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Trinity Division History
BACKGROUND
Headwaters of the Trinity River originate deep within the remote and rugged Trinity Alps. The Alps often are referred to as a counter part of the Swiss Alps because of the scenic nature of their jagged peaks and deep cut valleys. The Alps range in altitude from six to nine thousand feet, and encompass an area of roughly 500 thousand acres of primitive wilderness.
Deep within the Trinity Alps are more than 53 high mountain lakes that consist of deep granite waters, or rich and fertile spring and seep lakes. All of these provide a broad spectrum of wilderness opportunities, but they also serve as snow and water catch basins. Early spring thaws and rain water spill over lake outlets and cascade down steep terrain, often carving through deep granite formations. Eventually, this water becomes a complex network of more than 1,600 miles of tributaries that comprise the Trinity watershed and once fed the Trinity River Basin ecosystem.
The Trinity Alps watershed generates an average annual water runoff of about 1,250,000 acre-feet at Lewiston. Since completion of the Trinity and Lewiston Dams in 1963, as much as 90 percent of that water runoff has been diverted from the Trinity River Basin to the San Luis Reservoir. From there it goes principally to the Westlands Water District, but also to a limited number of other water users in the Central Valley, mostly subsidized agriculture, and a few urban users.
Annual average water diversions from the Trinity River since 1963 have approximated 1,000,000 acre-feet of water. Westlands is in the western San Joaquin Valley and until 1963 was largely a desert wasteland. Some irrigated farming had taken place since 1915 using private wells. Westlands, with severe groundwater overdraft problems, signed its first contract with the Bureau of Reclamation for water deliveries in the year Trinity and Lewiston Dams were completed.
Water which flows down the Trinity River below the Trinity and Lewiston Dams moves westerly to join the Klamath River 110 miles downstream at Weitchpec. The upper 40 miles of the Trinity River, from Lewiston to its junction with the North Fork, are extremely sensitive waters that truly are the heart of the entire 110-mile ecosystem below the dams. At its confluence with the North Fork, the Trinity River begins to transform from placid almost spring creek-like flats and glides into more defined riffles, channels and deep water holding pools. Its character begins to change dramatically.
The Trinity River gains volume and velocity as it is fed and nurtured by 41 additional tributaries and its three secondary rivers - the North Fork, the New River and the South Fork. These rivers support some of the last remaining and largest Winter and Summer run Steelhead, Fall and Spring Chinook Salmon, and Fall Coho Salmon populations in California. Trinity Coho Salmon now are listed under the Environmental Protection Act as “threatened,” and Steelhead and Fall Chinook Salmon are candidates for listing.
The Trinity is blessed with both resident and anadromous fish populations that greatly benefit commercial offshore and in-river Native American fisheries and support Tribal spiritual and cultural values, ocean and inland sport fisheries, and the economies of Trinity Basin, the North Coast of California and Southern Oregon.
Trinity fish species include resident and ocean-run Brown Trout, resident Rainbow Trout, wild Winter and Summer-run Steelhead, Spring and Fall Chinook Salmon, and the threatened Fall Coho Salmon. The Trinity River continues to support strong native fish stocks, but in numbers that are minuscule compared to those which existed prior to completion of Trinity and Lewiston Dams. Native anadromous fish returning to the river by the early 1990’s declined by as much as 80 to 90 percent since construction of the dams. Including hatchery stocks, about half of escapement goals now return to the river. Fish stocks still have not recovered in spite of some approximate $105 million in “restoration” measures.
In the early 1950’s, then Congressman Clair Engle, with the support of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Westlands Water District, decided that the Trinity River should be dammed, and that its water should be diverted to heavily federal taxpayer subsidized corporate, or corporate equivalent agricultural interests, in the western San Joaquin Valley. The Trinity Division of the Central Valley Project (CVP) also was authorized for the generation of hydroelectric power. This power is sold to non-agricultural customers paying rates which are higher than costs of production (by law, CVP power is sold to users at cost) in order to subsidize, even further, water deliveries and power used to pump water to Westlands and other agricultural customers.
At a Public Hearing promoting construction of the dams to Trinity County residents, Representative Claire Engle, as reported in the TRINITY JOURNAL on February 28, 1952 stated that the Trinity Project “does not contemplate diversion of one bucketful of water which is necessary is this watershed." He declared further, “The argument that it (building of the dams) would ruin fishing is absolute nonsense."
In records of other Public Hearings held prior to enactment of federal legislation creating the Trinity River Division, Central Valley Project, a Bureau of Reclamation official stated that the Trinity River's fisheries “would be improved by construction of the dams.” (emphasis added).
On August 12, 1955, federal legislation was enacted creating the Trinity River Division, Central Valley Project (P. L. 84-386). The Act provided for construction of the dams to divert water from the Trinity River, construction of miles of tunnels to carry the water, and construction of hydroelectric power plants.
The Act's provisions state, among other things “That the Secretary (of the Interior) is authorized and directed to adopt appropriate measures to insure the preservation and propagation of fish and wildlife…”
It was represented to Congress prior to enactment of the legislation that no more than 56 percent of the Trinity River’s water would be diverted. That representation never has been changed. However, promptly upon completion of the dams, 90 percent of the water from the Trinity watershed was diverted. That diversion volume was maintained until 1981, when Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus reduced diversions somewhat. However, his directive returning water to the river never was implemented fully because of the emergence of drought conditions. In 1991, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan reduced diversions from the Trinity River to approximately 73 percent of average annual watershed runoff. A total of 340,000 acre-feet of water a year annually was returned to the river in place of the 150 thousand, or 90 percent of watershed runoff it had been receiving.
TRINITY BASIN ECOSYSTEM SINCE 1963
Beyond legislative mandates included in the original 1955 Trinity Division legislation, additional legislation has reaffirmed intended protections for the river basin ecosystem, fisheries and wildlife. These include the 1984 Trinity River Basin Fish and Wildlife Management Program Act (P.L. 98-541), (which was reauthorized in 1996 (P.L. 104-149), and the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act (P.L. 102-575). The federal government, through the Interior Department, also has trust obligations to Native American Tribes, two of which -- the Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes -- are dependent upon Trinity River based fishery resources. This trust obligation has gone unfulfilled from lack of fish, essentially since construction of the dams.
As a result of decomposed granite and other sediment entering Trinity River from Grass Valley Creek, which smothered spawning beds and diminished fish holding pools, the Trinity River Stream Rectification Act (P.L. 96-335) was enacted into law in 1980. Its purpose was to provide for construction of Buckhorn Dam, a sediment collection dam high on the Grass Valley Creek watershed, and the Grass Valley Creek sediment collecting pools (Hamilton Ponds) to capture sediment from the heavily logged, and extremely fragile decomposed granite watershed. The Act also provided for the maintenance and continued dredging of the two Hamilton Ponds.
Subsequently, the entire 17,000-acre Grass Valley Creek watershed was purchased from Champion International after it had logged it fully. Construction of these facilities, acquisition of the Grass Valley Creek watershed, and initiatives to rehabilitate the watershed cost a total of about $50 million, or more than half of total Trinity restoration expenditures through the fiscal year ended September 30, 1998 - $90.8 million.
The Hamilton Ponds in recent years have been successful, generally, except in very wet years. This success also is attributable to extensive habitat rehabilitation activities on and in the watershed.
Although enabling legislation creating the Trinity Division required that there (be no harm) to the Trinity River Basin ecosystem, it took 18 years (1963 to 1981) for the Department of Interior to figure out that very great harm to wildlife, to fisheries and to the entire ecosystem, had resulted from construction of the dams and diversion of virtually all of the watershed's water. In 1981, Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus ordered a 12-year (it took 18 years) Flow Study to determine how much water should be returned to the river.
Thereafter, it was another three years before the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service initiated the 12-year Flow Study to determine the effect of various water flows on the Trinity's fisheries and wildlife. The Flow Study was started in 1984. Most experts believe that such a Study could have been completed in no more than five, or six years. In any event, the Flow Study Report also was reviewed thoroughly and independently by scientists and other experts in various fields, and it was released to the public on May 20, 1999.
In 1994, a combination federal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and state Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was initiated to measure impacts from various changes in water allocation to support the Secretarial decision on water flows into Trinity River, as well as upon dam operating criteria, and to evaluate habitat restoration projects. Lead agencies for the EIS are the Bureau of Reclamation, the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Lead agency for the EIR is the County of Trinity.
The EIS/EIR evaluated the benefits and impacts of higher water flows back into the river, as contained in the Flow Study Report, but it also evaluated other impacts and alternatives. Some had advocated increasing the height of the dam, and some had advocated removing the dam. Essentially all conceivable alternatives were evaluated in the EIS/EIR.
Following more than 20 years of scientific study, and an almost six-year effort that produced a Final EIS and EIR, and a Congressionally mandated deadline of December 1996 for the decision, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt issued a Record of Decision (ROD) December 19, 2000, which returned some water to the Trinity River.
The ROD by the Interior Secretary, with the concurrence of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, included a permanent flow volume schedule (water return, or re-allocation of water to the river), and established new operating criteria for the two dams. That decision returned an annual average of 594,500 acre-feet (amounts vary by five different water type years), or about 47 percent of total watershed runoff at Lewiston.
This decision was challenged before it was even made in federal district court in Fresno by Westlands Water District. The judge dismissed that challenge. Immediately following the Interior Secretary’s decision, Westlands Water District and other water districts, joined by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Northern California Power Agency filed another action. As a part of that lawsuit, they sought a Preliminary Injunction halting any increase in a return of water to the river. Judge Oliver Wanger did not grant that request. He did limit increases in flows to those associated with a “critically dry” water type year, pending a full trial of the case. That trial probably will start in fall, 2001. The judge also required that two biological opinions on fish species be evaluated in a supplemental EIS/EIR, along with an analysis of impacts related to California’s current energy shortages. The judge also ordered that all other restoration program activities included in the ROD continue. As an aside, implementation of the ROD will result in more power being generated by the Trinity Division’s hydroelectric facilities in 2001 than otherwise would be the case.
Flow volume figures for the river contained in the Trinity River Flow Evaluation Report released in May 1999, in the Final EIS/EIR released in the fall of 2000, and in the ROD are:
Annual Water Releases into Trinity River
Present 340,000 acre-feet
Annual Flows in the Record of Decision by Water-Type Year
Extremely Wet 815,000 acre feet
Wet 701,000 acre feet
Normal 636,000 acre-feet
Dry 453,000 acre feet
Critically Dry 369,000 acre-feet
Weighted Average 594,500 acre-feet
The complete ROD, together with a hydrograph (page 13) of annual flows and timing of water releases into the river, can be seen at:
http://www.ccfwo.r1.fws.gov/reports/ROD12-19-00(b).pdf
TRINITY RIVER BASIN
RESTORATION HISTORY
Subsequent Legislative History
In 1984, Congress passed legislation, the Trinity River Basin Fish and Wildlife Management Program (P.L. 98-541), commonly called the Trinity Restoration Program. This legislation was designed to assist in restoration of the Trinity River Basin ecosystem, degraded by years of excessive water diversions, poor logging practices and other activities adverse to the Trinity Basin's ecosystem, fisheries and wildlife. That Act, which was reauthorized in 1996 as P.L. 104-109, stated as its objective, among other things, the re-establishment of “fish and wildlife populations to those levels which existed immediately preceding construction of the Trinity Division.”
The Interior Department through the Bureau of Reclamation manages the Restoration Program. The legislation established a Task Force as a policy advisory group to the Bureau of Reclamation (which reported to the Interior Secretary), and the Task Force established various sub-committees. The principal ones were the Technical Advisory; Policy, Priority and Budget; and Outreach Committees. These advised the Task Force. The Task Force was composed of 19 representatives from the following entities:
California Department of Fish and Game
California Department of Water Resources
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
U.S. Bureau of Land Management
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
U.S. Forest Service
U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service
U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service
Trinity County Board of Supervisors
Humboldt County Board of Supervisors
Hoopa Valley Tribe
Yurok Tribe
Karuk Tribe
Commercial fishing interests
Sport fishing interests
Timber interests
Electric power interests
Agricultural water interests
The Yurok and Karuk Tribes and commercial, timber and sportfishing representatives were added to the Task Force when the Program was reauthorized in 1996. Electric power and water user representatives were added in 1999 when the Task Force was rechartered as a Federal Advisory Committee.
Recent Legislative History
Trinity Restoration legislation expired on September 30, 1998 and was not reauthorized by Congress. Although there was consensus (by definition, consensus presumes compromise by many for the advancement of a principal objective) by virtually all members of the Trinity River Task Force on draft reauthorization legislation, it was not agreeable to all parties.
The effects of the absence of reauthorization are manifold and many are undesirable: Funding for restoration activities must compete against other Bureau of Reclamation appropriation requests. This has meant less funding for some much needed restoration work.
There also exists, in some quarters, a belief that without reauthorization legislation, money for restoration will not be spent in the most cost effective and scientifically credible manner. In addition, it appears that no quantified mandate for fish and wildlife population levels exists, beyond that contained in the expired Restoration Program legislation.
Following the Record of Decision, management and organizational structure of the Trinity Restoration Program was changed. The Trinity Management Council (TMC), which reports to the Interior Secretary, is the top policy and decision-making group. It is composed of entirely of federal, state, local and Tribal governments:
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
U.S. Forest Service
Hoopa Valley Tribe
Yurok Tribe
State of California – Resources Agency Designee
Trinity County
National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA)
Below the TMC, on an equal level, are two advisory groups: The Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group and Independent Review Panels. Reporting both to the TMC and to the two advisory panels are the Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management Team, which consists of a Rehabilitation Implementation Group and a Technical Modeling Analysis Group. At the base of the organizational structure is Implementation, composed of Regulatory Agencies, Implementation Agencies and Contractors.
RESTORATION PROGRAM
PROJECTS AND COSTS
Since 1983, approximately $99.5 million has been spent through the Restoration Program, with about $5 million spent in the fiscal ending September 30, 2000. Between 1976 and 1982, $3 million was spent to develop a restoration plan. Major expenditures since 1983 have been (all approximations) $25 million to build Buckhorn Dam, $17 million to acquire from Champion International Grass Valley Creek watershed, and $3 million for modernizing Lewiston Hatchery, which had as its purpose mitigation for lost spawning and rearing habitat for fish ABOVE the dam -- at least 109 miles of prime, now lost habitat.
Approximately $6 million is available for the Restoration Program for the current fiscal year ending September 30, 2001. However, work is constrained to limited activities -- inadequate for restoration, absent even more water than is recommended in the Record of Decision.
The hatchery has been operated as a production and/or mitigation hatchery. Some fishery biologists believe it should be operated only as a restoration hatchery. Also, many of these persons and others believe over-production of hatchery fish should be avoided, particularly if sufficient water is returned to the Trinity River to restore an ecosystem which will support production of wild, natural fish -- an objective of the law, of every knowledgeable fishery scientist, and the Flow Study and EIS/EIR.
The Coho (silver) Salmon has been listed as a threatened species of fish. Several other species of fish are in danger of being listed as threatened or possibly endangered, and therefore not catchable. Lewiston Hatchery began a few years ago to fin-clip all Steelhead and Coho so that the hatchery now is producing fish, which, within limits, people are allowed to catch.
Other Restoration Program activities, in addition to major projects and not all-inclusive, include rehabilitation of habitat decimated watersheds. It will be some years before these efforts produce complete results, but on Grass Valley Creek watershed for example, already there is significant evidence of the effectiveness of this effort. Annual dredging of the sediment collecting ponds (Hamilton Ponds), at the confluence of Grass Valley Creek with the Trinity River, still is required on an ongoing basis.
The South Fork Coordinated Resource Management Plan (SFCRMP) has initiated and implemented a wide variety of programs involving cooperation of private property owners, members of the public, and various government agencies to improve habitat, to improve agricultural and irrigation practices, to reduce sediment entering the South Fork, and other worthwhile activities beneficial to a restored fishery.
Other activities undertaken by SFCRMP have included replacement of under-sized culverts, decommissioning logging roads, replanting watersheds susceptible to erosion, and the repair and replanting of landslide areas.
Mechanical Restoration Projects
Some methods employed in efforts to restore fish and wildlife habitat and survival in the Trinity Basin are quite advanced scientifically. Among these are channel manipulation projects, variously named featheredges, side channels, bank restoration, flood plain restoration, and alternate bars. Some 47 such projects have been identified as candidates for implementation.
All of these projects, by whatever name, are intended to increase juvenile fish habitat, or to remove riparian encroachment on the now somewhat channelized section of the river -- the Upper Trinity, above the North Fork. This channelization of the river is the result of extremely low flows for the 38 years following construction of the dams. Presumably, these channel manipulation projects are on hold until litigation surrounding the Record of Decision is final. At the same time, extremely high natural flows of water in the river, particularly in the winters of 1998 and 1999 have made major changes in the channel of the Upper River. The river's own constantly changing nature and natural high water winter flows will continue to alter significantly the river’s channel regardless of mechanical alterations.
Of the 47 project areas alongside the river identified as possible sites for additional mechanical riverbank manipulation projects, some 23 tentatively were planned to be constructed within three years following the Interior Secretary’s decision. However, none should be constructed until the Secretary’s decision is implemented -- they would accomplish nothing in the absence of higher water flows, except perhaps to produce more sediment in the river.
Other Restoration Projects
The Restoration Program has funded several other activities -- fish counts, coded-wire tagging of hatchery fish, introduction of gravel into the river because the natural gravel source has been cut off by the dams, necessary administrative activities and other actions, but those set forth above represent the principal “on the ground” restoration efforts.
Location for gravel introduction into the river sorely needs reevaluation. It has been deposited too heavily into areas just below the dam. The result of this misapplication has been to fill up and to destroy important natural, fish holding pools or waters. Gravel introduction into the river is intended to take the place of naturally occurring rocks and gravel moving downstream from tributaries. The dams block the natural river gravel renewal process emanating from original tributaries upstream of the dams.
Four bridges across the Trinity River must be replaced and a few structures must be moved to accommodate higher flows. In an “extremely wet” water type year, flows of 11 thousand cubic feet per second (cfs) for a period of five days would flow down the river toward the end of May to help move juvenile fish to the ocean, to flush sediment from the riverbed, to scour spawning gravels, and to create a viable river ecosystem and fishery.
Greater emphasis and funding must be devoted to watershed rehabilitation. Control of sediment from entering the river is critically important to protect spawning gravels, juvenile habitat, deep water holding pools (hopefully), invertebrate habitat, and other natural river system processes. Watershed improvement needs extend significantly to tributaries. More funding and work is required in these areas than is planned. This, in part, is because of the non-renewal of Trinity Restoration legislation. Specific legislative authority is limited for such expenditures in other legislation that is being relied upon for Restoration Program funding.
The Program's costs, until September 30, 1998 were borne 35 percent by federal taxpayers, 50 percent by CVP beneficiaries - the irrigator and power interests with the latter bearing the major share of this cost -- and 15 percent by state and local government. However, without a reauthorized Program, costs now are borne principally by funding from the Bureau through the Central Valley Project Improvement Act Restoration Fund or other sources. Attempts are underway to obtain funding from other sources including the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Forest Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, the State of California and others. Again, adoption of federal legislation reestablishing the Restoration Program would be helpful in meeting funding needs.
CVP BENEFICIARIES OF DIVERTED WATER
Viewed in dollar perspective, the transfer of wealth from water diversions alone (leaving out power revenue) from the Trinity River Basin and the North Coast of California and Southern Oregon results in the following approximate figures:
Assume water contractors pay the Bureau of Reclamation $20 an acre foot for water, and that the open market price is just $50 (average actually is far higher). The $30 difference over 35 years times one million acre-feet a year equals $1.050 billion. However, irrigators have paid as little as $3 an acre foot for water, and depending upon water type year -- extremely wet, wet, normal, dry, critically dry -- the market price of water has varied from $50 to as much as $600 an acre foot. Most outside knowledgeable observers estimate the value of the water transfer alone at about $3 billion.
In addition to water subsidies, the San Francisco Bay Delta pumps used to move water into the San Joaquin Valley are the largest single user of electricity in the state. This power is charged to irrigators at less than one cent a kilowatt-hour. Meanwhile, the state apparently is paying up to 75 cents a kilowatt-hour for power with estimates that it could go as high as $1 or more in summer 2001. And, then there are the crop subsidies. One example. Cotton, which uses $750 in water to produce $150 in wholesale value of cotton, can be sold only at prices of about 20 cents less than cost. Federal taxpayers pick up the tab again.
The legislation creating the Trinity Division provided that Trinity County was to receive preference for power usage up to 25 percent of generated electricity. Trinity County never has been able to use all of this power itself, so that dollar benefit has gone to out-of-area interests. In addition, Trinity County is paying substantially higher rates for its power than was projected originally.
Humboldt County and other downstream water users also were promised, in the 1955 legislation creating the Trinity Division, 50,000 acre feet of water annually to be used to their economic benefit. This water never has been made available by the Bureau of Reclamation, despite a signed contract between the Bureau and the Humboldt Board of Supervisors.
Impacts and Other Mitigation
With the Interior Secretary’s ROD, and following conclusion of litigation, assuming a favorable outcome for the Trinity, there are a number of other issues, which should be resolved and implemented in order to minimize impacts upon various interests. Many of these were set forth and evaluated in the Trinity EIS/EIR. Friends of the Trinity River believes that at least the following issues also need to be addressed:
Retirement of Westlands Water District's deadly selenium laden lands should be required, withdrawing their continued so-called “rights” to Trinity River water. Specific acreage for retirement within Westlands, again the principal beneficiary of Trinity water, have been identified in the State of California sponsored September, 1990, report entitled, San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program. This heavily federal taxpayer subsidized irrigated land has wreaked havoc on the environment. Impacts upon fish and wildlife initially was highlighted by major waterfowl deformities and deaths discovered at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, subsequently called “Kesterson Reservoir.”
Kesterson was to be a wildlife refuge, but drainage from irrigated farms containing saline, selenium poison, and other contaminants turned Kesterson into a death trap and breeding ground for deformed birds on the Pacific Flyway and for other wildlife. Recently, animals near the reservoir were found to have developed, or mutated into a species that possessed both male and female sexual characteristics. The solution to this devastation is not any closer to resolution today than when it initially was made public years ago
A more recent December, 2000 report by the U. S. Geological Survey, Forecasting Selenium Discharges to the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary: Ecological Effects of a Proposed San Luis Drain Extension, demonstrates dire and unacceptable environmental consequences from continued water delivery to Westlands and adjacent Western San Joaquin Valley lands. Just a few of these consequences are:
- The selenium, salt and boron contaminated aquifer “problem area” will increase from its current 450 to 950 thousand acres over the next 40 years
- As many as 200 thousand acres of Westlands lands are waterlogged and no longer can support sustainable agriculture
- If the San Luis Drain were completed -- at a cost now estimated at $810 million or more -- and irrigation in the Western San Joaquin Valley were halted completely now, it would take 60 to 300 years to drain hazardous waste called “groundwater” from the contaminated aquifer under Westlands and its neighbors
- Completion of the San Luis Drain with various discharge levels of selenium and other hazardous materials from Westlands poses a severe likelihood of bioaccumulation in the food chain of San Francisco Bay
The federal District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that federal taxpayers need not build the San Luis Drain, but must provide a solution to the drainage problem. Obviously, the only rational solution is to retire this poisonous land, and to reclaim the water, which now unlawfully is being put to wasteful and unreasonable use. Virtually none of these lands will sustain agricultural production in another 20 or so years.
Meanwhile, ponds on private lands are being used to store more poisoned water from irrigated land water runoff, or this toxic drainage enters the San Joaquin River, and then into the San Francisco Bay Delta. This contaminates the water supply of about one-third of California's population. Selenium also has been found to bioaccumulate in exposed fish, birds and animals in all affected land areas.
Reallocation of repayment obligations for CVP capital costs between power users and agricultural interests is required. Power users pay a disproportionate share of costs associated with projects constructed as part of the Central Valley Project. Although federal taxpayers pay CVP capital costs, they then are attributed, or assigned, to agriculture, power, fish and wildlife, recreation and flood control uses. The latter three beneficiaries are not charged directly for capital costs of building dams or other CVP facilities and infrastructure, except for minor amounts related to recreational use
CVP capital cost allocation is inequitable. Power and agricultural interests are supposed to repay their determined or attributed (some say arbitrarily determined and attributed) capital costs. This results in another subsidy being enjoyed principally by a very few large-scale agricultural interests, at the expense of commercial, industrial and residential power users as well as federal taxpayers.
While CVP power customers subsidize Delta pumping costs through higher electricity prices charged them, as well as certain other power use costs for agricultural interests, rates for commercially sold power are established in the marketplace, and generally cannot be increased when costs increase. This issue has become an increasingly difficult problem for power providers, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the Northern California Power Agency members and others now that utility deregulation has become a nightmare in California.
Beyond power users’ subsidies to agriculture, power users pay interest on capital costs attributed to them from the time money is spent on a capital project, and at an interest rate that is higher -- about one-third higher -- than that charged agricultural water users. Interest rates charged are in the range of 4 percent and 3 percent respectively. Power interests must pay interest on funds as they are expended as facilities are built. However, agricultural users do not get charged interest on any capital costs incurred until a CVP project is deemed “complete.”
Aside from subsidized interest rates and the capital cost inequity between power and agricultural interests, repayment of capital costs for CVP projects by their principal beneficiaries, large-scale agricultural operations, has been abysmal. A study completed by the independent United States Government Accounting Office, provided these facts in its July 1996, report entitled Information and Allocation and Repayment of Costs of Constructing Water Projects.
Federal taxpayers have spent $21.8 billion (original dollars dating back decades, figure not adjusted to 1996 dollars) to build 133 water projects in the West over the past several decades. Of that amount, irrigators are required to pay back only $7.1 billion. They have paid back only $945 million as of September 30, 1994 (latest figures available at time of Report).
Irrigation attributed capital costs are interest free until a project is “completed” by the Bureau of Reclamation. Thereafter, irrigators have 10 years before they have to begin repayment, and another 40 years to complete repayment. However, many projects, although they have delivered water to beneficiaries for years, have not been declared “completed” by the Bureau, and the repayment period is delayed further. If irrigators assert inability to pay in any year, because of some “hardship,” they are not required to make any payment.
In addition, much of the $7 billion irrigators owe the Federal Government has been shifted to power customers subsequent to original capital cost allocations, providing a further subsidy to irrigators. To cite just one example, with the Tualatin, Oregon Reclamation Project it was determined that the irrigators could pay only $5.9 million of the $31.5 million in construction costs allocated to them. Repayment of the remaining $25.6 million, or 81 percent, was shifted to power users.
Beyond all of this, the Bureau of Reclamation allows, if not encourages some farms to receive subsidized water in excess of the 960-acre (originally 160 acre) limitation by law for receiving taxpayer-subsidized water. In just a couple of examples of this breach of legal intent, a 23 thousand and a 10 thousand acre farm in the Westlands are receiving subsidized water. Many of these mega-farms are operated by so-called “custom farmers,” intertwined entities that lease land from Chevron and other large landowners within Westlands.
There are endless egregious examples of violations of the intent, spirit and letter of the law regarding beneficiaries of federal taxpayer subsidized water within Westlands. The original intent of the Reclamation Law was to encourage people to move West to develop small, 160-acre family farms. The intent of that law as carried out in Westlands Water District and elsewhere instead has favored large corporate and corporate equivalent agricultural interests in receiving corporate welfare through heavily federal taxpayer subsidized water, energy and crops.
Trinity River water principally goes to the Westlands Water District that signed its first contract for water delivery with the Bureau of Reclamation in the year Trinity River dams were completed, 1963. Putting more water back into the Trinity River, retiring Westlands toxic wastelands and returning to proper uses the water to which it is not entitled beyond 2007 would achieve several beneficial results:
- Assuring the safety of domestic water quality for more than one third of California’s population
- Restoring a once magnificent river, its ecosystem and fisheries
- Improving water quality in the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay Delta
- Rejuvenating chronically depressed economies
- Reducing major federal taxpayer-paid corporate or corporate equivalent welfare
- Preventing unpermitted and illegal uses of Trinity water
- Retiring poisoned land which should not be under cultivation
The Trinity River may be the only river in the United States that currently even has an opportunity for substantial ecosystem, fishery and wildlife restoration downstream from a federally financed dam project. The Trinity River indeed can become a national model of a restored river basin ecosystem. As part of the process of restoring the Trinity River Basin, a number of major health, energy and other critical problems facing California also can be solved.
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Mission & Purpose
Board of Directors
Gary Seput
Thomas Weseloh
Byron Leydecker
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PO Box 2327
Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327
Phone 415.383.4810
Fax 415.383.9562
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