Taking on water

Ed Cox was prepared to chastise the Butte County Board of Supervisors at the panel’s meeting Tuesday (Dec. 17) for what he called months of inaction regarding the Camp Fire-damaged Miocene Canal system.

Instead, Cox, a spokesman for the Miocene Canal Coalition, left the meeting encouraged.

The supervisors—led by a motion by Bill Connelly—voted unanimously to send a letter to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife that points out the environmental impacts of the dried-up, PG&E-owned canal system and asks the department to respond. The letter will be copied to multiple state entities, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and Cal Fire.

“For the first time in eight months, [the board was] actually covering some ground,” Cox told the CN&R. “The Department of Fish and Wildlife has been AWOL.”

The board’s action came during an hours-long discussion on the county’s water policies and goals that had been anticipated since Nov. 5, when the panel withdrew funding for a study exploring the feasibility of an intertie pipeline project between the Paradise Irrigation District (PID) and California Water Service Co.’s Chico branch (see “County sinks pipeline study,” Newslines, Nov. 7).

The concept was again discussed by the board, with Supervisor Doug Teeter, whose district includes the Ridge, making a motion to have the Butte County Water Commission review the project and provide recommendations to the board. The motion passed 3-2, with Supervisors Debra Lucero and Tami Ritter casting the dissenting votes.

“Let it come back to us, and then we can say, ‘Yeah, we support it,’” Teeter said. “And then maybe PID can take our support and go get grant dollars. … If we don’t have a study, we’ll never know if it’s even possible.”

The vote, however, highlighted disagreements among the supervisors regarding the county’s role in a possible pipeline project.

Lucero noted that Tuesday’s discussion about water was sparked by “misleading” language regarding the study’s scope. She said the study was set to examine—without explicitly saying so—use of the county’s “Table A” water, which is surface water the county pays for through a State Water Project contract. In a meeting at her office, including representatives from the city of Chico, PID and the county, she said people on all sides were unclear as to who would be selling water, who would be receiving water and how the project would work.

Further, Lucero said, the possible pipeline project has been misconstrued in the Board of Supervisors chambers and in the public. The project has been billed as a way for PID to remain financially viable after losing its customer base in the Camp Fire, “but it’s not realistic,” she said.

PID will receive two years of “backfill” money from the state totaling more than $14 million. It would take around five years, she said, to build a pipeline from Paradise to Chico.

“At the end of two years,” Lucero said, “you’re still in the same place because you don’t have a pipeline.”

Teeter disagreed, saying the study was going to examine three things, including the cost of the pipeline, water rights and “other water.” The “other water,” he said, included the county’s Table A water allocation and additional sources that come off the West Branch of the Feather River.

“I get you want to say it’s misleading,” Teeter told Lucero, “but it wasn’t.”

Nevertheless, Paul Gosselin, director of the county’s Department of Water and Resource Conservation, told the board that in hindsight, he didn’t do an adequate job of explaining the concept behind the study of the pipeline project. It wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive examination of a pipeline, just an initial “first phase” look.

Gosselin added that the study did start the discussion about in-county use of Table A water, of which it pays for 27,500 acre-feet per year. He said the county had been funding the pipeline feasibility study with grant money earmarked for exploring groundwater sustainability projects. The county, he said, is principally interested in reducing groundwater pumping in groundwater-dependent areas, such as Chico. A pipeline from Paradise to Chico could move surface water—whether it be Table A or other available water in the county—to the basin to help curb over-pumping.

To avoid confusion raised by the pipeline study in the future, County Counsel Bruce Alpert suggested that the board direct staff to bring forward for discussion any ideas or projects that would use Table A water. The suggestion appeared to be met with approval by the supervisors.

In the final water-related action taken Tuesday, the board unanimously approved a motion by Ritter that directed staff to explore water conservation in the county. Ritter said efforts to sustain groundwater basins shouldn’t look only at ways to refill them.

“When we are looking at conservation efforts, we have to start thinking differently,” she said. “We should be looking at other jurisdictions, what they have done. Look at places that have similar climates and how they xeriscape and how they use native species, and how that cuts down on water use.”

Gosselin said conservation techniques could fit nicely within the county’s sustainability goals, and he would report his findings to the board on a regular basis.