U.S Cuts Flow From Trinity To Sacramento River Basin Utility warns move will hike energy prices

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, December 19, 2000 ©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/19/MN144302.DTL

In a decision that could exacerbate the volatile market for California electricity, the federal government announced today that it will decrease water flow from the Trinity River to the Sacramento River basin.

The environmental plan, designed to restore fisheries to the Trinity River, was immediately praised by Indian tribes who have seen a dramatic decrease in salmon and steelhead populations.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who made the announcement at the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Trinity County, said the government's decision "reflects our commitment and obligation to protect both fish and wildlife species, and to fulfill our responsibilities to the tribes living in the region who have fished on the Trinity River for thousands of years."

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District criticized the plan, saying it would lead to higher costs to its customers and may raise electricity prices on the state's wholesale market.

In the past few months, electricity prices have skyrocketed, contributing to energy alerts in the Bay Area and throughout California and leading to charges that private companies are gouging public utilities.

The re-diversion of Trinity water may have a domino effect. The Central Valley Project, which sells 30 percent of its power to the Sacramento utility and the remaining amount to other utilities and sources, relies on the Trinity River to generate power.

"Everybody who buys power from (the Central Valley Project) is going to be impacted," said Brian Jobson, the utility's chief power contract officer. "When a chunk of energy becomes unavailable, that translates to the rest of the market in California as well."

Babbitt announced that the government will reduce diversions from the Trinity Division of the Central Valley Project by 25 percent, increasing the minimum flow in the Trinity River from 340,000 acre-feet to 600,000 acre-feet in an average year.

SMUD gets enough electricity from the Central Valley Project to meet the needs of 31,000 households a year.

"That's how much energy is being lost at time when we have an energy crisis in this state," Jobson said.

Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network in San Francisco, also criticized today's announcement, saying that "anything that has the potential to raise wholesale rates even higher from a consumer perspective would be a disaster.

"We're seeing the highest prices in history."

Jobson said SMUD will be forced to pay dramatically higher rates on the wholesale market for its electricity. Under its long-term contract with the Central Valley Project, the utility pays $20 a megawatt hour for power.

Power companies that supply electricity to utilities charge upwards of hundreds of dollars an hour for the same energy, Jobson said.

Though the overall effect on consumers and energy prices may not be dramatic, Jobson said, "The state already has serious problems. The only way you solve large problems is by incremental action. This is incremental action that will make things worse."

Jobson said the utility company hasn't decided whether to challenge the Interior Department's action in court.

Babbitt was not available for further comment, and his spokesman did not return telephone calls.

In his public remarks today, Babbitt said the government's plan "provides a well-balanced approach to Trinity River restoration."

He said it still allows for 52 percent of water from the Trinity River basin to be exported to the Central Valley, where it would be used to generate power and for farming.

Tribes in the northern reaches of California said they are regaining part of their history and dignity that was lost in 1963, with the completion of the Trinity and Lewiston dams, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began diverting up to 90 percent of the Trinity basin runoff to the Central Valley for irrigation and power generation.

Today's decision, said Hoopa Valley Tribal Council Chairman Duane Sherman, "is of monumental importance to the Hoopa people in the sustenance of our resources and culture."

E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 19, 2000

Answers

Posted at 5:14 p.m. PST Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2000

Trinity River decision to reverses decades of water policy BY JOHN HOWARD Associated Press Writer

ON THE TRINITY RIVER, Calif. (AP) -- Four decades after the remote Trinity River was dammed and diverted to pour water into California's farm belt, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt tightened the spigot Tuesday, doubling the water kept in the north and outraging growers hundreds of miles away.

In emotional ceremonies on the ancestral lands of the 4,000-member Hoopa tribe, Babbitt said his decision fulfilled a pledge he made to the Hoopa and Yurok tribes in 1993 during his first trip to the West as interior secretary. The promise: that he would act on the Trinity before leaving office.

``We didn't make it by much,'' Babbitt said, noting his tenure ends in a month.

Babbitt was escorted to the signing ceremonies by Hoopa Chairman Duane Sherman in a dugout canoe hand-hewn from a redwood that, by tribal tradition, was cut seven days after the full moon.

``This wasn't just a project. It was a cause invested with a moral imperative,'' Babbitt said.

The Trinity, which flows westward from northern wilderness and joins the Klamath 25 miles in from the coast, is at the heart of the culture and economy of the Indian tribes that have inhabited the region for thousands of years. The area is about 300 miles north of San Francisco.

``For 500 generations, the Hoopa tribe has known a different river than what they see today. Gone are those deep spawning pools, those alluvial gravels, those different salmon at different times of the year, those spring, fall and summer runs. It's changed,'' Sherman said.

Legislation backed by growers and crafted in the 1950s led to federal projects, completed by the early 1960s, that dammed the river and diverted about 90 percent of the water at Lewiston through huge tunnels to the Sacramento River.

The goal was to get more water into the Central Valley to produce power and irrigate crops to support California's swelling population. Indians, whose approval was necessary to consummate the original legislation, said they agreed to the plan after being assured that ``not one bucketful of water'' would be diverted that would affect fish and wildlife habitats.

But the runs of salmon, which provide commerce and food, diminished as large amounts of water were taken from the river.

The 90 percent diversion was later reduced to about 75 percent, but the environmental impacts continued as the salmon populations slowly began to mend. For years, the Indians and their political allies have sought to retain more water in the north.

Babbitt's decision meets their demands, at least in part.

It splits the diversion roughly in half -- 52 percent to the Central Valley and 48 percent to be retained in the north. That means the amount of water shipped out to the Valley will be reduced by some 300,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot of water, about 330,000 gallons, is roughly the amount used by a family of five in a year.

Farmers, irrigation districts and utilities say the river is a crucial part of California's water-delivery and power-generating system, and that reducing the flows southward violates federal promises.

``Today's decision was irresponsible,'' said John Fistolera of the Northern California Power Agency, a consortium of nearly two-dozen cities and farm-belt irrigation districts.

He said the decision was based on flawed science and came at a time when California seeks new sources of energy to cope with an electricity crisis.

``This is the perfect example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,'' Fistolera said.

The Westlands Water District near Fresno, the nation's largest agricultural irrigation district, challenged Babbitt's decision in U.S. District Court. The district's request for a temporary court order halting the diversion was rejected, but a hearing on the issue is scheduled there in February.

``Westlands is in a fight for survival,'' Thomas Birmingham, Westlands' general manager and legal counsel, said last week. ``We're going to do whatever we can to protect our water supply.''

Another issue looms before the diversion actually begins. Several small bridges cross the Trinity and must be removed for environmental and safety reasons before the river flow can be boosted. Money to do that is not yet available -- until it is, the bridges will stay in place.

But Chairman Sherman said the money would be obtained. ``We will find it internally,'' he said.

Although little known outside the north state, the Trinity supplies perhaps a seventh of all federal Central Valley Project water in California, and a fourth of the CVP's electrical power.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 20, 2000.