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10 CapitalPress.com Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters February 17, 2017 California State may curb pumping near aqueduct By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Water regulators are considering re- stricting groundwater pump- ing in the San Joaquin Valley near the California Aqueduct and other man-made canals because of subsidence. State Department of Wa- ter Resources officials say they’re considering legal op- tions for preventing facility damage in light of a new Na- tional Aeronautics and Space Administration report on sub- sidence — the sinking of land as the water table drops. The Feb. 8 report asserts that two main “subsidence bowls” covering hundreds of square miles grew wider and deeper between spring 2015 and fall 2016 and that a seven-mile area in Fresno County has settled up to 20 inches. Scientists say subsidence threatens flows in the aqueduct, which supplies water to near- ly 25 million Californians and nearly 1 million acres of farm- land. The canal has dropped more than 2 feet in one area of Kings County, losing 20 per- cent of its carrying capacity, the report said. The DWR is considering Courtesy of Calif. Dept. of Water Resources A truck approaches the West Washington Road Bridge over the high water in the Eastside Bypass west of Chowchilla, Calif., on Jan. 25. The bridge is buckling because of subsidence, which state officials say is causing wear and impeding flows in canals and aqueducts throughout the San Joaquin Valley. measures to curtail groundwa- ter pumping, create ground- water management zones near critical infrastructure, and de- veloping county ordinances, of- ficials said. Some of these mea- sures may be enacted through legislation, said Jeanine Jones, the agency’s interstate resourc- es manager. Thousands of wells exist near state facilities that could be contributing to subsidence, state officials contend. “The question for us is, what’s the status of those wells?” Jones said. “Are they all causing subsidence? ... That’s the due diligence we need to go through. “Perhaps the remedy is some kind of infrastructure pro- tection zone” in which drilling couldn’t occur within a certain distance of a canal or could only go a certain depth, Jones said. The DWR is conducting its own study of the effects of subsidence along the 444-mile aqueduct, the State Water Proj- ect’s main artery, and other facilities and will identify po- tential actions in the coming months. Much of the effort will like- ly be done through local enti- ties as part of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a 2014 law that requires local governments to regulate pumping and recharge. Local leaders face a July 1 deadline for setting up new groundwater management agencies. NASA scientists compiled their latest report using radar satellite maps and additional aircraft-based images focused on the California Aqueduct, ac- cording to a news release. The report follows the agency’s August 2015 study finding that all the drought-re- lated groundwater pumping in the valley was causing land to sink at historic rates. That study showed land in the valley was sinking by nearly 2 inches per month in some places. Since then, the University of California and others have begun numerous groundwa- ter-recharge projects in the valley, and storms this win- ter have provided as much as double the normal rainfall in some places. But whether the wet winter helps groundwater recharge in an area depends largely on the soil, Jones said. With “in- elastic” surfaces such as fine grain clay soils, the ground- water that’s removed can’t be replaced, she said. Groundwater recharge projects wouldn’t necessari- ly help the aqueduct or other at-risk facilities unless they’re close by, she said. A comprehensive rebuild of the aqueduct to its origi- nal capacity would likely cost hundreds of millions of dol- lars, and even a focused triage to fix the most affected parts of the canal could cost tens of millions of dollars per loca- tion, officials said. Already, subsidence-relat- ed repairs have cost the SWP and federal Central Valley Project an estimated $100 million since the 1960s. The DWR set aside $10 million from the $7.5 billion water bond voters approved in 2014 to help communities with depleted aquifers enact pumping ordinances and con- servation plans. But no Prop- osition 1 funds were set aside for repairs of existing facili- ties, Jones said. “The bond was really about building new things, not” operations and mainte- nance, she said. 7-2/#4N Tim Hearden/Capital Press U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, left, talks with Bruce Ross, field representative for California As- semblyman Brian Dahle, after making a presentation Feb. 9 at the Sierra Cascade Logging Conference in Anderson, Calif. McClintock: Congress can use funding authority to curb bureaucracy By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press ANDERSON, Calif. — The chairman of a federal lands subcommittee says Congress can use its funding authority to wrest control of land management and other government functions from an ever-expanding bureaucracy. U.S. Rep. Tom McClin- tock, R-Calif., said Congress is forbidden to fund unautho- rized programs and must reau- thorize them every few years, which enables lawmakers to fight back against administra- tive overreach. “There’s a movement in the House (of Representa- tives) that’s gaining steam to use the reauthorization pro- cess to take back the legisla- tive and judicial powers that we’ve given the executive branch over the past century,” McClintock told the Capital Press. “In some cases the bureau- cracy has exceeded its legal authority,” he said. A person is 10 times more likely to be accused of break- ing an administrative rule than of breaking a criminal law, said McClintock, who chairs the House Natural Re- sources Committee’s federal lands subcommittee. His comments during an interview followed his pre- sentation Feb. 9 at the Sier- ra Cascade Logging Con- ference’s kickoff breakfast, where he said a turning polit- ical tide is improving chances of passing bills that open up federal lands to more logging and other uses. Already, water legislation approved in December in- cluded environmental waivers for Lake Tahoe Basin forest thinning projects of fewer than 3,000 acres to prevent catastrophic fire, said McClin- tock, whose district includes a vast swath of eastern moun- tains and foothills stretching from Sacramento to Fresno. With Republican majori- ties in Congress and President Donald Trump, McClintock sees a better chance of passing the Resilient Federal Forests Act, which would enable fed- eral agencies to use disaster funding for firefighting, and his own Emergency Forests Restoration Act, which would fund the removal of dead trees from forests. Lawmakers may also seek to amend the Antiquities Act to divert funds from the ac- quisition of new lands to bet- ter managing existing ones, he said. “The mood (in Congress) is, ‘Please, God, don’t let us screw this up,’” McClintock told the breakfast gathering. “This is our one chance to save our country. ... We’re going to be judged on the success of the policies them- selves.” Often referred to as the “fourth branch of govern- ment,” the federal bureau- cracy has increasingly been accused of usurping powers delegated to Congress or the courts. U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch wrote in one recent opinion that “ex- ecutive bureaucracies” can “concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the fram- ers’ design.”
