k e e p i n g
BUSINESS JOURNAL
b u s i n e s s e s
c o n n e c t e d ™
AUGUST 2018
VOLUME 3 ■ ISSUE 8
IN PROFILE
New owners turn page on Turlock bookstore. PAGE 3
IN PROFILE
WATER WARS
Summer fun ramps up at Lake McSwain. PAGE 4
Farmers, state board clash over usage BY ANGELINA MARTIN
T
209 Business Journal
he final draft proposal of a state plan to increase water flows through the Tuolumne River for the benefit of fish and wildlife was released in July with little changes, despite vehement opposition from a broad coalition of local governments and organizations. In an effort to prevent an “ecological crisis,” the State Water Resources Control Board released its third and final draft of the BayDelta Water Quality Control Plan update, which calls for allocation of 40 percent of unimpaired flows along the lower San Joaquin River and its tributaries — the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers — to help rehabilitate the area’s native fish species. The result of a nine-year process during which the Board studied and analyzed different options, met with local stakeholders and reviewed more than 1,400 comment letters, State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus said that the plan’s challenge is to “balance multiple valuable uses of water — for fish and wildlife, agriculture, urban, recreation and other uses.”
“Californians want a healthy environment, healthy agriculture and healthy communities, not one at the expanse of the others,” Marcus said. “That requires the water wars to yield to collective efforts to help fish and wildlife through voluntary action, which the proposed plan seeks to reward.” Many farmers and local water agencies feel as if the State Water Board has indeed waged a water war on the San Joaquin Valley. The first draft of the plan, which also included 40 percent unimpaired flows, was released in September 2016, and in December 2016, hundreds of locally-elected officials, water and agricultural leaders, agency representatives and community members addressed the Board in Modesto, sharing the potential impacts the water grab could have on the farming community. “I would offer up to you today that no one in this room thinks 40 or 50 percent unimpaired flows is a balanced approach,” Stanislaus County Supervisor Vito Chiesa told the Board at the 2016 public hearing. “People are scared. They really are with what this can do to them, what this can do to the Val-
ley. Please listen to the people.” As detailed in the final draft proposal, the State Water Board proposes increasing flows to provide habitats for fish and wildlife upstream of the Delta from February to June, which are the critical
months for protecting migrating fish on the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers. A 40 percent unimpaired flow requirement, within a range of 30 to 50 percent, is proposed because “it can SEE WATER, PAGE 10
The Worth Your Fight campaign over water usage has been reinvigorated since the State Water Board released their final plans for the area’s rivers.