Lindsay Officials Fear Water Crisis
By Sarah Elizabeth Villicana, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.
Jan. 11–LINDSAY — County and city leaders are urging Congress to ensure the San Joaquin River settlement will not create a crisis for Tulare County during dry years ahead.
The Tulare County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution Tuesday seeking assistance to replace water that will be diverted from the Friant-Kern and Madera canals as a stipulation a recent settlement between the Friant Water Users Authority and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
At the center of the lawsuit was the decline of San Joaquin River Delta and a once-abundant salmon population. Since the inception of Friant Dam, which became fully operational in the 1940s, a 60-mile stretch of the river routinely goes dry.
After 18 years of litigation, parties resolved in September to provide sufficient water flow to the San Joaquin to sustain naturally reproducing Chinook salmon in a 153-mile stretch of river between the dam and the Merced River.
The water reserved for restoration efforts will come from the water supply now contracted to local communities and about 1,500 local farmers.
Supervisor Allen Ashida said as more farmers and communities tap a limited supply of groundwater, serious impact would be seen in all eight incorporated cities and in the smaller communities. Orange Cove and Strathmore are entirely dependent on Friant water.
Ahida said the settlement will create a net loss of 150,000-acre feet of water.
The Dist. 1 supervisor will travel to Washington at the end of the month to present the county’s looming water issues to lawmakers.
The process of restoring water to the San Joaquin will begin in 2009 with the salmon to be reintroduced by December 2012.
On Tuesday, board members unanimously approved the resolution urging legislators to address the losses in surface water and ground water supplies.
According to the a letter signed by Ashida and local leaders including city councilmembers from Porterville and Lindsay states:
“The mitigation plan should address the loss of surface water and the resulting ground water overdraft for urban users. The impacts of the loss of surface water for the people who reside in the Friant service area would be disastrous.”
A similar resolution was presented to Lindsay City Council on Tuesday evening. The city resolution also won unanimous approval.
Lindsay Mayor Pro tem Pamela Kimball explained the threat of trying to replace lost canal water by pumping from the ground water supply.
Tulare County’s ground water is often found to contain contaminates in excess of state and federal limits, according to the California Water Resources Control Board. Without a means to replace the water they would normally receive from the canal, during a dry year, many communities will be forced to revert to using a contaminated supply for their main source of drinking water.
“It is feared that with enough overdrafting of the groundwater, the issue of contaminants will be compounded,” Kimball said. “We want to know if [Congress] will help us figure out this problem that has been created for us.”
Lindsay now receives on average 70 percent of its municipal water supply from the Friant system.
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