Statement
of Michael J. Spear
Deputy
Secretary of the Resources Agency
Before
the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee Hearing
November
7, 2001
Santa
Monica, California
My
testimony will provide an overview of the Imperial Irrigation District (IID)
water transfer’s relationship to the problem of the Salton Sea (Sea).
When I am through you will hopefully have a rough idea of the
environmental and economic consequences of the decisions to be made and the
implication of not making those decisions quickly.
First,
the easy one. The IID transfer is a
necessary and fundamental feature of California’s water future.
Without the transfer both Southern and Northern California water problems
become more severe. You will hear
more about this from the next panel; suffice it to say the transfer and the QSA
need to be completed on time, next year.
The
transfer will, however, accelerate the increase in salinity of the Sea and
hasten the point in time from late next decade to late this decade (just 7-8
years from now) when the fish of the Sea begin to disappear.
That is the central point everyone needs to understand.
The transfer makes it imperative that policymakers, whether concerned
about water, the environment, or the budget, and most are concerned about all
three, know there will be significant consequences whether they act or not.
To save the Sea, approximately as we know it today, a decision must be
made, funded, and implemented within
this decade. It is almost
impossible and likely cost prohibitive to delay a Sea restoration decision for
more than a couple years once the transfer starts.
Some
background about the Sea. At its current elevation of –227 feet below mean sea level
the sea has a maximum depth of 51 feet, is 35 miles long and 15 miles wide.
It is the largest lake within the state at 234,000 acres or 366 square
miles. Visually, the Salton Sea is
no Lake Tahoe, but biologically it is very rich.
The productivity of the fishery is thought to be one of the highest in
the world, and it is one of the birding hot spots in the nation with over 400
species. During migration the Sea
is home to most of the world’s population of some fish eating birds like eared
grebes and white pelicans. Increasing
salinity will cause the loss of the fishery and that could threaten with
extinction certain bird species.
The
recent concern for the Sea stems from dramatic bird die-offs of the mid 90s.
In 1992 150,000 eared grebes died of unknown causes.
In 1996 thousands of white pelicans and a 1000 of the federally and state
listed brown pelicans died from avian botulism. These events triggered the Congressional interest led by the
late George Brown.
This
Congressional attention led to the passage of the Salton Sea Reclamation Act of
1998 which called for restoration
and cost sharing options for the Salton Sea by January 2000.
A draft report was released last year.
The alternatives were met with criticism and a draft report on new
alternatives is due soon.
Preliminary
information from the new alternatives, assuming a water transfer and a new base
inflow to the Sea of 1.2 million acre feet (maf)/year and future inflows of 1.0
maf/year, a probable scenario, shows capital costs for restoration in the $250
– $350 million range and the present value of annual operational costs in the
range of $100 – $500 million. The
only option that controls both sea salinity and a sea elevation is also the
least expensive. It includes on
land salt ponds and land use conversion. But
it has the drawback of requiring double the land area (90,000 acres) of some
other options. A third party
economic impact analysis, to analyze the effect on Imperial Valley economy and
jobs of this land use change has been completed.
The study shows a gross dollar output loss of $20 – $60 million and the
loss of 500 – 1000 jobs depending on the type of crops not planted.
Some of these losses would be mitigated by construction jobs and water
and land payments.
What
is not yet clear is the cost of doing nothing to restore the Sea after the
transfer begins. The effects of the
increase in salinity have already been mentioned but there will also be a
decrease in sea level elevation by as much as 1 foot per year for the next 15 -
20 years. A 12 feet drop exposes
40,000 acres or 1/6 of the sea bottom. The
air quality and odor effects on downwind land and people are not known but may
be significant. Of course land and recreational values of the sea will drop.
Costs to ameliorate such effects, if possible, are unknown.
The
draft report to Congress is due out next spring with a final by the end of next
year. Assuming the Federal
administration, Congress and California make a decision soon after the report is
submitted, there is time to restore the sea even with a transfer, if restoration
is the choice.