{"id":8717974,"date":"2023-01-17T05:30:13","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T13:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/?p=8717974&preview=true&preview_id=8717974"},"modified":"2023-01-17T09:34:09","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T17:34:09","slug":"skelton-california-has-lots-of-catching-up-to-do-on-flood-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/2023\/01\/17\/skelton-california-has-lots-of-catching-up-to-do-on-flood-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Skelton: California has lots of catching up to do on flood management"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Leland Stanford became California\u2019s governor in 1862, he needed a rowboat to carry him to the Capitol to be sworn in.<\/p>\n

Sacramento\u2019s streets were flooded. In fact, much of California was. A 300-mile-long lake was created in the Central Valley from near Bakersfield to Red Bluff. At least 4,000 people were killed.<\/p>\n

It was the largest flood in the recorded history of California, Nevada and Oregon, dumping 10 feet of water on this state over a 43-day period.<\/p>\n

The Great Flood of 1862 followed a 20-year drought.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom seems, in every other sentence, to blame the\u00a0intensity of our current storms\u00a0\u2014 or any drought or wildfire \u2014 on climate change. We\u2019re getting drier and wetter and the cycles are becoming more frequent, he and experts warn.<\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019m no climatologist. But I do read history. And you can acknowledge history without being a climate denier. Burning fossil fuel has warmed the planet and appears to have mucked up our climate. But we\u2019d still suffer terrible droughts and disastrous storms even if all the energy we used was carbon free.<\/p>\n

Cycles of drought and flooding have been the California way \u2014 nature\u2019s way \u2014 for eons.<\/p>\n

Times columnist Gustavo Arellano recently\u00a0wrote about the Great Flood of 1938.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia has lots of extremes. We\u2019ve always had more wet years and drier years than any part of the country,\u201d Jay Lund, vice director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, once told me. \u201cEvery year we\u2019re managing for drought and for floods, and we always will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, and we\u2019ve got lots of catching up to do on flood management with or without climate change.<\/p>\n

But the state has added little to its once-prized water system since approval of Gov. Pat Brown’s then-controversial California Water Project in 1960.<\/p>\n

One failure is we\u2019re not capturing and storing nearly as much floodwater as we should. The primary example is in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the source of drinking water for 27 million Californians and irrigation for 3 million acres.<\/p>\n

Ideally, we\u2019d be grabbing big pools of nature\u2019s gift and storing it for use in dry years. Instead, it escapes through San Francisco Bay and flows into the ocean.<\/p>\n

One immediate reason we\u2019re capturing less water than we could is a regulation agreed to by the former Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Under it, the \u201cfirst flush\u201d of each season\u2019s major storm is reserved for the bay. For two weeks, state and federal pumps at the southern end of the Delta have been permitted to pump at only about half capacity.<\/p>\n

The main reason is to protect endangered fish. Aggressive pumping reverses San Joaquin River flow, sucking endangered tiny smelt and little salmon into the pumps or mouths of large predator fish. But fish aside, the reverse flows draw in salt water from the bay. And that gets pumped south into Southern California reservoirs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re so focused on the Delta tunnel. It\u2019s going to allow us to pump large amounts of water during big winter storms without an environmental impact,\u201d says Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the state Natural Resources Agency.<\/p>\n

Fresher Sacramento River water from the north Delta would be siphoned into a 45-mile-long, 39-foot-wide tunnel ending near the southbound aqueducts. If it had been in place, Crowfoot estimates that an additional 131,000 acre-feet of floodwater could have been captured during the current storm as of late last week.<\/p>\n

But small Delta communities, local farmers and environmentalists worry that if the tunnel existed, water grabbers \u2014 meaning San Joaquin agriculture and L.A. \u2014 wouldn\u2019t just be taking stormwater. They\u2019d also be seizing water during dry summers and droughts, leaving the Delta saltier.<\/p>\n

All that must be negotiated and litigated. If it\u2019s ever built, the $16-billion project probably couldn\u2019t be operational until at least 2040.<\/p>\n

There also needs to be more storage room for floodwater. There\u2019s a perpetual cry for additional costly dams. But we\u2019re already dammed to the brim. There are nearly 1,500 dams in California. Practically every good site has been used.<\/p>\n

But one sensible dam project is noncontroversial and headed for construction. It\u2019s Sites in Colusa County, an off-stream reservoir that would hold 1.5 million acre-feet of water siphoned off the nearby Sacramento River. Construction on the $4.5-billion project could begin in 2025.<\/p>\n

Some existing dams, including San Luis in Merced County and Los Vaqueros in Contra Costa County, probably will be expanded.<\/p>\n

But the future of storage is underground in depleted aquifers. That\u2019s a major focus of state and local governments.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, even with climate change, Newsom didn\u2019t need to row a skiff to his recent second inauguration at the Capitol. He was driven to the outdoor ceremony in a big SUV as storm clouds briefly parted.<\/p>\n

George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist.<\/p>\n

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