State Hopes to Buy Yuba River Water to Help Relieve Drought

The state hopes to buy up to 250,000 acre-feet of water from overflowing Yuba County and use part of it to help the San Francisco Bay Area in the drought, state Water Resources Director David Kennedy said Tuesday.

He said part of the water bought from the Yuba River region would be resold to the Hetch Hetchy Project, which serves San Francisco and other Bay Area communities, and to Santa Clara and Marin counties.

The East Bay Municipal Utilities District, which serves Berkeley and Oakland, and the city of Napa already have made their own deals for water supplies from the Yuba River.

However, the East Bay utilities district deal was questioned by the state Department of Fish and Game, whose spokesmen said the Yuba County Water Agency should be required to release additional water to protect fisheries if the sale is made.

Donn Wilson, administrator of the Yuba agency, said negotiations are under way to try to meet the state agency’s objections. The issue may have to be settled by the state Water Resources Control Board, which has the final say over emergency diversions of water in drought years.

“We are still in a drought, but as a result of the early March rains it is a selective drought,” Kennedy told reporters after testifying before the Assembly Water Parks and Wildlife Committee. “The San Francisco Bay Area is the hardest hit. We’re trying to help them.”

Kennedy said the state may relax the 40% cutback in water deliveries it decreed in December for agricultural customers of the State Water Project.

“We’re looking at it on a week-to-week basis,” he said. “We now think 40% is the worst possible case.” He declined to guess when the policy might be changed.

He said that besides the Bay Area, Monterey County is suffering from the three-year water shortage. The Monterey region faces rationing this year because of the lack of rainfall in the Carmel River watershed.

The region around Stockton also is in trouble because of the limited amount of water in the Calaveras River, Kennedy said.

The Yuba County Water Agency, which operates New Bullard’s Bar Dam on the north fork of the Yuba River, is one of the few water distributors in California with a surplus this year. Water stored in its 966,103-acre-foot reservoir rose so high Monday that the district was required by law to start releasing it into the Sacramento River to save space for flood emergencies.

“The situation at Bullard’s Bar is quite unique,” Kennedy said. He said the biggest impact of the March storms has been in the region north of Sacramento.

A spokeswoman for the Yuba district said that despite the releases, the dam still held 823,311 acre-feet of water Tuesday morning.

Napa and the East Bay utilities district moved earlier in the year to make deals with Yuba County for its surplus water. Napa negotiated a contract for 7,000 acre-feet, and the East Bay district got an option for 60,000.

The East Bay utility’s board of directors voted Tuesday to buy the water at a price of $2.7 million. A spokeswoman said East Bay officials are confident that differences with the Department of Fish and Game can be worked out.

In Los Angeles, directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California postponed a decision on whether to relinquish 55,000 acre-feet of their district’s supply of water from the State Water Project for use by the Hetch Hetchy Project and Santa Clara County.

A spokesman said that in view of early March storms and the Yuba County purchases, the 55,000 acre-feet might not be needed in the north.

“The door is still open for them,” he added.