Sometime in the next few weeks, the federal Department of the Interior is scheduled to issue an opinion on the question of whether Humboldt County can finally claim the annual 50,000 acre-feet of Trinity River water that it was promised in 1955, when Congress passed the legislation that built Lewiston Dam near Weaverville and began the diversion of our wild river to the Central Valley. If and when that opinion is released — it has been delayed before — its contents will serve as the best local measure of the Obama administration’s steel.
It would take a gargantuan feat of twisted reasoning to argue that the water is anything less than the county’s due. Back in the ’50s, Humboldt County was outraged by the proposed addition of Trinity water to the Central Valley Project. The Board of Supervisors at the time pressed for and received a 50,000 acre-foot water allocation as a way to buy local support. Congress signed off on the deal. Humboldt County’s allocation was written into the Trinity River Division Act and reaffirmed by contract four years later.
Yet we have never received a drop of that water, and this despite recent protests by county government and, especially, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, whose land is centered on the Trinity and whose people have depended on it since time immemorial. This despite the shocking decline of North Coast salmon fisheries, especially on the Klamath River, of which the Trinity is the largest tributary.
Why have we never received our water? Largely because the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Lewiston Dam, has simply refused to give it to us. They are supported in their refusal by the frighteningly powerful Central Valley farming lobby. Together they insist that we are already getting our 50,000 acre-feet a year — it is included, they say, in the water that they graciously allow into the Trinity River from spill gates at the end of their reservoir.
Historical research undertaken by the Hoopa Tribe plainly shows this to be nonsense. Humboldt County’s allocation was always intended to be an allocation above and beyond the bare-minimal habitat requirements that have been imposed on the river for most of the post-dam era, and was to be used for whatever useful purpose we desire. But it remains to be seen whether Team Obama will stand behind the statutory record, the federal government’s unambiguous contract obligations and a river ecosystem on its last legs. It could, instead, follow the treaded path and give Central Valley agribusiness whatever it desires.
This has always been sleazy, but it would be especially egregious in this day and age. The Westlands Water District, the largest user of Trinity River water and a massive force in California politics, currently pays around $36 per acre-foot for its Central Valley Project deliveries — a dollar for 9,000 gallons. There might conceivably be some sort of rationale for that massive government subsidy if the water in question were used for its intended purpose — agriculture. Instead, though, Westlands, like many Central Valley Project water users, is developing a sideline in water brokerage. Right now it’s considering shipping 100,000 acre-feet of its current humongous water surplus to the Metropolitan Water District, which serves municipal users in the Los Angeles area. Last year, another Central Valley Project customer sold 14,000 acre-feet of irrigation water to San Bernardino County for $5,500 per acre-foot — something like 100 times the price it paid — and netted a profit upwards of $70 million.
Of course, such brazen raids on the public treasury require solid political support. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a public booster of Westlands and other Central Valley users — precisely the people who will squeal loudest if the administration attempts to honor the United States’ long-neglected contract with Humboldt County, thereby taking those valuable gallons off their nascent commodities market. Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity has been known to broadcast live from Westlands territory, screaming about the federal government killing Central Valley agriculture (irony is dead) through enforcement of environmental laws.
The Obama administration seems to cave to such pressure on alternate days, saving up barely enough political capital to attempt something worthwhile tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Or maybe the administration will see this case for the clear-cut matter of law and justice that it is.
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Hey, it’s that time of year again! The NCJ‘s annual “Best of Humboldt” issue — the funnest issue of the year — drops on Sept. 2. That means we need your votes, stat!
We want to crowdsource our picks for Humboldt County’s best bar, restaurant, coffeehouse, band and two-thirds of a dozen other things. To save everyone a bunch of headache, voting is online-only this year, so direct your browser to northcoastjournal.com/bestof2010/ and chime in. Polling ends Aug. 27. For all that is holy please make your voice heard!
This article appears in Beer Me, Jesus.
Great blurb on the water and our right to it – contractually – what are the comments from our local elected leaders?
What do our very own Sups think; maybe Lovelace can back some of that ‘I am the most liberal sup, in the most liberal town’ talk with some action and deliver something more than verbal acts of hubris.
Thanks for the info.
As for the Westlands deal, your characterization is a bit sensationalized. The MWD deal would be unprecedented and the result of Westlands’ failure last year, despite their reputed political power, to get enough water for its customers. Expecting the same this year, Westlands farmers left vast acreage fallow, only to get water allotments in June and later, when it did them no good at all.
Faced with having a surprising excess of water and no way to use it, they reached out to MWD, which is having a hard time supplying its customers’ needs due to Delta litigation, Colorado River shortages, etc. What would you have them do with it? Let it run out to sea when the dams are opened to drop water levels in preparation for the winter rainy season?
All this water is California’s water, not my water or your water. (I’m a Southern Californian, in case you’re wondering.) We have a state-wide responsibility to manage it reasonably for the use of all Californians.
Laer:
It’s honorable of you to give your name.
You say …
… and your attempt at a rhetorical question, there, sort of illustrates the North/South divide when talking about California water issues.
We used to have a fishing industry up here. We used to have fish. You’ve probably eaten them from time to time, in the past.
It so happens that the Klamath River salmon runs that remain occur in the fall — “in preparation for the winter rainy season,” you might call it. And there the salmon sometimes die on the banks of the river for lack of water, and that’s because of the dams and diversions on the Klamath, Shasta, Scott and Trinity Rivers.
It’s not quite true that “all this water is California’s water.” Certain users — private users, municipal users — have contracts for shares of it. Humboldt County’s contract has never been honored. Westlands’ contract, of course, has.
And a mockery is made of the fine civic sentiments in your final paragraph by the fact that Westlands and other agricultural users are now taking “California’s water” and trading it on their own account, to entities such as your clients.
Southern California does not have adequate water supply for its continually growing population. It’s a friggin desert, fer chrissakes.
Get on that desalination technology or something, Laer.
At the least shut down the golf courses before pointing your drinking straws up here.
To the person from SoCal, it would make sense that you don’t understand the value of a natural resource to it’s native area considering Southern California has historically been draining, literally, surrounding areas of their natural resources. Those of us who live on or near these resources witness the damage it is doing to our area and our way of life.
Our water? If it is California’s water then why does the Bureau of Reclamation control where it goes, how much it is worth, and how liitle they are willing to leave in the river? If Humboldt County gets its 50,000 ac ft then who will decide what it is used for; our Board of Supervisors, who?
This article is the most succinct and accurate one I have read, so far, regarding the ‘great california water rip-off’. After a 20 year fight we were ‘allowed’ to retain 50% of the Trinity flow. Experience and science has demonstrated that this is not enough. A vast quantity of diverted water is being used to leach selenium and chlorine from from farmland contaminated by chemical fertilizer. The evaporation ponds are clearly visible along hiways 5 &99. One could also make a case for ‘saving the central valley desert’ – a significant ecosystem in it’s own right that has been destroyed by development .
The link you have to vote in the “Best of 2010” doesn’t seem to be working for me. Is the problem on my end, or yours?
boo to the online-only voting. I smell lazy. Should be the other way around: stamped envelope only, LOCAL4LIFE-G
Fred: I’m going to take a gamble and say it’s on yours. Click my name on this comment — should get you there.
Boo: I forgot to say that you can also wire your votes in by telegraph, or send them via carrier pigeon.
sure…have the pigeons do the work for you.
Westlands Water purchased the Bollibokka Club, a private fishing club on the lower 7 miles of the McCloud River, so a proposed raising of Shasta Dam would meet with less opposition, so the tribes would be powerless, and so they can make even more money, on top of all their federal subsidies and water-shipping schemes. Their agenda is right out there in the open.
Look, Im an environmentalist first and foremost, and I decry the disastrous decline of salmon up here, but the common good has to be considered. Central Valley farming is one of the country’s major breadbaskets, and farms are already fallow due to lack of water.
The dam is already in place, the salmon are already degraded, I would venture at this point it’s in the greater good, for all of California, to keep central valley farms green.
But if it’s going to lawns and golf courses, that’s a different story. Why water rights need to be socialized, so water that could go for drinking or agriculture doesn’t get wasted.