 |
|
 |
| ||
|
The Zombie Drain
In the African Congo, natives fear a voodoo snake deity called a zombie for its power to reanimate a dead body. In California's San Joaquin Valley, environmentalists fear a similar power has breathed new life into a drainage project they thought long laid to rest - completion of a controversial canal that would export the valley's saline and selenium-tainted drainage water to the Bay and Delta. This "zombie drain" has been making increasingly less ghostly appearances in courts, state policies and government plans of late.
Because the San Joaquin Valley was once a great inland sea, a layer of clay now underlies the productive agricultural center, trapping irrigation water in a saline basin. The San Luis Unit Authority Act of 1950 required the government to help farmers drain the land and it began by building the 85-mile-long San Luis Drain. The drain was never completed and connected to Delta rivers or waterways, first due to ballooning costs and later because its truncated terminus at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge led to shocking birth deformities in refuge birds, which biologists attributed to selenium in the drain water. The drain was closed, most thought forever.
A 1990 report detailed alternatives to draining the salt and selenium-tainted water into the Bay and Delta, stressing water conservation measures and land retirement. But the $50 million report's recommendations have only been implemented by pilot programs so far. In the meantime, as BurRec attorney Jim Turner phrased it, "the bathtub was filling." In 1993, farmers in the Westlands Water District, where the drainage problem is most severe, persuaded a federal district court judge to request BurRec to complete the San Luis Drain. The Bureau appealed the decision and on May 1, 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ordered all parties into mediation.
But BurRec, bound by an order from the district court judge, has already had to begin discussions with the State Board concerning requirements for its drain discharge permit. The Board, in turn, has directed its staff to give BurRec guidance concerning environmental documentation for the drain. Giving the zombie drain further shape in reality is the Board's 1995 Water Quality Plan which states that "Ultimately it will be necessary for in-basin management of salts to be supplemented by the disposal of salts outside the San Joaquin Valley... [BurRec] should reevaluate alternatives for completing a drain..."
In the meantime, farmers, bureaucrats, and environmentalists remain in mediation, trying to find a solution to a thorny byzantine issue marked not only by squabbles over money and political power, but also by changing beliefs about humanity's right to produce radical changes in the landscape.
"I can understand these people," says BurRec's Turner. "They are alleging that when they bought their lands and developed their farming interests, they did it with the understanding that the land was going to be drained. For them, the Bureau has reneged on its promise. How are they going to live and make money?"
According to Turner, the position of the BurRec is that, although there may have been an original authorization for the Secretary of Interior to construct the drain, times have changed since 1960.
"Costs are now so high and the environmental damage has intensified," says Turner. "I think there are some valid legal claims that are going to have to be resolved, but I feel confident that our side will prevail."
Not only have big water projects fallen out of favor, but increased awareness of pollution problems in the Bay and Delta are limiting the opportunity for increases in pollution load. According to Terry Young of the Environmental Defense Fund, selenium is already accumulating in Bay birds and organisms. "The oil refineries that discharge selenium into the Bay are in the process of ratcheting down their discharges," she says. "The drain would add a significant new load."
Ken Swanson of the Westlands Water District says that drainage water can be treated to remove selenium before it is discharged. The treated water would be run through a diffuser which would provide for rapid dilution in the receiving water body. This is radically different from the situation at Kesterson, where the water collected in one area, says Swanson.
"The drain envisioned 20 years ago was a lot larger than is needed today," he says. "The drain's original design capacity was 450 cubic feet per second. We're envisioning a 150 cubic feet per second drain, so the facilities we based our estimates on are different from what the Bureau based its cost estimates on."
Swanson says the reduced figures reflect the adoption of water conservation measures by agricultural interests in the San Joaquin Valley. He added that the water district would phase in drainage, starting with about 8,000 acre feet annually and building to 60,000 acre feet per year over the next century.
"Retiring land really isn't an alternative unless someone wants to come in and buy land from these guys at market value," Swanson says. "That kind of money isn't there."
Terry Young disagrees. Pilot projects based on the 1990 report, A Management Plan for Agricultural Subsurface Drainage and Related Problems on the Westside San Joaquin Valley, have shown that it is feasible to deal with the valley's drainage problems without adding to the Bay's pollutant load, says Young. The real clash is between the old system of subsidized agriculture that often ignored the realities of the arid American West and a new environmental ethic spurred by budget constraints. Even proponents admit that nobody really knows what the San Luis Drain and its associated water treatment facilities would cost in the long run. But Young says she is convinced that the major cost will be borne not by San Joaquin Valley farmers, but by U.S. taxpayers.
"The drain is a whole lot less expensive for them than treating their own pollution or accomplishing enough source reduction, says Young. "It would be paid for the same way the rest of the San Luis Project and aqueduct was paid for. In a nutshell, the farmers ultimately have to repay the capital expense, but they get a very low interest rate and such a long amount of time to repay that the amount shrinks over time. Basically, its a huge subsidy."
Subsidy or not, public acceptance remains a major hurdle for the ghost drain to transcend in its quest for new life, according to the State Board's Jerry Johns. "The only way people will allow the drain in their backyard is if we have done absolutely everything else we can to manage salts and the discharge is shown to be safe," he says.
Contact: Swanson (209)224-1523; Turner (916)979-2155; Young (510658-8008
Editors Note: In related news, the Central Valley Regional Board approved a basin plan amendment this May which adopts a 5 ppb selenium objective (over a four-day average) for the San Joaquin River.
[ ABAG HOME | SFEP HOME ]
Copyright © 2002, San Francisco Estuary Project