For San Joaquin River, a historic reawakening

Published online on Sunday, Sep. 27, 2009
By Mark Grossi / The Fresno Bee
 It all starts Thursday with a gentle surge of water to be released from Friant Dam into the San Joaquin River.

A massive, unprecedented and unpredictable river restoration project will begin, reawakening miles of dried riverbed and salmon runs that have been extinct for six decades.

Since the dam was built in the 1940s, long stretches of the river have been dry. Parts have become a gutter for the San Joaquin Valley, collecting muddy seepage, trash and abandoned cars.

Now, in a nine-year effort that could cost up to $1.2 billion, the 350-mile San Joaquin will be reconnected with the Pacific Ocean. Salmon, which once teemed in its waters, may again migrate from near Fresno to the ocean.

The project begins with test releases to determine how the river will respond. Engineers then will widen the riverbed in some places and dig new channels around obstacles.

In recent years, government agencies across the nation have attempted other big river restoration projects, from the Penobscot River in Maine to the Klamath in Oregon. But nobody is restoring a big, salmon-supporting river this far south — or a river as damaged as the San Joaquin.

“I’ve never seen anything like this on this scale,” said Bay Area-based biologist Chuck Hanson, a longtime fisheries consultant and now a member of an independent advisory committee on the San Joaquin restoration.

Not everyone relishes the challenge. Under terms of a complex, controversial court settlement, east-side Valley farmers — 15,000 of them, cultivating 1 million acres from the center of the Valley to the foothills — will give up some of their irrigation water so the San Joaquin can be reborn.

The water loss comes at a dark moment for California agriculture. The Valley’s west side — a national symbol for farmers battling environmentalists over water — already is reeling from three years of drought and restrictions to preserve a rare fish species, the delta smelt.

Though river restoration will send more water downstream into the west side, farmers in the hard-hit Westlands Water District would get no share. Some could benefit from river water that seeps into the water table, however — but the potential benefit is unknown.

There are plans to pump some replacement water back through an aqueduct from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where the river ends, to help east-side farmers. But that water may instead be needed downstream to ease problems for threatened fish, such as the delta smelt.

For worried farmers, the restoration boils down to a single question: Can the government rebuild this river without crippling the Valley’s internationally known farming industry?

Environmentalists and scientists think the odds are good. But nobody knows for sure.

Fish and farmers

Farmers have dreaded this moment since 1988, when environmentalists sued to rescue the San Joaquin. Decades earlier, it was the river that rescued farms. In the 1940s, Friant Dam was built to capture most of the river’s water and irrigate dying farms in Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.

The river and its salmon runs were deliberately sacrificed, although even then the state fish and game code required a stream of water beyond the dam for the native fish. Environmentalists used that provision as a cornerstone in their 1988 lawsuit.

Farmers fought the suit for 18 years, but decisions in the case were consistently going against them. They were running out of options. So they cut a deal in 2006 — a compromise intended to restore the river and salmon runs but preserve most east-side farming.

Three years later, some farmers have begun to doubt they will see much river water circulating back from the restoration to their fields. And they wonder whether salmon, a cold-water fish, will even survive in a warming climate over the next century.

Farmer Kole Upton, one of only four people who negotiated the restoration deal in 2006, has changed his mind about the settlement for many reasons, including the salmon issue.

With climate change, “it’s going to get very warm here,” he said. “This looks like an ultimate waste of taxpayer money.”

Fishery biologist Peter Moyle of the University of California at Davis disagrees, saying the San Joaquin may be a refuge for salmon because it taps a part of the Sierra likely to remain a source of ice-cold water in spring.

“It does drain some of the highest Sierra, which will still have a snowpack,” he said.

The fishing industry is elated about this restoration. Decimated fisheries in the Pacific Ocean forced authorities to shut down salmon fishing for the second consecutive season this year. The idea of restarting San Joaquin salmon runs sounds good.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get 110,000 fish [in the river] like we did before, but I think it will help,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Associations, which was a plaintiff in the 1988 lawsuit.

But the restoration probably will not return the river to a pristine state with robust salmon runs, said Ron Stork, senior policy expert for Friends of the River, a statewide advocacy group. There’s not enough water in the settlement for big salmon runs, he said. Stork’s group also was among the 14 environmental, fishing and conservation organizations that filed the 1988 lawsuit.

“The restoration is symbolic,” Stork said. “This is a very big undertaking in a place where the political and institutional culture is to capture every bit of water that falls on the Sierra Nevada and use it in the Valley. The culture is that none of this water should leave the area.”

From the Sierra to the sea

The restoration will span the middle 150 miles of this 350-mile river — from Friant Dam to the place where the Merced River empties into the San Joaquin.

But there is much more to the San Joaquin, especially above Friant Dam. The headwaters are at Thousand Island Lake, east of Yosemite National Park.

The river runs through a mountain wonderland, passing near the spectacular volcanic columns of the Devils Post Pile and flowing through breathtaking glacial canyons. It arrives at Millerton Lake after about an 80-mile journey that takes it through several hydroelectric dams and lakes, such as Redinger and Kerckhoff lakes.

The 150 miles from Friant Dam to the confluence of the Merced is where the river must be rebuilt. Beyond that, it refills with tributary water from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers on its run to the delta. All three major tributaries have salmon runs.

Even far downstream, however, the river has problems: Farm pesticides and urban waste contaminate the flow.

Some cities, such as Antioch, get water from the delta. Fresh water from the restoration might help water quality for those residents. It also might improve conditions at the deep port of Stockton, where fish suffer from a lack of dissolved oxygen in the slow-flowing river. The city discharges millions of gallons of treated sewage into the river each day.

Many believe a restored San Joaquin will ultimately improve the health of the delta by providing a stronger push of fresh water to guide dwindling species away from massive water pumps.

The cost of the river revival is not small, although it could be as little as $600 million. The price tag easily could push beyond $1 billion because officials may need to buy private property to widen the river and build expensive facilities to help replace irrigation water that farmers lose.

Congress has authorized $250 million, but the money will have to be approved by federal lawmakers as it is needed for projects in the next decade. The state has committed about $200 million through water bonds.

East-side Valley farmers will pay nearly $90 million in extra water fees over the next 10 years, as well as contribute an average of 15% to 17% of their river allotments.

The restoration overshadows all but a few river projects in the country, ranking alongside the $200 million removal of hydroelectric dams along the California-Oregon state line on the Klamath River.

But Friant Dam isn’t going anywhere. The San Joaquin restoration will be a series of projects to widen the channel, alter the river course to go around barriers such as Mendota and Sack dams, and prepare spawning habitat for salmon.

The work will be done over the next nine years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, owner of the dam and architect of the restoration plan.

Officials will release water from the dam during the next several years to study the river. How much water will sink into the ground? How much will seep into neighboring property? How fast will the vegetation return? Maybe another lawsuit

While east-side farmers have reached an uneasy peace over the river’s fate, the fight over the restoration has shifted to the Valley’s west side, where the most significant expense is anticipated. Farmers working 240,000 acres near the river already are considering their own lawsuit, fearing a reinvigorated river will destroy their crops.

They are part of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Authority, representing growers who traded their historic river rights for Northern California water decades ago.

These west-side farmers have developed crops near a 25-mile stretch of the old, dried riverbed beyond the Mendota Pool, which is part of Reach 2. When the river fills, water might seep through the levees and onto their land, swamp their crops and cause big losses.

The Bureau of Reclamation has assured them monitoring wells will be in place and water flow will be slowed if excess seepage is detected. But farm officials say the monitoring wells have not been installed, and the government will run out of time.

“Our goal is not to go to court,” said executive director Steve Chedester of the exchange contractors, who worry about seepage damage. “But we think it would be wise to slow down the restoration until the wells are in.”

The growers in Chedester’s organization also are directly involved in a possibly controversial 35-mile section of river northeast of Los Banos. The river hasn’t flowed at that point since the 1960s. Flood water has been shunted through an artificial channel called the Eastside Bypass. Officials need to decide whether they will rebuild the withered old river or use the bypass.

If officials decide to use the natural river, they will have to spend $350 million or more to buy miles of private land so they can rebuild the waterway deeper and wider. Federal officials will decide in the next two years.

Chris Acree, executive director of Revive the San Joaquin, a Fresno-based advocacy group, prefers to see the natural river restored, even though there are some obstacles. For instance, someone 30 years ago built a house in the river channel in Merced County. It would have to move.

But “it’s only one house,” Acree said. “There could have been cities built.”