Cumulative Effects - No One is Adding

By Susan Sutton

Since 2001, I have been very concerned about all the restoration going on between the levees on the Sacramento River, as well as in the weirs and bypasses. I believe in habitat restoration when it is in the proper location and causes no harm to people, animals, or communities.  My concern, and it should be of great concern to all Californians, is that when habitat is placed in our floodways, it has the serious potential to restrict the carrying capacity of the flood system and result in further erosion and degradation of the system.   Currently, numerous habitat restoration projects are underway in the Sacramento River system. While individually, specific habitat plans may not appear to impact the flood system, the cumulative effects could have great impacts on the ability of our flood system to function as designed.

Over the past 20 years numerous plans have been slowly put into effect to “restore the natural habitat” in the Sacramento River.  This process is juxtaposed to the way the Sacrament River was designed back at the turn of the century: to act as our flood control system.  The flood control system is made up of dams, weirs, bypass channels, and the Sacramento River. The entire plan to return the river to a meandering waterway was laid out in 1998 in the Sacramento River Conservation Area Handbook.  This plan, if totally implemented, will be setting up a recipe for disaster for not only residents in the upper Sacramento Valley, but in the city of Sacramento and surrounding areas as well.    

Here are a few the facts regarding one project on the upper Sacramento River north of Colusa:

1. May 1998, Sacramento River Conservation Handbook, Pg. 7-7.   National Flood Insurance Program (pg 5-21) definition of regulated floodways: refers to lands that must be reserved so that water can be discharged without increasing the flood base by one foot.
2. August 2001, Draft Environmental Assessment, Central Valley Project Improvement Act Habitat Restoration Program, Boegar and Ward Property Acquisitions Colusa County, California, issued by the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sacramento, California.  The Assessment states on Page #9:

   a. “The Service recently analyzed river channel roughness upstream of the Boeger and Ward properties and predicted changes on water surface elevations for proposed habitat restoration in the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge system (USFWS 2001)...At the restoration sites, where SFCP levees confine the river, one-dimensional modeling predicted water surface elevations to increase a maximum of 0.5 feet.”b. However, the conclusion of the Assessment was that there would be No Significant Impact (FONSI).

3. February 13, 2002, Finding of No Significant Impact for Boeger /Ward Property Acquisitions in the Sacramento River Conservation Area.  Key concern: No impacts of .5 to.7 feet increase in the river from restoration of said properties?
4. Draft II, Colusa Subreach Background Report.  Pg. 71.  Eight tracts identified in Subreach Area as candidates for restoration. Hydraulic impacts not determined.  Thus, no consideration of cumulative impacts.  The Nature Conservancy has studies pending.

The big question is if one property raises the River ½ of a foot, what impacts will all the other properties slated for conversion to habitat have on the river?  No one knows.

The environmental agenda has a strong foothold in the politics of today.  And while many programs are well intentioned, no one is looking at the total picture.  Multiple programs are calling for habitat restoration.  Here are just a few:

• Sacramento River Conservation Area
• Sacramento River National Conservation Area(Part of California Wild Heritage Campaign)
• Comprehensive Study – Funds exhausted
• Sacramento River Project
• Wilderness Designation Campaign
• Wild & Scenic Designations
• CALFED
• Habitat Conservation Easements
• Habitat Communities Conservation Programs
  
• Expansion of Wildlife Refuges
  
• Wetlands Reserve Program
• Farm Bill
  
• Sacramento River Watershed Program
  
• American Heritage River Program
• Flood Protection Corridor Program

           Many of these programs overlap(ed).

Today, Department of Water Resources (DWR), on their web site, has recapped the success of levee repairs,

“Department of Water Resources (DWR) has completed structural repairs to 19 additional levee sites in the Central Valley flood control system. These 19 sites are part of the 71 sites the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) announced last fall to be critically damaged and in need of urgent repair because of the high risk to urban areas. DWR, after inspection, found the damage to the sites severe enough to require the department’s repair team to work into the beginning of the 2007 rain season to enable the levees to withstand this year’s expected winter storms. Twelve of the completed sites are on the Sacramento River in Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, Solano, Glenn, and Butte counties. Seven sites are in the lower San Joaquin River region in Fresno and Madera counties. (01/18/07).”

Environmental projects are being incorporated into every project.  Mitigation is mandated even where it doesn’t make sense.  For example:  chaining dead trees to the bottom of the levees.  The cost to complete an important effort, like flood control, escalates beyond reason.  Who pays?  All of us. 

If indeed global warming is indeed happening, then it is incumbent on all of us to get our flood control system back to its original carrying capacity and then maintain it.  Only crops or habitat that does not impede the winter flood flow should be allowed.  Maintenance is key.
 
So, what needs to be done?  Here is a short list.  Our diligence today will mean big payoffs in the future.

1. Call for a moratorium on all habitat restoration projects in the Sacramento River, weirs and bypasses including the Yolo bypass, until a full study can be conducted on the cumulative impacts of all the current and proposed restoration projects throughout the entire system.   

2. Efforts should be redirected from habitat restoration on the river to returning the flood system to its original carrying capacity. This includes cleaning out the weirs and bypasses, and may even include dredging and pulling out large woody debris.

3. Once the flood control system is functioning as designed, then habitat placement can resume where it is guaranteed not to impact the flood control system, and only if maintenance funds are available to assure that flood flows can pass through the system unimpeded.

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