REDWOOD NEEDLES
REDWOOD NEEDLESPresented by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, The REDWOOD NEEDLES
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By Dr. Hillary Adams, Navarro Watershed Protection Association
Attorney Stephan Volker has won a major victory in the case of Sierra Club et al vs. State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). SWRCB had neglected to include in the trial record critical information known to them at the time the suit was filed (August, 2000). The Sierra Club was forced by the State to pay $4,000 to obtain the original record, yet the SWRCB neglected to include over 500 pages of relevant material. The relevant material included an important peer review of the methodology being proposed by the SWRCB for all coastal watersheds.
The peer review, dated June 12, 2000 and entitled: "Fish Bypass Flows for Coastal Watersheds; a Review of Proposed Approaches for State Water Resources Control Board," is highly critical of the methodology applied to the Navarro River watershed. The report states (p.19): "We are concerned about the methods used in the Navarro River basin negative declaration to estimate the amount of water available at the project sites. Without data, no method will ever be accurate, so it is appropriate to use a simple method. Making reasonable estimates with such methods requires considerable skill and knowledge and experience with the region in question, to guide selection of parameters for the model; simply plugging in numbers for a table can lead to gross errors. It is also important that the method not be biased. The initial studies refer to the Rational Method, which is intended to predict peak flows. It is not clear to us what method was used for estimating average annual flows. Unfortunately, such methods for predicting peak flows are intended for sizing culverts or similar applications where the harm from underestimates is much greater than the harm from overestimate, so the methods are biased high. For estimating the amount of water available for appropriations, or the amount that will be left in the stream, a bias in the opposite sense is appropriate."
The 38 page peer review was conducted by Dr. Peter B. Moyle, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis; and G. Mathais Kondolf, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning and Department of Geology, University of California, Berkeley; with Technical Assistance from John G. Williams, Bay-Delta Modeling Forum. It includes many suggestions for improvement of SWRCB methods of analysis, field investigations and staff training. For example, it says: "Since making assessments of the availability of water for proposed projects is a routine part of the SWRCB's work....the SWRCB should have strong in-house expertise in this area. Based on the SWRCB documents that we have reviewed, this expertise is currently lacking."
The judge ordered SWRCB to produce all of the additional material requested by Attorney Volker under "additional discoveries," amounting to nearly 500 pages . The material includes maps, charts and reports, many of them relating to hydrologic studies in the Russian River basin, and material from Sacramento State University used by the SWRCB in formulating its methodology.
A trial date is presently anticipated in December or January. The Navarro litigation will affect all California coastal watersheds. Important litigation of this kind is expensive. Funds are urgently needed. Please make a generous contribution to help continue this critical fight to save our coastal watersheds and fisheries. Make your check payable to: Sierra Club, Redwood Chapter Foundation, "Navarro Litigation." Mail to: Sierra Club Redwood Chapter, c/o Margaret Pennington, P. O. Box 466, Santa Rosa, CA. 95402-0466.
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