Will lawsuits, high costs put end to Brown’s water tunnels plan?

Thomas Elias has written an Op-ed in the Riverside Press Enterprise in which he calls Northern Californians "resentful".

What NorCal 'resents' is the South building houses without any water supply then expecting the rest of the state to pay for their greed.

The Pass Area has built so many houses that the beaumont basin has been in overdraft for over 15 years.

TODAY 2/3's of the beaumont-cherry valley water district's and 1/2 of the yucaipa valley water district's water using is coming from imported state water - which cost millions - and they are building THOUSANDS more houses .

Jeff Davis, Manager of the San Gorgonio Pass Water Ggency stated at a workshop titled: "The Rising Cost of Imported Water" that how the tunnel water will work is that it will make water so expensive that it will drive farmers that the farmers will make more money by selling the water to socal houses then the farmers will make producing crops.

Will lawsuits, high costs put end to Brown’s water tunnels plan?

The first time Jerry Brown was governor of California, his greatest policy defeat came when resentful Northern Californians voted almost unanimously in 1982 to reverse a legislative vote authorizing a massive ditch around the delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.

This was called the Peripheral Canal; it aimed to bring Northern California river water to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and cities in Southern California.

Once that plan died, anything remotely similar became political anathema for decades until Brown retook the governor’s office in late 2010. Demonstrating that his goals rarely change, Brown soon began pushing for a more sophisticated and expensive version of the canal, this time two giant underground concrete culverts rather than an earthen ditch like the original canal plan.

Brown has pushed this tunnel plan all through his second go-’round in the Capitol, and now it may be reaching a decisive point. Not only are water districts around the state becoming concerned about who will pay the project’s cost of about $17 billion (plus interest), but local governments in the immediate area are alarmed over a host of environmental issues.

In late August, Sacramento County sued to stop the plan, which might make water supplies more reliable, but would produce very little more water than moves south from the Delta area without the tunnels in an average year.

Cities like Stockton and Antioch, hard by the Delta and its latticework of canals and streams, plus the Placer County Water Agency and several groups of commercial fishermen also are suing.

Sacramento County’s action says the state Department of Water Resources ignores environmental harm to the Delta, including the taking of almost 700 acres of the county’s farmland out of production during the projected 13-year construction period. The county also says its water quality will drop, as would the quality of water flowing to and through the Delta after the tunnels open.

State officials deny most of this, insisting water quality in the Delta will improve and be far more controllable if the tunnels are built. The conservation groups Restore the Delta, Friends of the River and the Sierra Club joined the lawsuits, too, insisting the 35-mile-long tunnels flout the California Environmental Quality Act (known as CEQA) and would cost up to $67 billion by the time they’re done.

Enter money. This project might be a pretty tough sell in Southern California once more of the public fully understands the cost, with little prospect of increasing water supplies to the region.

Even the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to more than 15 million persons from the Tehachapi and San Gabriel mountains to the Mexican border, is a little bit querulous. The Met, as the district is often known, supported the original Peripheral Canal and has generally backed the tunnels, arguing they can stabilize water deliveries to its vast area.

But in August, the Met’s staff reported that “The costs of the California WaterFix (a recent name for the tunnels) are substantial.” The staff added, though, that “the costs that would be allocated to (the Met) are reasonable and affordable, given the water supply reliability improvements.”

But some members of the Met’s board, mostly city council members and elected county officials, wonder about the projected cost split of 55 percent paid by urban users and 45 percent by largely agricultural rural water customers.

And there are doubts that farmers can afford even the cost share that might be allotted to them.

If farmers can’t or won’t pay, warn skeptics, customers of the Met and other urban water agencies like the Santa Clara County Water District and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power would get stuck with additional costs, possibly driving rates up far more than the currently projected range of between $18 and $60 per year for an average family, depending on prevailing interest rates.

The bottom line here might just be the bottom line: If the water districts are unwilling to make a big financial commitment, Brown’s pipe dream will die. The same if the slew of lawsuits against the twin tunnels should succeed. If that happens, what visible legacy will Brown leave after a total of 16 years as governor?

Read Full Story Here: http://www.pe.com/2017/09/05/w...

Beaumont-Cherry Valley Water District August 3, 2017, Workshop Transcript

8:00 Davis: It has been done throughout the State, all over the State for decades. So the answer to that question is ‘Yes’. But you have to watch it in the dry years. If you read our Urban Water Management Plan we say that we have trouble in dry years. We, as an Agency, has to go out and find additional water supplies for dry years, which is what we just did and we’re going to do some more. So $1,800 an acre/foot before it going up 3% to 3 1/2%, Not 100% reliable. 60% reliable, some years it’s going to be less, some years it’s going to be more. I think the reliability in the future is probably going to stick around 60%, I don’t think it’s going to go up. We’re going to do the Twin Tunnels Project, you might have heard. Also known as ‘Cal Water Fix’. That’s basically going to keep the water reliability at 60%. If we didn’t build that Project, we think the reliability would go down to under 50%.

9:00 Davis: Table A Water without the Cal Water Fix would actually decrease in reliability over the years. So clearly; water agencies that depend on Table A water have to find additional supplies. We know that, you know that. We’ve been trying to do that for a number of years.

Davis: So with the Cal Water Fix some of the water agencies may, in order to pay for the Cal Water Fix may decide to sell their Table A to other State water contractors. In fact I know that some are interested in doing that and Antelope Valley might be one of them that would be willing to do that. They’re not going to do that now, they’re going to wait and see how the Cal Water Fix impacts them.

23:00 Davis: We’re certainly in the market for additional Table A water for contractors as well. As the Cal Water Fix moves forward in the next year or two I think there’s going to be more Table A water for sale from other contractors. We would tend to be buyers in that market. We are negotiating a deal right now for additional Table A water, I’m not in a position to say how much or what the cost is per acre foot. Table A Water Rights are averaging about $6,000 per acre foot. You can’t compare the $6,000 per acre foot to the $1,800 or $1,000 per acre foot because it’s a one-time cost, it’s not every year. You buy the right say at $6,000 per acre foot and you’ve got that right forever. However that’s not the total costs because when you buy Table A water from another contractor there’s a one-time fee.