Running Water

This morning, as I do every other week, I picked fruit with Village Harvest. We pick fruit from backyard trees and small local orchards, and distribute it to the needy via local food pantries, meal programs, and community service agencies. This morning. we were lucky to have with us students from Pinewood School in Los Altos Hills, performing a day of community service.

Three huge orange trees kept us all busy for about 2.5 hours.

The students were enthusiastic and hard-working. They seemed to have a good time.

And we ended up with about 900 lbs of oranges to distribute.

Fresh produce is an especially welcome addition to the dry and canned goods that make up the bulk of food pantry supplies.

Senator Joe Simitian’s bill to get moving on “alternative conveyance” (remember what that means?) was shelved today, according to the Sacramento Bee. Assemblymember Lois Wolk is quoted as saying:

“We don’t know what will fix this yet … so to leap to the conclusion that it is a conveyance facility and to focus attention on that I think truly is premature,”

which seems more than a bit disingenuous, seeing as how we’ve been doing nothing with the Delta but studying it (and sucking water out of it, of course) for the last 30 years.

But maybe this will be the study to end all studies, the report of the Blue Ribbon Task Force. Holding your breath?

The task force for the new San José master plan met tonight at City Hall. On the agenda was water: water quality, water supply and floodplain management. The City’s Environmental Services Department gave an excellent presentation on watershed protection, then followed basically the same presentation on water supply as I saw at Thursday’s joint City-District meeting. Finally, the deputy director for public works gave the flood protection segment.

The first presentation was especially inspiring, in urging denser, infill development with more opportunities for stormwater to be absorbed into the ground on-site. The city also reiterated its commitment to recycled water, and heard from the task force that purple pipe should be extended to residential development. So far, the State Department of Health does not allow that, although it is now possible to use dual plumbing in condominiums, in addition to apartments. In the time for public comments, I said that the city should also support residential grey-water systems.

But, in their comments after the presentations, it was clear that the task force members are unhappy with the high ratio of presentations to discussion that they have had for the past seven months. The discussion they did have focused on this issue of process, and not on how water or watersheds would figure into the new master plan. Future meetings, perhaps even the next one on 27 May, should provide more scope for the task force to start talking about the new master plan itself.

I also have to say that the audiovisual problems in conference room W118 would be funny if they weren’t so annoying. I hope the City Hall staff get them straightened out soon.

Today’s Merc has a very brief article about Thursday’s joint meeting between the SCVWD Board and the San José City Council. Mostly it dwells on Mayor Reed’s opening remarks about the fragility of the Delta. Nice that they’re paying attention.

Aquafornia is an excellent water blog. I especially recommend this masterly summary of California’s water situation.

And the Mercury (really the AP) reports on a meeting of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force in which several options for a peripheral canal were presented, ranging in cost from $4.2 billion to $17.2 billion.

As Chair Kamei said yesterday, “Everyone south of Tracy is ’southern California’ when it comes to taking water from the Delta, including us.”

Last week, The Fresno Bee reported that farm organizations are split over Proposition 98, just one of the eminent-domain-reforming measures on the June 3 ballot.

At issue is a single paragraph that would prohibit government from taking private land for the “consumption of natural resources.” The language is meant to keep cities from taking water rights.

…

The [California Farm Bureau Federation] says its farm brethren are misinterpreting the measure. Prop. 98 still allows land to be taken for public use, including for “public facilities” such as water-storage projects, according to legal advice obtained by the bureau.

“The suggestion that [Prop. 98] would preclude the taking of property for the purpose of constructing a water storage or water conveyance facility because the water stored or conveyed is eventually ‘consumed’ is unpersuasive,” the opinion states.

Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune reports that an attorney for the State Department of Water Resources has come to the same negative conclusion about Proposition 98, saying

Proposition 98 “could seriously hamstring or thwart future water projects.

The Metropolitan Water District has already decided to oppose the measure, as well.

This morning saw a joint meeting between the SCVWD Board and the San José City Council. The study session dealt with three issues: water supply, water conservation and recycling. The presentation is available here.

It was a very heartening meeting. All of the participants were engaged and cooperative. The council members wanted to be sure that their general plan incorporated the latest information about water supplies; the directors wanted to work closely with the city on the advanced recycled water treatment plant. Both agreed to try to move up the meeting of the joint committee negotiating the agreement between the City and the District about the plant. It was very pleasant to be in a room with so much good will in the air.

Despite the fact that the amended District Act was recently passed 7-0 in the Assembly Local Government Committee, Scott Herhold is trying to keep the issue alive in today’s column in the Merc.

I’d much prefer it without all of the “teenager-kegger” sniggers. The County oversight of the District was mostly theoretical, anyway; it’s not as though the SCVWD pulled a fast one in evading County scrutiny. Santa Clara County was just as eager to escape possible liability in lawsuits against the District.

The fact remains, however, that this amended District Act is almost entirely self-serving on the part of the Board. As Scott quotes me at the end, I, indeed, do feel that this piece of legislation should not pass, term limits or no.

This is the third time I’ve seen the groundwater charge presentation, and I keep coming back to the chart of the projected increases. Here it is again:

How many entities feel confident enough to get up and say “You’re going to be paying almost 10% more per year, every year, into the foreseeable future”? I can’t imagine anyone doing that if the audience is paying attention. And here, of course, the audience isn’t paying attention.

I think that there are needs that require investment. Upgrades to water treatment plants, environmental enhancements to riparian habitat, and, although it’s not on the District’s list, investment in recycled water capacity are all necessary and expensive. Darrin Taylor said today that, were construction costs rising at their historical 3% per year rather than 7%, the projected water rate increases would be more like 4% per year. And the District itself has to buy water from the state and the federal government, at costs that are also set with little public oversight.

I’m less thrilled about paying for retiree health benefits, although I agree that those commitments must be honored. (As I said before, what’s funny is the fact that merely finding out how much they really cost has prompted changes.)

Is it a good thing that no one comes to the groundwater charge hearings? Is it better that the District has the freedom to raise rates as it sees fit, to fund programs that it feels are required? Of course I don’t think so, since my whole candidacy is based on the need for greater public oversight.

But it’s true that public approval for increased funding is hard to get. And the District isn’t out there selling the water treatment plant upgrades.