The 3 million acre feet cap of water exports in all years is a key recommendation of the Environmental Water Caucus (EWC) updated solutions plan titled “A Sustainable Water Plan for California.”
In fact, 2011 was the all time record export year with 6.67 million acre feet of water diverted from the Delta, followed closely behind by the 6.46 million acre feet exported in 2017. 2018 saw 4.62 million acre feet exported from the Delta, while 2019 saw 5.3 million acre feet exported and 2020 saw 3.65 million acre feet exported: https://viewperformance.deltacouncil.ca.gov/pm/water-exports.
Due to the projected poor water conditions in the Sacramento and its tributaries this year, all of the juvenile chinook salmon (smolts) from state fish hatcheries are getting truck rides to saltwater this spring to increase their survival.
Over 16.8 million young chinook salmon from four Central Valley hatcheries — the Feather River, Nimbus, Mokelumne and Merced facilities — will have been trucked to release sites around San Pablo and San Francisco bays and in Half Moon and Monterey bays by early June, according to the CDFW.
“If you don’t conserve enough water to maintain carryover storage to enable successful spawning and outmigration of salmon in a drought, then the CDFW has to truck the fish downriver to the bay so that fish are able to survive,” said Bill Jennings, chairman and executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA): www.recordnet.com/...
Below is the chart with the annual exports and the 15 year average. All of the figures are in million acre feet:
Year
|
Annual Export
|
15 Year Average
|
2010
|
4.773481183
|
5.368112135
|
2011
|
6.678547642
|
5.453433578
|
2012
|
4.971327374
|
5.441023876
|
2013
|
4.270590543
|
5.405164312
|
2014
|
2.037482936
|
5.216134646
|
2015
|
1.939412746
|
4.921947348
|
2016
|
3.508986048
|
4.814769057
|
2017
|
6.463958728
|
4.87413627
|
2018
|
4.6
|
4.758666667
|
2019
|
5.344226
|
4.705860648
|
2020
|
3.655797327
|
4.518263237
|
For more information, see: viewperformance.deltacouncil.ca.gov/…
USDA predicts a record of 1,330,000 bearing acres in California almonds this year
The massive water exports out of the Delta take place as the acreage for almonds, a water-intensive crop, has increased dramatically over the past ten years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) on May 12 released the 2021 California Almond Subjective Forecast that predicts a 3 percent increase in the California almond crop during this drought year, with a record bearing acreage of 1,330,000 acres.
“The initial subjective forecast for the 2021 California almond production is 3.20 billion pounds,” the report stated. “Forecasted production is 3% above last year's production of 3.12 billion pounds. Forecasted bearing acreage for 2021 is a record high of 1,330,000. Forecasted yield is 2,410 pounds per acre, 3% lower than the 2020 yield of 2,490 pounds per acre.”
That forecast follows the April 22 release of the USDA NASS 2020 California Almond Acreage Report that estimated total almond acreage for 2020 at 1,600,000 acres, up 5.3 percent from the 2019 acreage of 1,520,000. Bearing acres (orchards mature enough to produce a crop) were reported at 1,250,000 acres, up 5.9 percent from 2019.
And who are the biggest and most powerful almond growers in California? Yes you guessed it — Linda and Stewart Resnick, the owners of The Wonderful Company. The billionaire power couple have donated $250,000 to Gavin Newson’s campaign against the recall this year: www.counterpunch.org/…
As winter Chinook are dying before spawning and almond acreage keeps expanding, Doug Obegi of NRDC informs us that on Friday the State Water Resources Control Board appeared to tentatively approve a temperature management plan for Shasta Dam that “sacrifices salmon and fishing jobs for agribusiness profits this year, violates water quality standards, and leaves California woefully unprepared if next year is also dry” - and will apparently allow the federal and state governments to allocate more than 4.5 million acre feet of water in 2021 to their contractors.
“While this plan is terrible for salmon and the thousands of jobs and communities that depend on their health, it appears to allow Reclamation and DWR to allocate more than 4.5 million acre feet of water this year to their contractors, largely agribusinesses in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, rather than making more politically painful cuts,” Obegi wrote: on.nrdc.org/...
Unfortunately, the Sacramento River is not the only river system where salmon are dying because of the Bureau of Reclamation’s poor water management policies. On May 13, the Yurok Tribe reported that a widespread and catastrophic juvenile fish kill is taking place on the Klamath River, a day after the US Bureau of Reclamation announced that it would not release water to prevent a juvenile salmon kill on the river, as requested by the Tribe.
“Right now, the Klamath River is full of dead and dying fish on the Yurok Reservation,” said Frankie Myers, the Yurok Tribe’s Vice Chairman. “This disease will kill most of the baby salmon in the Klamath, which will impact fish runs for many years to come. For salmon people, a juvenile fish kill is an absolute worst-case scenario.”
Read the Yurok Tribe press release here: bit.ly/33H5as9