Camping Out at the Water Board

California EPA building in downtown Sacramento. Credit: CA DWR

California makes its state water right decisions in the CalEPA building in Sacramento, the home of the State Water Resources Control Board.

In a water-rights proceeding, you get to speak “on the record” to the Board or it Administrative Hearing Office by “protesting” the new or modified right.

Sites: The hearing for the “assignment” of a “state filing” to the Sites Project Authority for the proposed 1.5-million acre-foot Sites Reservoir off the Sacramento River will be getting underway shortly. Thirty days of testimony and cross examinations have been scheduled. The effort will be grueling. The result could be a rubber stamping of the project proposal or significant environmental responsibilities on the Authority in operating the project to better protect the Sacramento River in the Delta.

In the case of the latter, even with an expected two billion dollars in state and federal taxpayer money, the Authority and the owners of the storage space in the project will have to decide whether they can finance and justify the other two billion to complete the project.

The location of the proposed Sites reservoir. Credit: Sue Graue

Delta Tunnel: And on the heels of the Sites hearings, the Board has to call balls and strikes on the potential construction and operation of the proposed Delta Tunnel Project (pushing water under the Delta to the giant pumps that take north state water south). The deadline for the tunnel “change in point of diversion” water-rights change petition protests just passed, and Friends of the River found itself, along with other conservation groups and other friends, among the protestants.

We expressed our concern, perhaps a peculiar one, that north state rivers could be overtapped and dammed with the opening of the tunnel superhighway to the south state. 

Delta waterways. Credit: Paul Hames, CA DWR

It will be déjà vu all over again since the Board held extensive and lengthy hearings during the end of Jerry Brown’s second time as governor. They didn’t hand down a ruling since the new Governor, Gavin Newsom, attempting to “split the baby,” changed the new proposal from two tunnels to one. And this time around, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, representing federal irrigators who blanched at the price tag, is leaving the California Department of Water Resources to push for the tunnel on its own.

I expect hard and difficult hearings for all of us. But we can’t just stick our head in the sand and hope that the rivers just protect themselves. We and our friends have to play our role in these and other hearings that lie ahead.

I hope we enjoy camping at the CalEPA building. It has some nice Redwoods in the courtyard.

Ron Stork

Ron is a national expert in flood management, federal water resources development, hydropower reform, and Wild & Scenic Rivers. He joined Friends of the River as Associate Conservation Director in 1987 and became its Senior Policy Advocate in 1995. 

Ron was presented the prestigious River Conservationist of the Year award by Perception in 1996 for his work to stop the Auburn dam. In 2004, he received the California Urban Water Conservation Council’s Excellence Award for statewide and institutional innovations in water conservation.

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