Water options start flowing; committee, public float ideas to help solve water district dilemma on North Coast

John Driscoll
The Times-Standard
05/13/2010

In what would be a
reversal of irony, the lake-less city of Blue Lake could someday get a
lake.
Creating a lake for fishing and boating is among the
options explored as part of a process launched by the Humboldt Bay
Municipal Water District to find ways to use its abundant water and not
lose it to an outside interest. The water could also be put to use by
expanding the district's boundaries, be used for aquaculture, be piped
to another area or used to increase flows for salmon in the Mad River,
from which the system is supplied.
An advisory committee and
extensive tapping of public opinion recently yielded possibilities for
the district board to consider as it sees the 2020 expiration of its
state water permit coming over the horizon.
The options run
from the long term to the short term, from potentially expansive uses
for water to others that would consume only small amounts. A
Sacramento-based water law attorney guided the advisory committee
through the maze of legalities surrounding water in California.
”Water
law is complex and steeped in history,” said District General Manager
Carol Rische.
The district provides treated water to about
80,000 residences and businesses. Ruth Lake reservoir in Trinity County
stores water that is released to the lower Mad River, where a series of
pumps sends the water into a distribution system.
Residents
and businesses use only a fraction of the system's water. Most of the
system's
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water -- up to 60 million gallons per day
-- is untreated, and was meant to supply two pulp mills on the Samoa
Peninsula. Neither pulp mill is operating currently, and although a
company called Freshwater Tissue is hoping to restart a mill, it still
won't come close to consuming the full 60 mgd. With California's
use-it-or-lose-it water rights system, the district could lose rights to
the lion's share of the supply its system was designed to provide. When
2020 comes around, it may mean the district is only licensed for the
10,000 acre feet it uses each year, versus the permit it possess now for
85,000 acre feet. An acre foot covers an acre of land 1 foot deep, or
about 326,000 gallons.
The 14-member advisory committee and
the public developed options for different categories of water use,
including using the water within the district, selling it outside the
district, using it for environmental purposes in the Mad River itself,
and directing it to be used for hydropower generation.
Sacramento-based
Downey Brand water rights attorney David Aladjem said that the district
can obtain a license for any water it can show is being put to
beneficial use, a term defined by state law.
”The question is,
can you actually find good uses for this water?” Aladjem said.
Raising
flows to benefit the Mad River's salmon and steelhead -- if indeed they
would benefit -- would likely not be a use to which water can be
appropriated, Aladjem said. But he added that taking excess water
designated for municipal use and using it for so-called in-stream uses
would be allowed, he said, unless domestic users begin to require the
water.
Aladjem noted concerns about selling the water outside
the district, whether by pipeline or other means. While any entity with
rights to more water than it uses fears that it will lose control of its
water if it's sent out of the area, Aladjem said, that can be addressed
up front.
”I think it's a legitimate fear,” Aladjem said,
“but I think the law can address it.”
The options the advisory
committee laid out regarding sending water out of the area recognize
that huge amounts of water could be transferred, but depending on the
means it could take two to 10 years to implement. Agricultural uses,
aquaculture, diversion of water to the Mad River Hatchery and even the
building of a lake in Blue Lake could use reasonably large amounts of
water -- but nowhere near what a pulp mill could consume.
Advisory
Committee member David Lindberg, an engineering geologist with LACO
Associates, said that the most obvious solution is to have one or more
pulp mills come online, although he said it's unclear if that would be
acceptable to the community.
”We have such a large supply of
untreated water on the Samoa Peninsula,” Lindberg said, “it's going to
be hard to find users that will use that much water.”
He said
he'd like to see a solution that will protect the district's water
rights and also contribute money to the overall system to prevent
increasing water rates.

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