By Rachel Becker, CalMatters
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California&#;s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion.
The new estimate for the Delta tunnel project &#; which would transform the massive water system that sends Northern California water south to farms and cities &#; is $4 billion higher than a estimate, largely because of inflation.
Included is almost $1.2 billion to offset local harms and environmental damage, such as impacts on salmon and rare fish that state officials have called &#;potentially significant.&#;
The goal of the project is to collect and deliver more water to two-thirds of California&#;s population and 750,000 acres of farmland during wet periods, shore up supplies against the threats of climate change and protect the system from earthquakes.
But environmental groups and many Delta residents have long warned that the tunnel could put the imperiled Delta ecosystem at even greater risk, sapping freshwater flows needed for fish, farms and communities in the region.
The tunnel has been the focus of intense debate in California for more than 60 years. It&#;s the epicenter of water wars that have pitted Delta locals, environmentalists, tribes and the fishing industry against state officials and water agencies that supply cities and farms, mostly in Southern California.
The new report from the state Department of Water Resources comes as state water regulators weigh competing rescue plans for a region they have described as &#;in crisis&#; and in the midst of an &#;ecosystem collapse.&#;
Gov. Gavin Newsom backs the proposed project, calling it his &#;number one climate resilience program&#; and saying he hopes to get it permitted before he leaves office. The 45-mile tunnel would transport water from the Sacramento River around the Delta to a reservoir near Livermore, the first stop on the 444-mile California Aqueduct.
The new estimate and report will help water suppliers in Southern California, the Central Coast and the Bay Area weigh whether it&#;s cost effective for them to buy the tunnel&#;s water. The state would issue revenue bonds to fund the project, then suppliers would have to pay back the costs.
Water agencies, such as the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are expected to have all of the information they need to decide by the end of , said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, which operates the state&#;s massive water system.
&#;The questions are how can this project be implemented, what kind of assurances can we have in the resilience it provides to the Delta and our water supply future, and at what price?&#; Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, said in a statement. He said the cost estimate &#;brings us closer to understanding that equation.&#;
Building the tunnel could take until at least , with construction expected to start around and last roughly 15 years.
Had the tunnel been in place this year, it could have funneled 909,000 additional acre-feet of water south from intakes in the north Delta, according to state water officials. That&#;s nearly enough water to fill Folsom Lake, and could supply more than 9.5 million people for a year.
The total benefits of the project &#; calculated at around $38 billion &#; far outweigh the costs, according to the report, with every dollar spent expected to reap $2.20 in benefits. &#;In other words, doing nothing is more expensive,&#; said David Sunding, a UC Berkeley emeritus professor of environmental economics who led the cost-benefit analysis.
Sunding said water deliveries from the tunnel would cost about $1,325 per acre-foot &#; less than the average cost for water generated by desalination, recycling and stormwater capture.
Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global water think-tank, said he has serious concerns about the analysis and whether it accounts for the real costs of construction and water treatment and distribution. He called for &#;far more and better&#; economic and environmental assessments.
&#;This project gets more expensive every single time a new version is proposed, and this type of project has never been brought to completion under budget,&#; he said. &#;Water conservation and efficiency improvements are far cheaper than the Delta project.&#;
One major benefit to a tunnel, Sunding said, is earthquake preparedness for the state&#;s water delivery system, which is crossed by the major Hayward and San Andreas faults. A catastrophic earthquake that crumbles levees could interrupt water deliveries for nearly seven months and degrade water quality for almost another year. Sunding said the tunnel would, ideally, allow water deliveries to continue in some form after quakes, or at least protect water quality.
The tunnel could also increase water exports from the Sacramento River when pumping from the south Delta is limited to protect threatened and endangered species, Nemeth said. Thousands of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run Chinook salmon have died this year from the pumping, according to state and federal estimates.
But conservationists warn that a tunnel wouldn&#;t reduce the risk to fish: The existing pumps would still be operational &#; posing a continued threat to protected species. Environmental groups and fishing organizations have sued over the project, saying adding the tunnel would further reduce freshwater flows &#; increasing salt levels and harmful algal blooms, and harming native fish.
Tribes and environmental justice organizations also oppose the state&#;s application for a change in water rights to build and operate the tunnel. &#;The injurious impacts of mismanagement in the Bay-Delta can no longer be endured by Tribes and Delta communities,&#; Malissa Tayaba, vice chair of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, said in a statement.
Jon Rosenfield, science director of San Francisco Baykeeper, called it &#;just the latest version of a plain old water grab.&#;
The state&#;s own environmental analysis warned two years ago that the tunnel could harm endangered and threatened fish, including the Delta smelt, winter-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Changes to flows at the intakes or downstream, for instance, could reduce migration, damage habitat and expose salmon and other native fish to more predators.
The analysis calls for thousands of acres of wetland restoration to offset the &#;potentially significant impacts&#; &#; projects that critics say have historically been slow and inefficient in California.
The Delta watershed supports about 80% of the state&#;s commercial salmon fishery, which was cancelled this year for the second time in a row because of plummeting populations.
&#;What better way to address declining salmon populations than by draining their homes?&#; Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in a recent statement. &#;Bravo, Governor, for turning healthy rivers and estuaries into a punchline that harms tens of thousands of families, businesses and employees across California and Oregon.&#;
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NASA researchers are using high resolution airborne data to determine the vulnerability and resilience of the Mississippi River Delta.
Cynthia Hall, NASA ESDS Program Community Coordinator
Many of the world&#;s large deltas are in peril due to coastal land subsidence and sea level rise. The Mississippi River Delta is one of these disappearing systems; it&#;s the world&#;s seventh largest delta and is a living laboratory where scientists can gather data to learn how to save these valuable ecosystems and the services they provide.
On average there is one delta for every 300 km of shoreline around the world. As rivers meet the ocean, slowing down and fanning out, sediments are dropped, forming a delta. Coastal waves, river discharge, vegetation, and tidal water flow all influence the development of deltas. Coastal communities rely on deltaic environments for many reasons and their disappearance can have catastrophic effects. Deltas serve as a buffer for storm surges, thereby protecting mainland areas; they serve as nurseries for a variety of marine organisms; they sustain and provide sustenance for biologically diverse ecosystems; and their soil serves as a filter that removes toxins from the water. The loss of a delta to subsidence and sea level rise would result in numerous environmental, economic, and social impacts on coastal communities.
The Mississippi River Delta is a unique testbed in that it is sinking in some areas, like the Terrebonne Basin, but growing in adjacent areas, like the Atchafalaya Basin to the west. The Terrebonne Basin is engineered (marked by channelization and levees), and this has decreased sediment flow to the delta floodplain. Large parts of the Atchafalaya Basin, conversely, allow rivers to deliver sediment to that basin. According to Delta-X principal investigator (PI) Dr. Marc Simard and co-PI Dr. Cathleen Jones at NASA&#;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, the Mississippi River Delta offers the unique opportunity to investigate areas with similar vegetation and climate, but very different soil accretion patterns. Understanding delta formation in an environment like the Mississippi River Delta, that is experiencing both erosion and accretion, is important because the U.S. Gulf Coast is experiencing some of the highest levels of global sea level rise: between 9 to 12 mm per year, which is three-to-four times the global average.
The Investigation
NASA&#;s Delta-X airborne mission, with flights that began on March 26, , is gathering remotely sensed and in situ data to study changes occurring to the water, vegetation, and sediment along the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne Basins. The data will be assimilated into a model to forecast the resilience and vulnerability of the delta given the rising seas; the framework for the model can be used for forecasting change in other delta systems around the world. Delta-X was competitively selected through NASA&#;s Earth Venture Suborbital-3 program.
Delta-X uses three primary airborne sensors: the Airborne Visible-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG), an instrument with high spectral resolution at visible wavelengths; the Air Surface Water and Ocean Topography (AirSWOT) instrument suite, which includes a Ka-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR); and the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), which collects data in the L-band. Wavelength is an important feature to consider when working with SAR since the wavelength determines how the radar signal interacts with the surface and how far the signal penetrates into a medium. The Ka-band represents a shorter wavelength and is able to measure highly reflective rough water surfaces with little to no vegetation, whereas the longer wavelength L-band can penetrate more heavily vegetated areas to measure changes in the water surface below vegetation.
For more information on sensors and spectral resolution, see the Earthdata Backgrounders What is Remote Sensing and What is Synthetic Aperture Radar.
These airborne instruments collect data more frequently than satellites in order to detect changes to water levels and sediment concentration over a full tidal cycle (the Gulf Coast experiences diurnal tides, meaning one high and one low tide per day). The data will be collected concurrently on three different aircraft, while scientists in the field collect in situ data at the same time. This facilitates multi-scale and multi-instrument calibration of models. These models will be used to validate upcoming satellite missions like the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) and the NASA/Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) missions. These missions will not have the ability to make multiple measurements during a single tidal cycle, however. SWOT will obtain measurements over a given area every 21 days and NISAR every 12 days.
The data from Delta-X will be used to calibrate and validate a series of dynamic, hydroecological models, which can then be used to forecast the future of the Mississippi River Delta. Delta formation models before AirSWOT were developed at a coarse scale. Delta-X co-PI Jones equates this to a bathtub view, in which you are looking at the entire deltaic system (macroscale). To more accurately predict the resilience of the delta and inform realistic remediation plans, measurements at a smaller, or mesoscale (around one hectare [10,000 m2] or roughly the size of a sports field), are needed. To make better predictions about delta formation, scientists need to be able to define channels, surface water levels and discharge, sediment movement, and plant production at a much finer resolution than coarse areal averages.
The UAVSAR data will create maps of water level changes in wetlands over time; AirSWOT data will provide water surface elevation measurements over the same time period, but within channels and lakes. These measurements help with understanding river discharge and sediment transport across the floodplain&#;s wetlands. There are two processes which contribute to soil accretion: delivery of sediments and plant production of organic material (i.e. roots and litter). AVIRIS-NG will be used to estimate the quantity of sediment being transported in the rivers and also to estimate plant structure, including species, biomass, and spatial distribution. This information will be incorporated into a model that simulates how the delta evolves.
All of these variables help scientists better understand the processes contributing to soil accretion, which is what is needed to save these critical geomorphic systems. Changing variables within the model will provide scientists with insight as to how the delta will respond under different circumstances.
The models based on Delta-X data, once developed and calibrated, determine how much sediment will need to be put back into the system sustainably, that is, in the most natural way possible, to mitigate the impacts of a rising sea. Jones notes, &#;&#;deltas are really sensitive. They live in this balance between losing and gaining land. But if we understand all the processes developed over millennia that have kept them in balance, we will be able to reverse some of the [loss].&#; The Delta-X modeling framework can be used for forecasting change in other delta systems around the world by using its remote sensing and numerical model parameters.
The Application
The state of Louisiana has a $50 billion, 50-year plan to protect its coastline from erosion and rising sea levels. Data from Delta-X could help better inform coastal restoration efforts and sediment diversions.
According to Delta-X co-PI Simard, &#;In terms of application, Delta-X is very important; there is a science component of course, but application-wise we are really hoping it&#;s going to support decision making . . . to inform the state [of Louisiana] about remediation plans.&#; In fact, the Delta-X team has been interfacing with Louisiana&#;s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the non-profit Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge to help develop sustainable coastal restoration efforts. In addition, 12 co-investigators from eight institutions, along with undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students, have been involved in mission planning and will be working tirelessly in the coming months to understand this fragile ecosystem.
While the data and models from Delta-X are specifically for the Mississippi River Delta, Simard notes that, &#;the framework can be applied [to other deltas]. We can either take the model parameter values obtained during Delta-X to implement models elsewhere or, even better, we can have another Delta-X campaign over those other deltas to do a better job there too.&#;
Data Availability
To demonstrate the viability of the mission, two pre-Delta-X missions were conducted in and . The data from these campaigns are archived at NASA&#;s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) and can be accessed at the links below:
Pre-Delta-X data in Earthdata Search
Pre-Delta-X data at ORNL DAAC
Delta-X data are expected to be available through Earthdata Search and ORNL DAAC in the fall of . To keep up to date on the Delta-X campaign, read the Delta-X Science Blog.
Original Article Published April 12,
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