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CalFED - Brass Tacks at Last?
The decision on CALFED's preferred alternative seems to be coming down to two very specific things: bromide and fish. Water suppliers want to make sure their source water from the Delta is as free of bromide as possible, especially in the face of mounting research about associated health risks and tough new drinking water regulations. And resource agencies want to make sure that the salmon, steelhead, striped bass and smelt battling a system short on water and habitat and rife with obstacles and hazards finally end up on the road to recovery.
"These are the two things that may have the most impact on our conveyance choices," says CALFED's Rick Woodard, referring to his agency's three recently-released alternatives for how to re-engineer the Delta's rivers and pumps to better convey water for the benefit of both cities and farms and the ecosystem and its endangered species.
"CALFED will be made or broken on the issue of diversion effects on fish," says U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Mike Thabault. "It's time to move from avoiding jeopardy to recovery."
CALFED's three alternatives share a common program of ecosystem restoration, water conservation and the like but differ in terms of their "conveyance" approach. The first would basically maintain the status quo, the second would enlarge a key channel feeding the pumps and build a mini-canal to improve "through Delta" water movement, and the third "dual system" would add a new canal from Hood to the South Delta pumps, bypassing the Delta (see map). This canal is also known as the "isolated facility" or "PC" (though smaller in size and capacity than the peripheral canal rejected by voters in 1982). The isolated facility would allow a portion of the flow, as necessary to protect fish or drinking water quality, to be isolated from the Delta, with the remainder being pumped from within the Delta as it is today.
Though scientists and engineers think the Delta bypass canal might be the best for reducing bromide (because it moves the point of diversion further upstream away from bromide-bearing seawater) and protecting fish (because it gives water managers more pumping flexibility and recreates natural flow patterns), some stakeholders and citizens disagree. Many are saying CALFED's got to prove that a less invasive approach won't work first. So CALFED is now toying with a new "phased" approach beginning with the common programs and moving into "through-Delta" improvements, then monitoring the heck out of the whole effort for seven years to see if works (see page 8). If it doesn't, then everyone seems to be expecting a contingency plan involving the dual conveyance system.
That leaves us with a current CALFED energy rush - led by several swat teams of scientists, stakeholders and agency staff - directed at putting more meat on actions proposed to address bromide and fish. The fish team began by exploring which life stages of which species would be most affected by a change in the point of diversion under each of the alternatives, and is also assessing how much of a role diversion mortality may play in controlling population abundance as compared to other stressors such as inadequate habitat. Diversions impact fish in several ways, most directly by killing them when they get sucked into pumps and intakes, and less directly by affecting flows, disturbing migration, decreasing biomass and promoting predation on endangered species.
At first glance, an isolated facility seems to provide the most benefit for the most species, especially San Joaquin salmon and young Delta smelt. This is mostly because "the South Delta is such a death trap," says team member Elise Holland of The Bay Institute. With an isolated facility, water managers get a second set of pumps in a different location and can switch back and forth to avoid hurting the fish depending on where they are in the system. "It's the San Joaquin salmon, who get pulled down Old River directly into the pumps, that really tipped the scales toward the PC, but the uncertainties about impacts are many and the double hits north and south are a real problem," says Holland.
The double hits problem, shared by both alternative 2 and to a lesser extent 3, is that with a new screen at the Hood intake, some of the non-resident fish in the system may now have to negotiate screens both at Hood and in the South Delta. And while screens are well-intended, the technology is far from perfect. "We still can't screen out eggs and larvae," says Holland.
Also weighing in on the diversion-effects equation are all the other bits of the PC-package. According to Fish & Wildlife's Thabault, this package includes a bunch of very stringent operational constraints matched to fish migratory movements and hydrological conditions, plus habitat reconstruction, water quality improvements to the San Joaquin in terms of salts and selenium loads, and capacity constraints on exports . "Because it does the most to mimic the natural flow of water from east to west, from the rivers to the sea, it's still the best for fish," he says.
But with the PC likely to be relegated to contingency status, the team is now working to make the "through-Delta" alternative, which ranked worst for fish in a preliminary report, as good as it can get in terms of species recovery. The problem here lies with the new mini-canal, according to CALFED's Ron Ott. "If we put a substantial amount of Sacramento River water through the canal into the Mokelumne, salmon runs cued to sense Sacramento River water may end up the canal," he says. Fish in the canal could then get stuck behind new pumps below the Hood fish screen, requiring new fish bypass or salvage (trucking) facilities - another death trap for many fish. For these and other reasons, many biologists are skeptical that any through-Delta approach can work for fish.
Such concerns will have to be addressed in awfully short-order. By the end of August, the fish team must complete a sound through-Delta alternative, by September a contingency plan detailing the most fish-friendly PC, and by October a phased approach integrating both with water supply concerns. "We need to start by optimizing operation of the existing Delta system, which is flawed, and make some small structural changes everyone can agree on," says Holland. The harder part will be attempting to build in some level of operational equity for the fish in a system that more often caters to the needs of farms and cities, she says.
The water suppliers, for their part, aren't squawking yet. Most have come round to the idea that unless they take care of the fish, they can't count on a reliable water supply, according to fish team member Pete Rhoads of Los Angeles' Metropolitan Water District. "But there's still considerable uncertainty over the effect of the pumps, versus toxics, versus exotic organisms," he says. Uncertain or not, all are now being asked to give it their best guess this fall. "CALFED's backed us into a corner," says Holland. "They're asking us when and how is the lowest impact, and the answer is never."
Moving on to the bromide problems, the isolated facility could be the best alternative but there's a catch. It might or might not be able to be built in time to help water suppliers meet any of the new drinking water standards lurking on the doorstep of the new century.
By way of background, bromide is a natural substance that derives from seawater and occurs in the Delta at levels six times the national average for source water, largely because California is the only place in the country that takes drinking water from an estuary. Bromide troubles water suppliers because when water containing it undergoes ozonation to remove disease-causing microbes, it forms a carcinogenic byproduct called bromate. "Bromate is ozone's Achille's heel," says Buck.
Since the 1980s, water suppliers have invested heavily in ozone treatment to replace chlorine which, when used for drinking water treatment, can produce a better-known and much-longer regulated class of harmful disinfection byproducts known as trihalomethanes, or THMs. The quality of the Delta source water also plays a role here, as THMs form when water containing organic carbon from plant material (common in the region's peat soils) is disinfected with chlorine. The additional presence of bromide can create bromated-forms of THMs. While THMs have long been suspected carcinogens, studies released this spring also suggest a link with miscarriages.
This November, U.S. EPA plans to reduce the allowable level of THMs in drinking water from 100 parts per billion to 80 ppb and set a standard of 10 ppb for bromate. Even lower "placeholder" levels have already been published for implementation as early as 2002. Though local officials think these tougher standards are unlikely to fly, Byron Buck of the California Urban Water Agencies isn't too optimistic. "I can't think of any examples in regulatory history where EPA has relaxed health standards, and backing off placeholder numbers, hard fought for by the environmental community, would certainly be perceived as a relaxation," he says.
Water purveyors have two choices for reducing bromide and disinfection byproducts: get better source water or invest in new and more complex treatment processes (see CUWA report Now in Print). Some suppliers, like the Contra Costa Water District (which has one of the most seawater-influenced intakes), have already successfully dealt with the first round of regulations by developing a diverse array of filtration and treatment options that they can use in different combinations as needed.
But this treatment technology isn't feasible yet on a scale necessary to get a big water supplier like Los Angeles' Metropolitan Water District ("Met") into compliance, according to Buck. "The bottom line is that it's less costly to build a new facility to get better source water," he says. If suppliers wanted to add a new technology such as "membrane filtration" to comply with tougher standards on the horizon, Buck calculates that costs would run $140-250 per acre-foot as opposed to $30-$125 for the isolated facility.
CALFED's through-Delta alternative could reduce bromide by about 25% (using the mini-canal to shunt a bunch of spanking-clean fresh water downstream) and dual-system by about 60% (by skimming off water before it reaches the seawater-tinged Delta). Just how accurate these calculations are likely to turn out, and their significance in light of the latest health effects research, treatment technologies and regulations, is the task before yet another CALFED panel of outside experts set up to meet this September.
But no matter what the experts say, "The utilities can't count on any of the alternatives to help them comply," according to U.S. EPA's Bruce Macler. "There won't be any 10-year grace period for Met. The state will enforce and the public won't allow any delay, when it comes to their health." But Buck believes that the feds will have to consider the difficulties in developing any new compliance timelines.
For their part, environmentalists note that seawater intrusion is not the only potential source of bromide to drinking water supplies - which are often a combination of waters from multiple sources and reservoirs run through numerous canals, all places where they might pick up bromide, pathogens, organics and other water-quality compromising substances. "Bromide is getting into the plumbing system in places all along the California Aqueduct, not just the Delta," says the Tuolumne River Trust's Tim Ramirez. "Drinking water quality is better evaluated when it reaches the door of the treatment facility, not up at the source."
So what can CALFED do right away, in terms of core actions, that can yield benefits regardless of the alternatives? This is the question now being answered by CALFED's existing water quality swat team of stakeholders and advisors, of which Macler is a part.
"In many cases, the real problem isn't bromide, it's algae," says Macler. Algal growth spurred by excessive nutrients flowing into source water from feedlots and fertilizer use puts utilities in a bad bind. "You can't chlorinate algae, or you get bad tasting water," he says. And you can't use ozone treatment because it produces bromate.
One thing Macler's group thinks CALFED and water suppliers should do is watershed management activities around drinking water intakes. A few obvious examples, says Macler, would be to: reroute an agricultural drain which has long fed unwanted nutrients into the water above the Rock Slough intake; replace wooden cow bridges over the South Bay aqueduct with metal ones (cow pats fall through the wooden slats); work with farmers around Discovery Bay on how and when to drain fields; and even to restrict swimming in reservoirs. "These kinds of corrections are pretty proactive and doable with small dollars - the bang for the buck compared to treatment is astonishing," says Macler. "We need to try these core actions before we reroute the Delta."
But Buck is skeptical that there are any other significant sources of bromide than seawater. "These actions will at best give you some localized improvement in organic carbon contamination, but do nothing for bromide. You can't deal with the bromide issue with watershed management, it's a non-sequitur," he says. He also points out that the science on the impacts of disinfection byproducts is still in its infancy, and relates only to a third of the potentially harmful treatment byproducts in our water. "There may be more serious health problems coming down the line that will force an isolated facility," he says.
Whatever the perspective, the isolated facility seems to be the runner-up. So for now, CALFED's alternatives seem to be heading back down that old familiar road: pollution prevention in the watersheds and operational optimization at the pumps. It's a straight road, but it's also had no enforcement teeth to date, and no track record of large scale success. Key will be whether forthcoming monitoring of fish recovery actually results in course changes and adaptive actions, or just sits around in the hard drives of scientists. Also key will be assurances on how any new facilities may be operated (see p.3) and how tough the feds - both U.S. EPA on drinking water and U.S. Fish & Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service on endangered species - decide to get when they see CALFED's future path.
Contact: Ron Ott (916)657-3319 & Rick Woodard (916)657-4765
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