Key players in California water confront drought, fish and more at Modesto summit
A key message emerged when California water leaders gathered in Modesto: Stop grumbling about drought, and get cracking on real fixes.
Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, convened the Thursday afternoon summit at the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau.
Several speakers called for new reservoirs and groundwater recharge to hold wet-year surpluses for use in dry times like 2021.
The manager of a West Side irrigation district invited others to follow her lead in using water recycled from city sewage plants.
A UC Merced professor suggested putting solar panels atop canals, both to generate power and to reduce evaporation. The Turlock Irrigation District might take up the idea.
Professor Roger Bales also urged thinning of wildfire-prone forests in the Sierra Nevada. If trees suck up less water, he said, more could run off to farms and cities.
About 50 people gathered in the L Street conference room. They included Karen Ross, food and agricultural secretary for Gov. Gavin Newsom, and two members of a powerful state water board.
Also present were eight mayors in Harder’s district, which takes in Stanislaus and southern San Joaquin counties.
The summit did not include any of the environmental groups seeking to reduce river diversions to benefit fish. Irrigation advocates said they care about this, too, but they could achieve it in ways that do not harm farmers.
The summit happened amid yet another of the droughts that beset California. It started last year, when runoff was only 61% of average in the central Sierra. This year is 47%.
The effects vary greatly. Some irrigation districts have zero federal allocations because of junior water rights and fish protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Some have 75% to 100%, thanks to stronger rights and water stored from recent wet years.
Harder said past droughts have led to job losses in rural areas, and he wants to avoid this by upgrading the long-term supply.
Ross mentioned some good news – $5.3 billion for water upgrades in the new state budget. It’s part of a surplus of about $76 billion for the fiscal year that started July 1.
“We have one-time cash to invest,“ Ross said.
The plan includes fixing leaky canals, cleaning up polluted wells, conserving water on farms, and other measures. Storage is not among them.
Water suppliers also might tap the $1 trillion-plus infrastructure package President Joe Biden is negotiating with Congress.
Reservoirs large and small
Harder noted his support for a reservoir proposed for the hills west of Patterson. It would help the Del Puerto Water District deal with a sharp decline in its federal water allocation.
The congressman also endorses the proposed Sites Reservoir, west of the Sacramento Valley, and expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir, northwest of Tracy.
Far smaller projects could help, too. TID plans to build a “regulating reservoir” to better manage canal flows in the Ceres area, board member Michael Frantz said.
The district already has such a system near Hilmar, catching water that otherwise might run out the canal end. The idea could save perhaps 20,000 acre-feet a year. That’s about 1% of Don Pedro Reservoir, the main storage for TID, but worth pursuing in a time of uncertainty.
The Modesto Irrigation District has installed its own regulating reservoir along a canal north of Empire.
The ground is a reservoir, too
Many farmers are using wells this year to deal with the reduced river supplies. But they also face a state mandate that pumping not exceed recharge by about 2040.
Frantz said TID and MID are models for sustainable groundwater use. Much of it comes from flood irrigation, still in use despite the spread of drip and sprinkler systems to many farms.
The aquifers also can benefit when cities supplement their wells with treated river water. Modesto has done this on the Tuolumne since the mid-1990s.
Turlock and Ceres will do the same with a plant scheduled for completion in 2023. Their wells can fall short during drought, and they sometimes exceed drinking-water standards. TID will sell part of its Tuolumne water to the plant.
“It’s employing a lot of people,” project General Manager Robert Granberg said of the construction. “It’s developing a new supply for these communities that desperately need it, that are currently on groundwater — truly a regional solution.”
‘It’s not fish versus farms’
Farm Bureau President Jake Wenger spoke about a state proposal to greatly boost reservoir releases for lower-river fish. This could happen on the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced under the State Water Resources Control Board.
“Everybody in this room has talked explicitly about the need for more water,” Wenger said. “Yet we’re currently facing a regulation that would deplete this community of significant water resources.”
The board has said it is open to “voluntary agreements” that help fish while not taking so much water from farms and cities. They could include measures such as restoring gravel where salmon spawn and floodplains where baby fish develop.
The board members on hand, Joaquin Esquivel and Dorene D’Adamo, said they could not comment in detail on the plan. But they said in general that they were willing to work with water users.
“It’s not fish versus farms,” said D’Adamo, a Turlock resident. ‘”It’s fish and farms. It’s drinking water for communities. It’s refuges. We need to do it all.”
Solar panels along canals
Bales was a co-author on a recent study on the potential for solar panels shading canals around the state. It estimated that this could get California halfway to its 2030 goal for energy sources that do not worsen climate change.
The savings from reduced evaporation are more modest: enough water for perhaps 50,000 of the 9 million irrigated acres in the state.
This approach would reduce the need to build solar panels on farmland or in natural areas.
“Let’s put infrastructure over existing infrastructure,” Bales said.
TID is considering such a project as one of several options for increasing its solar portfolio. It could go before the board later this year.
The district supplies electricity to homes and businesses along with its farm water service.
Bales and colleagues at UC Merced also have looked into how forest health affects water supplies.
Much of the land has become over-dense with trees and brush, making wildfires more destructive than ever. Thinning them out could provide lumber and also reduce the amount of water transpired to the air.
Recycled water on West Side
Farmers in Del Puerto get part of their supply from sewage treatment plants serving Modesto, Ceres and Turlock. The cities upgraded the process so the water could be safely used on crops.
General Manager Anthea Hansen said the district did this because of greatly reduced allotments from the federal Central Valley Project. Farmers also are using wells to get by this year.
Del Puerto proposes the new reservoir so it can store water from wetter years and have more control over its operations.
Harder also is seeking money for a pipeline that would increase the Patterson Irrigation District’s use of the San Joaquin River.
This story was originally published July 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
