these situations DAN POPE, Alternate and the widespread shortages of water also now available for on-farm WESTLANDS WATER DISTRICT irrigation are well known and documented. TRIBAL MEMBERS DANNY CASAS, Our Authority is a recently-formed joint powers public agency that Director ANGELA KARST, Alternate comprises five counties and several cities as well as water agencies and a TABLE MOUNTAIN RANCHERIA Tribal Council. We were organized under California law. The Authority’s MEMBER AT LARGE purpose is to seek means to develop much needed new above-ground and MAYOR ROBERT SILVA groundwater supply storage through construction of key regional ◊ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR infrastructure opportunities designed to resolve water shortage problems MARIO SANTOYO for all of Valley users. Telephone (559) 779-7595 WEB: www.tularecounty.ca.gov ■ ADDRESS: 2800 Burrel Avenue, Visalia, California 93291 The proposed Temperance Flat Dam and Reservoir, under investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), is a primary focus of our board and member agencies. This facility would be located on the San Joaquin River, upstream from Reclamation’s Friant Dam and partially within the existing Millerton Lake footprint, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Fresno. Thus far, the Temperance Flat project has successfully passed its Draft Feasibility Report and EIS/EIR, and the final versions of these documents are going through review by Reclamation and Interior staff. The final reports are expected to be released within the next 60 days. More than 20 years of federal investment and study, directed and carried out at a cost of approximately $36 million to date by Interior and Reclamation, have gone into the Temperance Flat project. This effort was initiated in 1995 by the CALFED Bay-Delta Program (in which Interior, Reclamation and the State of California were full partners). The project officially became the Upper San Joaquin River Basin Storage Investigation via CALFED’s Record of Decision in August 2000. Since that time, the study has scrutinized federal, state, and regional interests in a potential reservoir project in the San Joaquin River watershed. The study looked at expanded water storage capacity, improved supply reliability, and flexibility for agricultural, urban and environmental uses. Also examined were improved San Joaquin River water temperature and flow conditions to enhance the success of ongoing salmon restoration. It has been a remarkably extensive examination of potential projects, locations and potential benefits. After a rigorous evaluation, Reclamation selected the Temperance Flat Reservoir site as the most effective location. The proposed Temperance Flat Reservoir would provide about to 1.3 million acre- feet of much-needed additional storage to help achieve current water management objectives and adapt to a changing climate that is projected to reduce our largest “reservoir”— the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada — and increase rainfall to levels that will overwhelm existing reservoirs. Despite so many years of federal resource investment and favorable findings in the feasibility study, the BLM in recent years decided to pursue a San Joaquin River Wild and Scenic Rivers designation. Such a designation would include a segment of the same river reach proposed to be included within a new Temperance Flat Reservoir and would prevent the project’s development. BLM’s proposed designation makes clear that the agency wants to ensure this short San Joaquin River segment “shall be preserved in free-flowing condition.” However, if such is the objective, it is one that can never be attained. Seldom is it possible for the San Joaquin River to be “free flowing” through the proposed “wild” foothill segment. Seven major dams and nine small dams owned by the Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric companies operate upstream from this location. Those dams and reservoirs store and divert water through bypass tunnels and penstocks into a dozen power plants to generate electricity. The reach under consideration for designation as wild and scenic is the 7.25 mile stretch between Kerckhoff Dam and Kerckhoff Powerhouse. Water is diverted at Kerckhoff Dam through tunnels to the downstream powerhouses and thus largely bypasses the upper segment of the San Joaquin River (please refer to the attached PG&E hydropower project map). The only exceptions are minimum flow WEB: www.tularecounty.ca.gov ■ ADDRESS: 2800 Burrel Avenue, Visalia, California 93291 requirements, infrequent powerhouse outages, and when flows are high enough to exceed the tunnel capacities and spill over Kerckhoff Dam. As required by FERC, the minimum release from Kerckhoff Dam to the San Joaquin River is 25 cubic feet per second (cfs) in normal water years, and 15 cfs in dry water years. Between May 15 and June 30, up to 400 cfs is released from Kerckhoff Powerhouse to the San Joaquin River for Shad spawning. By contrast, up to 4,800 cfs of flow is routed from Kerckhoff Lake to Kerckhoff No. 2 powerhouse (approximately 10 miles downstream from Kerckhoff Dam) through a tunnel that bypasses the entire river segment under consideration for designation. The older and smaller Kerckhoff Powerhouse is operated much less frequently and has a capacity of up to 1,000 cfs. Also, within the 7.25-mile reach under consideration for designation between Kerckhoff Dam and Kerckhoff Powerhouse (considering a ¼ mi buffer on either side of the river), approximately 42% of the land is privately owned and thereby limits BLM’s management and public access. Our Authority and those we represent in this water-short region are gravely concerned and perplexed by the seemingly paradoxical actions taken by two federal departments under the same agency. While one federal agency (Reclamation) is carrying out its Congressionally-directed responsibilities under the CALFED Record of Decision to study and pursue new San Joaquin River surface water storage, another (BLM) federal agency is independently striving to make such a water storage project impossible in a location where a “free flow” of water simply cannot be “preserved.” Worse, these agencies taking such contradictory positions and creating growing conflict over the San Joaquin River usage and policy are both within the Interior Department. The reason we are so adamant in pursuing a major new water storage project like Temperance Flat is simple. Our counties — Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Madera and Merced — have borne the brunt of California’s severe water supply reductions over the past decade. These reductions resulted not only from natural drought but from ever-more-stringent federal regulatory actions and court decisions. Water users on each side of the Valley have been adversely affected. Many farms have lost most or all of their water supplies. The rural communities they surround and support in these, the nation’s most productive agricultural counties, are suffering economically and socially. With the passage in 2014 of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) by the California Legislature, our need for integrated water management has become even more acute. Temperance Flat Reservoir is one of the greatest opportunities to restore balance to our water management, sustain our economy and comply with SGMA. Temperance Flat is crucial for creating means of capturing high flows of San Joaquin Valley runoff from the mountains with a storage capacity adequate to meet surface water usage needs in dry times. Such surface storage capability is also necessary hydrologically because of the extended period required by the groundwater recharge and banking processes to convert water stored in above-ground reservoirs into percolation
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