February12,2016-
Friant Water Authority’s new CEO Jason Phillips is looking at both some good news and bad news for eastside farmers who depend on federal canal water.
Phillips who worked for the Bureau of Reclamation before becoming CEO at the fractured water contractors group in January says his discussions with the Bureau recently suggest that “it is almost a sure thing that Shasta reservoir (at 2.5million acre-feet today) will fill to over 4 million acre-feet this year” assuming El Nino continues.That would trigger a full 840,000 acre-feet for the Exchange Contractors delivered from north of the Delta.
That is important to South Valley farmers who must stand in line for water behind the Los Banos-area Exchange Contractors.”If they get their water out of Shasta they won’t make a call on Friant water “above Millerton, as they have for the past two years.
While the Shasta prediction is good news – Phillips says the bad news is that the Bureau will have a tough time delivering all that water through the Delta this spring because of restrictions placed on them to save the endangered Delta smelt.
The Bureau has a limited number of smelt is can“take” at the Tracy pumps this water year – around 50 – so must be slow and cautious as it pumps water south. So far they say they have taken only one smelt. Restrictions will increase in March and April he says.
That will mean more water will head out to sea this wet year, a fact that galls many in the farm community.
The smelt are declining in the Delta, perhaps due to combination of factors that include the pumps,the drought and invasive fish that eat juvenile smelt.
The government may be ready to rescue the tiny fish as they have with salmon. If biologists fear the population is getting too low the U.C. Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory has a captive population of 10,000 smelt that could be released to keep the species going.
Meanwhile Phillips notes the Bureau “ must act in accordance with Fish & Wildlife “biological opinion” he states.
“If they can’t deliver all the water the Exchange Contractors are entitled to – they will take some from Friant’s supply on the upper San Joaquin, he fears.”We hope that it is a small amount but we don’t know yet””
Phillips says the yield on the San Joaquin looks to be the best in years figuring at least 1 million acre feet and perhaps up to 1.5 million acre-feet. The average yield is 1.7 mil acre-feet.
Of course for the past two years eastside farmers from Fresno,Tulare and Kern Counties have seen no Friant Kern Canal water and have had to depend on trades and groundwater.
“It looks like we will have a pretty healthy Class 1 supply this year” says Phillips optimistically.
Friant will get its first look at an initial allocation from the Bureau around March 1, figures Phillips. A hot and dry 10 days in February may be followed later this month by several promising storms.
Under strain over lack of water and controversy over the way forward- the Lindsay-based Friant contractors organization broke into three groups this past year but continue to share dependency on water from the big canal that courses down the eastern edge of the Valley irrigating more than a million acres.