Category: Water Board

The State Water Resources Control Board has increasing power and responsibility, especially since the new 2009 surface water laws, and the 2014 groundwater laws. The Water Board hired a bunch of enforcement staff, and they are hiring more. Fines went way up in 2009. Know how the Water Board works and what their main requirements are, to protect your business, your diversion, and your pocketbook.

Board Updates Proposed Regs March 2

March 2, the California Water Board has updated the proposed regulations for measurement of surface water diversions.  You have to move fast to beat the comment deadline!

The notice is required to be given “…at least five working days prior to submission of a proposed emergency action to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL).  Then, “After the submission of the proposed emergency to OAL, OAL shall allow interested persons five calendar days to submit comments on the proposed emergency regulations as set forth in Government Code section 11349.6. This document provides the required notice.”  I haven’t called to check, but this could mean there are only 4 more days, until either March 6 (Sunday) or March 8 if “days” are M-F.

The definition of qualified persons is expanded, which will greatly help people with small diversions to comply at less cost, and sooner!  Instead of just engineers, now contractors and “professionals” may install and certify measurement devices.  The deadlines are stretched out somewhat – the biggest diversions (equivalent to 1.40 cubic feet per second 24-7-365, or 5.60 cfs for 90 days straight) and storage over 1,000 acre-feet per year have20160302_BdPropReg_AcrcyFreqQualIndvto be done by January 1, 2017 – less than 10 months.  The diversions equivalent to 0.14 – 1.40 cfs year-round, get six more months, to 7/1/2017.  The smallest diversions, 0.014 cfs year-0.14 cfs year-round, get until January 2018.  That makes sense – the Board gets the most bang-for-the-regulations with the large diversions.

In addition, the Board gives some estimated costs, which helps to plan for the expenditures.  It can be expensive, but when done right, devices can last 10, 20, even 40 years in some cases:

20160302_BdPropReg_CostRange

That’s all for now.  If someone already passed along comments that represent your water right interests, that’s great.  If not, you have a few days to make your own comments.

Water Management (Sharing Shortages) In California In the Short and Long Term, Part 2

Continuing from Part 1, why would a groundwater shortage in San Diego affect how much a surface water diverter in Modoc County could use…rather, how much the diverter has to reduce his use?  Where does all groundwateWatercyclesummaryr come from?  Surface water flowing in streams, accumulating in meadows, ponds, and lakes replenishes groundwater, whether it takes a year, 3 years, or 20 years.
Rainfall infiltrates (soaks in) until the soil has no more capacity, and then runs off.  Groundwater is directly connected to, and depends on the amount of surface water.

In 2009, just 7 years ago, the California Legislature passed and the Governor signed Senate Bills 1, 6, 7, and 8.  These new laws required:

In 2013, 4 short years later, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed.  This is a gigantic change in state groundwater laws – 515 groundwater basins in California are now prioritized based on overdraft, increased groundwater pumping, and falling groundwater levels; or conversely, the health of groundwater basins – some are hardly even touched.  On this map, now everybody can see what was neCASGEM_BasinPrioritization_Statewidearly invisible 2 years ago – the state of our groundwater basins.

About 2/3 of California’s water falls in the northern 1/3 of the State.  However, most of the good agricultural land, as well as most of its population, is in that drier 2/3 of the State.

Back to San Diego potentially affecting how much water can be diverted in Modoc County…does San Diego even have a groundwater basin?  Yes it does, along the Sweetwater River.  Of course this isn’t hydrologically connected to drainage from the Pit River in Modoc County; the Pit River ultimately eCASGEM_BasinPrioritization_SanDiegonters the Pacific Ocean in the Sacramento River-San Joaquin River Delta, and the Sweetwater enters the ocean on the shores of the City of San Diego.

Think about it:  7 short years ago, groundwater was mostly a mystery to 90% of folks, and surface water management was hardly “integrated”, except for the federal Central Valley Project (CVP), State Water Project (SWP), and some relatively small projects.  20 years from now?  Heck, that’s 2036; I’ll bet that, just continuing the –> trajectory –> of legislation that started in 2009, by 2030 (14 years from now), surface water and groundwater will be so connected and co-managed, that shortages in San Diego will require diversions to be reduced from where the water is in those northernmost Counties contributing to the Sacramento River drainage:  Siskiyou, Modoc, Shasta, part of Lassen, Tehama, Glenn, Butte, and Plumas.  I put in print so we can check my prognostications down the road.  You heard it here first!

Maybe that sounds paranoid or protective.  It’s not, I would think the same whether I lived in Crescent City, San Francisco, Susanville, Oroville, Bakersfield, or San Dimas.  After all, who would have thought in 2007 or 2008, that we would be integrating surface water use, looking at groundwater maps in syndicated newspapers, hearing of possible  fines of $25,000 for misreporting surface water diversion in the middle of nowhere…?

That’s all for now, by the end of the week we’ll be back to discussing the many aspects of the diversion of surface water.  Have a good night, everybody.

Water Management (Sharing Shortages) In California In the Short and Long Term, Part 1

san_diego_sdskyline14_smCalifornia surface water and groundwater laws are increasing controls rapidly, and the changes aren’t over yet.  The end result will likecreek_through_meadow_smallly be that shortages in San Diego will reduce how much a license holder in Modoc County can take.  It will probably take 20 years for the full effect…but 20 years is a lot faster than it used to be for farmers, ranchers, cities, and the environment.

How does this work?  It is harder to see from the surface water side.  How are the two ends of the State even connected, hydrologically?  Some diverters up around Alturas divert from the Pit River, which flows into Shasta Lake on the Sacramento River, which flows to the Delta, from which water is pumped by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).  Actually, DWR diverts water released from Lake Oroville on the Feather River, but that water joins the Sacramento River at Verona, before it gets to the Delta.Central_valley_project-01_wiki

The federal water goes to the San Joaquin Valley, which is the southern end of the Great Central Valley and salad bowl of California.  The USBR Central Valley Project (CVP) coordinates to some extent with the California State Water Project (SWP).

CVP_State_water_project_wiki

 

 

 

The state water goes partly to the San Joaquin Valley, and mostly over the Tehachapi Range to the Los Angeles Basin.  Where the water goes from the CVP and SWP is carefully controlled by water rights and contracts.

 

wiki_800px-Well_spudder_8606

What we don’t see with our own eyes is the groundwater picture.  Groundwater pumping has dramatically increased during the last few years of drought, as news articles have made clear.  Nobody’s groundwater rights are affected by the new groundwater laws, but every groundwater basin either has or will soon have a local management agency of some type.  Maps of groundwater shortages will be in news articles, online, and where every citizen of California can see them.  This is part 1 of a several-part post on how in the world, or in this case the state, groundwater shortages in the extreme South will affect surface water diversions way up in the North.

How Good Is Good Enough? Water Board Required Accuracy of Your Measurement Device

How accurate does your measurement device have to be?  The Water Board gives those numbers in the Fact Sheet at http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/press_room/press_releases/2016/pr12016_measurement.pdf; see the bottom of this post for the excerpt on accuracy.

When talking about new weirs, orifices, flumes, mag-meters, and acoustic Doppler devices, plus or minus (+/-) 5% accuracy is expected of new, properly installed, regularly maintained, correctly operated devices.  What does that mean?  If your diversion rate is measured at 1.00 cubic feet per second (cfs), then you would expect the true value to be between 0.95 and 1.05 cfs.  If your diversion rate is 5.00 cfs, then the true value would be between 4.75 and 5.25 cfs.  The total accuracy is 10%, we just don’t know if measured values are really up to 5% less, or 5% more than calculated.

New devices might actually have better accuracy than +/- 5%.  Engineers never count on that because a bunch of factors, known and unknown, can stealthily make the accuracy worse.  Accuracy also depends on the measurer – some are better than others, some are better trained and experienced, and most take the job seriously but some do not.

Of course, accuracy gets worse as measurement devices age.  Why does this happen?  There are a number of reasons:

  • Settling, so the device is not level front to back, or side to side, or both
  • Cracking, so water leaks out, or the cracked wall is not straight (planar)
  • Wear, spalling, chipping, and other roughening in the device floor and walls
  • The ditch fills in downstream, causing submergence
  • Old boards that warp and leak
  • Installed staff gages wear, making them harder to read correctly
  • Etc.

The USBR Water Measurement Manual has 14 chapters, and all of Chapter 3 discusses accuracy in great detail.  That’s the “Bible” of water measurement so we would expect it to be, well, accurate in its discussion of accuracy.

http://www.usbr.gov/tsc/techreferences/mands/wmm/index.htm

It is not clear to me yet whether the Board’s accuracy numbers are +/- values, meaning the allowed accuracy is +/- 15% for diversions less than 100 acre-feet (AF) per year, and +/- 10% for diversions greater than 10 AF per year.  If so, that seems reasonable because that allows for some aging of measurement devices.  Otherwise, the Board would expect measurement devices to always be in new condition for diversions greater than 100 AF per year or storage greater than 200 AF per year.  That would be pretty expensive!

That brings up the subject of money – accuracy requirements hit your pocketbook.  First you have to either install or pay for a measurement device to be installed.  Hopefully the device will last 20 to 30 years, but high flows, getting walked on by cattle, freezing and thawing, settling faster than expected, and other events can wear them out faster.  The replacement cycle might be 10 years for some diversions, or even 5 if wear and tear is bad.

Board_FactSheet_MeasurementAccuracy

This post may be more than most people want to read on the subject of accuracy.  Still, it’s a lot shorter than Chapter 3 of the Water Measurement Manual!

That’s all for now, have a great rest of the week.

Coming to a Diversion Near You – Water Board’s 2017 Measuring, Reporting Requirements

Continuing our discussion from a previous post, http://allwaterrights.com/2016/01/27/diverters-must-report-weekly-daily-or-hourly-starting-2017/, surface water diverters must have some kind of measurement system, and must report diversions more frequently.  The Water Board posted a fact sheet online that summarizes the emergency regulations:  SENATE BILL 88 AND EMERGENCY REGULATION FORMEASURING AND REPORTING ON THE DIVERSION OF WATER

Many diverters, particularly those who report less than 100 acre-feet (AF) per year, can find enough information in this blog to successfully install their own measurement devices.  100 AF per year is equivalent to a year-round, 24-7 diversion of 0.140 cubic feet per second (cfs).  If the diverter only uses water during the irrigation season, the equivalent rate is higher.  For example, a diversion for 90 days is only 1/4 of a year, so the rate is proportionately 4 times greater:  0.560 cfs.

What are some of the other regulations?  Here are a few from the January 8 version, which still has the edits shown.  The first is that diverters must “immediately” report changes in name, address, or ownership.  Sometimes, buyers of property don’t even know they have a permit or license!  Not immediately reporting something a buyer is not even aware of, puts the new owner in legal trouble:20160108_prop_regs_S_915-916

There are changes in the regs which we have already discussed, in measurement devices, reporting frequency, and who is legally qualified to install measurement devices:

20160108_prop_regs_S_933_meas_dev_Part_2_of_4

20160108_prop_regs_S_933_meas_dev_Part_3_of_4

20160108_prop_regs_S_933_meas_dev_Part_4_of_4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20160108_prop_regs_qualified_indiv

More on the regulations later, including additional information about how to comply with the law, stay out of trouble, and protect your right to divert water

Summary of Water Rights, Flow Measurement Posts So Far

There have been 25 posts so far, on the types of California surface water rights, flow measurement devices, and how to measure diverted flows.  You’ll see new posts once or twice a week.  Please send suggestions for post topics!  We have discussed:

  1. All Water Rights, California
  2. Read Me My Rights (How do you know if you have a water right?)
  3. Reasonable And Beneficial Use Depends On Who You Are
  4. The Smartest Water Expert In California (Chuck Rich)
  5. Riparian Rules by Chuck Rich
  6. Water Rights – Why Do They Exist? Which Kinds Are There?
  7. Water Rights And Engineers
  8. California Water Right Holders Now Required To Have Measuring Device
  9. What Is Your Place Of Use?  (Where can you legally use your right?)
  10. Places Of Use – Adjudicated (Decreed) In The State Superior Court
  11. A Place For Permits And Licenses (Places of Use)
  12. Nothing Secret About It  (This is all public information.)
  13. Quick Change of Subjects: What’s a Water Right Permit Cost?
  14. Life Of Reilly: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It!
  15. How to Divide Up a Decreed Water Right – Part 1
  16. How to Divide Up a Decreed Water Right – Part 2
  17. Weirs – Planning, Building, Measuring Flows
  18. From weir to orifice in only an hour
  19. Chilean Water Rights at (darn near) the Driest Place on Earth
  20. Some Hope in Rain and Snow Totals
  21. Is John Stealing Water?? Orifices – Right Size and How to Measure
  22. Worried about SB 88? That’s what this blog is for! Get a device in, send a photo to the Board, record and report your diversions
  23. Flumes – installing for decades of flow measurement, Part 1
  24. Simple Weirs and Orifices, on video, and in photos!
  25. Diverters must report weekly, daily, or HOURLY starting 2017!

Diverters must report weekly, daily, or HOURLY starting 2017!

SWRCB_Header

So on Tuesday, January 20, “The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) adopted regulations Tuesday evening requiring all surface water right holders and claimants to report their diversions. Those who divert more than 10 acre-feet of water per year must also measure their diversions.”  Click the logo above to see the 2-page document on the Board’s website.

Well, how bad can it be?  Before January 20, most diverters had to report monthly diversions, so 12 volumes per year, plus the annual total.  That’s 13 numbers.  The required frequency a year from now will be increased quite a bit, to weekly, or daily, or hourly:

“For instance, large diverters with a claimed right to take 1,000 acre feet of water or more per year are required to have a measuring device or measuring method capable of recording at least hourly in place by Jan. 1, 2017; those with claimed rights to divert 100 acre feet or more must comply by July 1, 2017 and record at least daily; and those with claimed rights to divert more than 10 acre feet must comply by Jan. 1, 2018 and record at least weekly.”

How can flows even be reported hourly?  See the end of this post.  What if someone decides to skip reporting, and let the Board catch up with them later?  The FINES can be large enough to hurt – we’ll discuss this in a later post.

At the minimum reporting requirement of weekly, the volume is 10 acre feet (AF) to 100 AF.  What is 10 AF in terms of a seasonal agricultural diversion?  All the flows shown below are year-round; if the diversion only runs seasonally, the actual water right might be 2 to 10 times the calculated amount, depending on how long the season is and when the stream dries up.

10 AF  =  0.014 cubic feet per second (cfs) year-round, or 6.2 gallons per minute (gpm).  That’s a domestic right, enough for a family house, garden, and perhaps 15 trees or a yard.

100 AF = 0.140 cfs, or 62 gpm year-round.  Depending on soil, this is enough for 3 to 15 acres of pasture or hay, maybe 15 cows or steers, or maybe 30 acres of a mature walnut orchard with micro-sprinklers.  This is enough for a little extra money, still not enough to support a family.About_1.4_cfs_over_weir_edited_2_small

1,000 AF = 1.40 cfs or 620 gpm year-round.  This is enough for 30 to 150 acres of pasture or hay, or maybe 300 acres of orchard.  Water in this quantity could support a family and would be considered a ranch or farm.  The 4′ weir above has about 1.4 cfs going over it.  As mentioned above, if this diversion only runs 6 months of the year, and really only gets the full flow for 3 months, then the actual continuous water right might be 5 cfs.  It might be easier to reverse the thinking: a 5 cfs right might run at 5 cfs for 3 months,  3 cfs for a month, 2 cfs for 2 months, and be off the rest of the year.  That’s closer to a 2 cfs right year-round, or about 1,400 AF per year.

How is flow measured HOURLY?  The only practical ways to do this used to be an old mechanical recorder, like a Stevens F Recorder (pen on paper on rotating drum) you can still see on some creeks.

More likely today, it will require a battery-powered pressure transducer set inside a 2″ pipe bolted on the side of the weir, or headwall, or other permanent structure.  These cost from $400 to $1,200 or more, depending on the brand and more importantly, quality.  The higher the quality, the less they have to be checked, and have dirt removed from the bottom sensor.  The maintenance can be significant – in warm water with algae, the sensor might have to be cleaned once a week.  If it’s not maintained…well, then at some point it stops recording that data that the Board requires.

WaterLevelLogger_wl300_1

Here’s one that would do the job, from http://www.globalw.com/ products/levelsensor.html.  It sits there and records water levels night and day, for months at a time before it has to be downloaded to a computer.  The data file that is downloaded is what is actually sent to the Board – a spreadsheet of flows for 6 months would be half an inch think and unusable!

That’s enough for now, a good night to you all.

Worried about SB 88? That’s what this blog is for! Get a device in, send a photo to the Board, record and report your diversions

Worried about SB 88?  That’s what this blog is for!  Read here to select a flow measurement device, install it, send a photo to the Board, record your flows, and report them as required.  You will find most or all of the information you need in here.  If you need help, Rights To Water Engineering can help you meet the law quickly and at a relatively low cost.  (530) 526-0134

California Senate Bill 88 is effective as of January 1, 2016, 11 days ago as of this posting.  Here is the part that affects private or small agricultural diverters the most:

SB88_Art3_Clip

Quick Change of Subjects: What’s a Water Right Permit Cost?

What does it cost to get a surface water right?  If your land is not riparian to the stream where the water is, or maybe one parcel is but your other 5 parcels are not, then you’ll need to file for a (Post-1914) appropriative right with the State Water Resources Control Board.

AlmondOrchard

Let’s say you want to irrigate 50 acres of new almond orchard in the Sacramento Valley.  How much water do you need for micros-sprinkler irrigation?  Let’s use the value for a 5-year-old orchard, about 3.33 acre-feet (AF) per year for irrigation and frost protection.  That number comes from the U.C. Davis Report Sample Costs To Establish An Orchard And Produce Almonds Sacramento Valley – 2012, at http://aic.ucdavis.edu/almonds/cost%20studies/AlmondSprinkleSV2012.pdf ,

The total annual volume of water for 50 acres is 3.33 * 50 = about 167 AF/year.  That equates to a constant flow of 0.03 cfs.  But, you probably irrigate one day per week, so 7 times the average rate = 0.21 cfs. So, in your permit application, you would need to apply for 167 AF/year, diverted at a maximum rate of 0.21 cfs.

To get the rate for filing for a permit with the Board, we need to check the fee schedule:   http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/fees/docs/fy15_16_fnl_fee_schd_sum.pdf

SWRCB_fee_summary_permit_app

So your application fee would be $1,000, plus $15 per AF over the first 10 AF.  Your cost would be $1,000 + (167 AF – 10 AF) * $15/AF, for a total of $3,350.  There is also an annual cost:

SWRCB_fee_summary_permit_annual

Your annual fee would be $150 + $0.063 per AF over the first 10 AF.  Your annual cost would be $150 + (167 AF – 10 AF) * $0.063/AF, for a total of $160/year.

Of course, these costs are if it’s a “slam dunk” and there are no complications.  There would likely be a 1602 permit required by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and there could be other permits.  If anyone contests the application, then you would have more fees (see the schedule), perhaps attorney fees, and perhaps a negotiation to use water from someone else’s diversion.

A Place For Permits And Licenses

A Permit or License is required to hold Post-1914 water rights issued by the State Water Resources Control Board. An Application starts the process, then the right is permitted, and once proven, licensed.  This is the engineering summary of the process, not as precise or detailed as an answer from an attorney or a bureaucrat.

Let’s take a look at a license.  All of the information shown here is publicly available and it was downloaded from the Board’s website.  Note that the License has 3 identification numbers, all of which are important:

Application:  18405          Permit:  13122          License:  12363

From the language in the body, it is clear that the first use of water at this location was in 1958.  An Application was filed at some point, and proof of the claim was established in 1979 when the Board inspected the diversion.  A Permit might have been issued at the same time in 1979 – that information is not listed here.  Finally in 1988, the water right holder obtained the License.

A018405_ewrims_lic_pg1_purpose_amt

 

Now to the subject of this post, on Page 2 the Place of Use is listed.  The clip below shows the end of Page 1 and the start of Page 2:

A018405_ewrims_lic_pg1_pod_placeofuse

The place of use is defined as  1) at the reservoir, and  2) on 357.7 acres somewhere within 3 Sections, an area totaling about 1,900 acres.  The clip above also lists the point of diversion, and the purposes of use, but we’re focusing on the Place of Use right now.  Let’s go look at the map.

Whoops!  This License was downloaded as a PDF from the Board’s Electronic Water Rights Information Management System (eWRIMS) website at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/ewrims/index.shtml.  The thousands of downloadable permits and licenses in the database do not include the maps, as far as I have ever seen.  To get that, we would have to visit the Board’s office in the CalEPA building in Sacramento.

However, there is also an eWRIMS Geographic Information System (GIS), in addition to the database.  We can see the location of the diversion on either a  topographic map, or on an aerial photo.  Here’s what that looks like:

A018405_ewrims_map_w_aerial_256color_small

The pink text in the middle of the photo is where the GIS shows the diversion for this License.  What is the Place of Use?  That is not shown.  With some other information, like who owns the surrounding parcels of land, and maybe a telephone call to the owner, manager, or representative, we could probably figure out where the Place of Use is.

However, land can change hands so the owner shown on the license may no longer be correct.  Sometimes parcels get split up and one of the present-day owners pays for the permit covering the entire Place of Use.  It can get complicated without seeing the original hardcopy of the map.  The owner might not even have a copy of the map, especially if ownership has changed hands several times.  It’s good to memorize or keep on a Post-It the number for the Board: (916) 341-5300.

That’s enough for this post.  Stay tuned for upcoming posts on the Place of Use, Purpose of Use, Point of Diversion, and water right amount….