See Patagonia’s Founder, Yvon Chouinard, speak on behalf of California Water Impact Network about the devastating impact of Paper Water on California. Have you heard of paper water?  Click here for full video https://vimeo.com/226513260

In all of the intense media coverage of Oroville Dam spillway fiasco over the past couple of weeks, the mainstream media haven’t yet discussed the real issue behind the disaster: corporate control of California water politics.

The reason why state officials and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ignored a previous warning by Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba River Citizens League that the emergency spillway is not armored (concrete reinforced) and extensive erosion would take place if the emergency spillway was used is not just because of incompetence or negligence. (www.dailykos.com/…)

I believe it is because Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown spent all of their energy and money over the past decade into pushing the water bond and Delta Tunnels, rather than repairing and fixing existing infrastructure such as the Oroville Dam spillway, at the behest of corporate agribusiness interests and the Metropolitan Water District. Read more here

By Adam Keats, Mercury News.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein and San Joaquin Valley agribusiness would have us believe that bureaucratic red tape and blind adherence to environmental laws are holding back the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, preventing water from being delivered to thirsty farms and cities.

Aside from pushing a false conflict between farms and fish, this thinking is flawed for another reason: It grossly overstates the amount of water capable of being produced by the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.

The fundamental problem for water contractors dependent on Bay-Delta water supplies is not that the fish are getting too much water, but rather that the water isn’t there. Big Ag knows this full well because it baked this fact into the State Water Project contracts.

State Water Project contractors hold contracts for about 4.2 million acre-feet per year of project water (often referred to as “Table A Water”). Yet, as the Department of Water Resources admits, because much of the system was never built out — including several proposed dams that were taken off the table by Gov. Ronald Reagan when he protected several rivers as Wild and Scenic. So the State Water Project can only reliably produce between 2 and 2.4 million acre-feet per year. The difference is known as “paper water,” and the fact that the contracts are based on so much imaginary paper water is one of the main reasons the Bay-Delta ecosystem is collapsing.

The contracts are based on artificially inflated numbers because the “entitlements” set expectations high and put pressure on the state to actually deliver that amount of water.

These numbers present a false story of extreme hardship by the contractors, who even in the best years seem to only get half of the water they contract for. They put pressure on elected officials and provide false justification for bills like Feinstein’s. Continue reading here

By Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara Independent.

Two of the highest ranking officials in state government descended on Santa Barbara County this Monday to assure local politicians and water agency directors they recognize the severity of the county’s drought-inflicted water shortage and that help — in the form of grants, bonds, and low-interest loans — was available for water infrastructure solutions. But they made it pointedly clear that unless Santa Barbara politicians got far more involved than they have been and that managers from multiple water agencies cooperated with one another far better than they currently do, Santa Barbara’s chance of successfully competing for limited state funds hovered somewhere between zilch and nil. Read more here . . . Santa Barbara Independent

By Jacques Leslie, Los Angeles Times

A generation ago the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta tunnel project might have made a certain kind of sense. California’s lakes and rivers had been so thoroughly replumbed by dams, drains, pumps, canals and aqueducts that the state already contained the world’s most engineered water system — so why not add one more megaproject to the labyrinth?

Water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flows into the delta, where some of it is directed into pumps that send it south to farmers on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side and to municipal users in Southern California. The tunnel project, known as California WaterFix, is the latest rendition of proposals dating back to the 1940s to divert Sacramento River water south before it reaches the environmentally ravaged delta. The WaterFix calls for a pair of 35-mile-long, 40-foot-diameter tunnels to be installed as much as 150 feet below ground, starting at Clarksburg and leading to the state aqueduct near Tracy.

The tunnels’ planners hope to increase water deliveries south by avoiding the delta and restrictions meant in part to protect fish that get caught in the current pumping system. But as the project has evolved . . . Read More

By Lynn Alley, Wine Spectator

By Tara Duggan, San Francisco Chronicle

In the shallow waters off Elk, in Mendocino County, a crew from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife dived recently to survey the area’s urchin and abalone populations. Instead of slipping beneath a canopy of leafy bull kelp, which normally darkens the ocean floor like a forest, they found a barren landscape like something out of “The Lorax.”

A single large abalone scaled a bare kelp stalk, hunting a scrap to eat, while urchins clustered atop stark gray stone that is normally striped in colorful seaweed.

“When the urchins are starving and are desperate, they will leave the reef as bare rock,” said Cynthia Catton, an environmental scientist with Fish and Wildlife. Warm seawater has prevented the growth of kelp, the invertebrates’ main food source, so the urchins aren’t developing normally; the spiky shells of many are nearly empty. As a result, North Coast sea urchin divers have brought in only one-tenth of their normal haul this year.

The plight of urchins, abalones and the kelp forest is just one example of an extensive ongoing disruption of California’s coastal ecosystem — and the fisheries that depend on it — after several years of unusually warm ocean conditions and drought. Earlier this month, The Chronicle reported that scientists have discovered evidence in San Francisco Bay and its estuary of what is being called the planet’s sixth mass extinction, affecting species including chinook salmon and delta smelt.

Baby salmon are dying by the millions in drought-warmed rivers while en route to the ocean. Young oysters are being deformed or killed by ocean acidification. The Pacific sardine population has crashed, and both sardines and squid are migrating to unusual new places. And Dungeness crab was devastated last year by an unprecedented toxic algal bloom that delayed the opening of its season for four months.

The collapses are taking a financial toll on the state’s seafood industry. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Wednesday showed the California fishing harvest decreased in value by $109 million between 2014 and 2015, or by 43 percent.

The impact has already been felt in Bay Area homes. This summer, chinook salmon sold for more than $35 per pound in some markets, about 50 percent higher than in previous years. The absence of Dungeness crab during the 2015 holidays jarred many locals, though the Bay Area’s favorite crustacean is still slated to return to tables on Nov. 15, when the 2016 commercial season is scheduled to begin.

More disturbing are signs that the recent changes to the Pacific Ocean could represent the new normal.

Follow this link to see the full article and images

by Dan Bacher

Has the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation become a rogue agency within the Department of Interior? It’s beginning to look like that, based on recent Inspector General reports documenting the loss of millions of taxpayer dollars through Reclamation mismanagement in the Klamath Basin and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

On the heels of an Inspector General audit finding that Reclamation has “wasted” $32.2 million in illegal payments to Klamath Basin irrigators, a new federal report reveals that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has cost taxpayers millions of dollars by failing to collect moneys owed by Klamath Basin irrigators for nearly a decade. 

The audits have spurred calls by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and other groups to hold individual Reclamation officials accountable and to reform the embattled agency.

The latest audit by the Office of Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Interior, dated September 27, 2016 but released this month, concludes that Reclamation never collected “repayment of millions of dollars of costs incurred to design, construct, and operate and maintain new head gates and fish screens” within the vast Klamath Project.   

These gates and screens are intended to keep federally protected fish “in the river and out of the Klamath project irrigation canals,” according to the IG report. 

The report from Michael P. Colombo, Western Regional Manager for Audits, Inspections and Evaluations, made the following recommendations to David Murillo, MId-Pacific Regional Director, Bureau of Reclamation:

We recommend that USBR: 

1. Identify USBR’s total costs to design and construct the A-Canal head gates and fish screens; 

2. Identify USBR’s total cost to operate and maintain the A-Canal head gates and fish screens from 2003 to 2011;  

3. Promptly notify the Klamath Irrigation District of its obligation to repay the cost to design, construct, and operate and maintain the A-Canal head gates and fish screens and the total amount that must be repaid, as determined by USBR in Recommendations 1 and 2; and  

4. Negotiate and establish a repayment contract with the Klamath Irrigation District to secure timely repayment of USBR’s cost to design, construct, and operate and maintain the A-Canal head gates and fish screens, as determined by USBR in Recommendations 1 and 2. 

Colombo asked Murillo to provide a written response to this report within 30 days. 

In another audit report dated October 11, 2016, the IG found that Reclamation improperly diverted $32 million in federal funds intended for drought contingency planning and helping endangered coho salmon and sucker populations to a Klamath irrigator’s group over several years without the  legal authority to do so.

“We found that USBR did not have the legal authority to enter into the cooperative agreement, resulting in $32.2 million in wasted funds spent by KWAPA (Klamath Water and Power Agency )under the agreement,” wrote Mary L. Kendall, Deputy Inspector General for the Office of Inspector General, in the audit report dated October 11, 2016. 

The report found that the program had done little to help endangered coho salmon, Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers, as it was intended to do. 

The Klamath Water and Power Agency was a water and power authority in Klamath Falls, Oregon that received water from federal water projects in northern California and southern Oregon. KWAPA was forced to close its doors on March 31, 2006 due to “disorganization” and complaints filed by PEER.

You can read my piece on that report here: www.counterpunch.org

Reclamation has yet to respond to the IG audit on head gates and fish screens,  but it disputes the IG report on the $32 million wasted on irrigator subsidies and refuses to change its practices or recoup moneys illegally spent, PEER noted.

“Reclamation maintains that the reimbursement program has been an important tool in dealing with water issues in an over-allocated basin,” the Bureau claimed in a written statement.  

Interior appears to be in disarray as these scandals unfold. This intra-agency dispute regarding the misspent $32 million has been referred to Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for resolution. “But that post has been vacant since 2014,” PEER points out.

Meanwhile, Kristen Sarri, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, left Interior on October 24 for her new position as President and CEO with the  National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has delegated her authority to respond to a related probe by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to the Commissioner of Reclamation, according to PEER.

“It looks like the Interior Secretary is letting the inmates run the asylum,” stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein. “If the current Secretary will not impose adult supervision, we will urge that her successor commit to implementing obviously overdue reforms of the Bureau of Reclamation as a condition of confirmation.”

Dinerstein’s organization is representing Reclamation employees who are blowing the whistle on what she says are “illegal and environmentally tone-deaf actions by the agency.”

Dinerstein said “other shoes are also expected to drop” on Reclamation. These include a pending IG audit of how Reclamation is allowing the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to illegally siphon off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to prepare the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Governor Jerry Brown’s controversial Delta Tunnels plan, a project that will principally benefit corporate agribusiness interests.

Whistleblower complaints funneled through PEER also prompted this pending investigation. 

That PEER complaint charges that:

• Those funds, over $60 million, are earmarked for fish habitat improvements under the authority of the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. However, they are instead being expended on work that “will harm critical habitat for at least five endangered and threatened fish species. Out of millions spent not a dime went to habitat improvements;”

• The state double-billed for work it supposedly already did with an earlier $50 million grant;

• And the state collected all of the federal funds when the agreement was executed, in violation of a 50/50 matching requirement.

The Delta Tunnels project, now called the California WaterFix by state and federal officials, is deeply connected to the Klamath River watershed. The two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species.

The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes.

You can read my piece on the “Tunnelgate” scandal here: www.counterpunch.org

 “The unmistakable pattern in all these investigations is that Reclamation is ripping off fish and wildlife assistance to further reward already heavily subsidized irrigators, often for activities to the detriment of fish and wildlife,” concluded Dinerstein. “Both taxpayers and the environment are utterly ill-served by current Reclamation policies and leaders. Fundamental change in Reclamation is imperative.”   

To fully understand the Delta Tunnels plan, you also need to recognize the deep connection between the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called “marine protected areas” in California and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). In spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest.

To read my report, Deep Regulatory Capture Exposed: The Links Between Delta Tunnels Plan & MLPA Initiative, go to: www.dailykos.com/…;

Download the latest audit report

Look at audit report on Reclamation illegal irrigator subsidies

See related Special Counsel probe

Note ongoing audit on Reclamation’s improper Delta Tunnel payments 

View departure of last remaining senior Interior Policy, Management and Budget official