A Meandering Demo(n)-stration on Coyote Creek

On Monday, June 1, the Santa Clara Valley Water District held a "Open House" in the Olinder School Cafeteria to discuss their flood control options with the surrounding neighborhoods. About 100 people showed up over a four-hour period to be given docent-guided explanations of the dozens of wall maps, charts and graphs depicting the 10 or so options that had so far been considered by the engineering staff of the Water District.


Many folks showed up to voice their protest about any plans that included removing homes from the creek banks or putting levees around the park to enhance its function as a flood detention basin. In a separate post, I describe why William Street Park and much of the Coyote Creek park chain was developed for the dual purposes of flood detention and recreation.


Purely by coincidence, the next day, the Water District conducted what may have appeared as a demonstration of what it would look like to remove a house along the creek. The pics and video below was taken by me on Tuesday. What you see is the pile of sticks which used to be the Jaffe home on the 300 block of South 17th Street in downtown San Jose on the west bank of Coyote Creek.











The story of why this home was demolished began a few weeks after the January 25, 1997 flood on the Coyote Creek. After the flood stage had passed, the Water District began releasing water from Andersen Reservoir, located 20 miles upstream, for the next six weeks or so. Once they reached the elevation of their "rule curve" someone ordered the valve closed at the dam and the water level in the creek downtown dropped 2-3 feet almost instantaneously. Without the water column as a buttress, the saturated banks did what gravity demands and began flowing out into the river and everything above it collapsed.

Another home next to and south of the Jaffe's completely tipped dangerously toward the river, and was soon red tagged and eventually demolished also. There was also some bank failure in the back yard of the home north of the Jaffe home as well. The slippage of the bank unfortunately occurred in the middle of the Jaffe home, so part of the house remained habitable for the time being.

Law suits were, of course, filed against both the District and the City. The District used the immediate defense that the sewer in front of these homes was damaged and leaking and was therefore the cause of the bank failure, not the operation of the reservoir. After I was deposed by the attorney for the home owners, the water District's attorney was not too happy that I supported the theory that the bank slipped due to "draw down failure." In response, they shopped around for someone to write them a report refuting this theory and found a Stanford professor that would back them up, for a considerable fee, of course.

The District won the case but never felt too good about it, apparently, for in about 2006, the District offered to buy the Jaffe's home and remove it, as they have now done. This bring the total to five lots on the west bank of Coyote Creek now restored by the Water District to undeveloped parcels between the William Street bridge and the San Antonio Street bridge. The term used by the District (and others) for homes that back up to the creeks is called "encroachment."

Prior to 1950, before the construction of Andersen Dam, large setbacks from the creek banks were the rule, and streets such as Arroyo Way and Brookwood Drive did not exist, in respect for the need for such setbacks. The City General Plan today includes a 100 ft. setback for new subdivisions, but is seldom enforced, especially if the developer claims they will lose many buildable lots that the City should buy in order to "create" the setback.

The District, for years, has been encouraging Cities and the County to not create subdivisions that allowed homes to back up against the creek banks. Streets were encouraged or at least tolerated, even when floodable, as the District could use these paved surfaces for maintenance, while building homes that backed up to the creeks blocked access and created a continuous source of complaints and often litigation.

In 2000, the voters approved a parcel tax by over a two-thirds margin to fund the "Clean,Safe Creeks and Natural Flood Protection Program." This would generate funds for a period of 15 years to begin several flood control projects throughout the County. One of these projects is the Mid-Coyote Creek planning study, which began near the end of 2007 and has progressed to the state which was on display at the Olinder Cafeteria on Monday.

Yesterday, our District 3 Council member, Sam Liccardo, notified the neighborhoods that a task force would be appointed from all the neighborhoods surrounding the mid-Coyote Creek, between East Hedding St. upstream to Hwy. 280. Over the course of the next year, alternatives will be evaluated and recommended for consideration by the District. Congress member Zoe Lofgren also sent a letter to the neighbors that stated that no project would move forward without her endorsement and that of the neighborhood.

Tomorrow, the Water District will conduct a bus tour for those that signed up on the Monday or Wednesday "open house." The tour will start at Andersen Dam and move downstream, following the virtual flood wave through the reservoir and the creek channel below, heading eventually to South San Francisco Bay. This will hopefully help some of the neighbors visualize the daunting task upon the Water District staff to route a flood wave up to 17,000 cubic feet per second through this highly developed metropolis. It will also be a great opportunity to compare the benefits of flood detention to the less popular and more expensive alternatives of channelization.

But even if most of the flooding can be prevented using the existing reservoirs and other detention facilities like Laguna Seca in Coyote Valley and Lake Cunningham next to Eastridge, the meandering of the river bed through downtown neighborhoods will continue to claim homes built adjacent to Coyote Creek and, in time, we will see a repeat of yesterday's demolition and the demonstration of the forces of the earth, constantly at work in this naturally meandering stream bed.

Another challenge for Henry Waxman: Salt of the Earth

While Henry Waxman takes on climate change from the federal helm, his home state of California is slowly but surely losing its primary resource: Agriculture

The San Joaquin Valley is the California poster child for desertification through salinization of its soils as a result of using water from the Federal Central Valley Project. This water contains 2 million tons of salt, applied through out each successive irrigation season.

The oceans are the planetary depository for salt. The continents have been contributing salt to the oceans since rain began to fall from the atmosphere. Humans add their piece to the salt flow with their activities, greatly accelerating the salt flow from certain watersheds.

Industrial agriculture adds enormous salt loads to the receiving waters upstream of the ocean and re-distributes salt downstream through irrigation projects, mainly financed by the federal government.

Twenty five years ago, the State was prepared to build a canal around the eastern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and thereby reduce this salt load by half and further restrict pumping if salt levels were too high to deliver water during droughts. That essential piece of plumbing was then called the Peripheral Canal and these have become the most dreaded two words in Sacramento.

In response to the State, certain large agricultural interests financed a campaign to stop the Peripheral Canal with a referendum to reverse the state legislative actions which authorized the Department of Water Resources to build the final link in this massive water system. Most support to kill the canal came from the Delta farmers and cotton empires of the Salyer and JG Boswell, built mostly in Tulare Lake and surrounding wetlands. Read excerpts from The King of California here.

With the success of this one ballot measure, San Joaquin Valley farmers fired the poison dart that would steal this 100 year effort by the US Bureau of Reclamation to reclaim these arid lands for production of food and fiber to supply our nation and much of the world. Over the past twenty-five years, the farm lands have been laced with 50 million tons of salt delivered with the irrigation water, twice as salty as it would have been if the Peripheral Can had been built.

It is while these lands are still a viable agricultural resource that we need to act.

I'd like to see California push toward more sustainable agriculture by lowering the salt content of the irrigation water in the San Joaquin Valley rather than watch the land owners salt it in and then develop the salt flats with urbanscape. This means we build the peripheral canal and design it for considerable sea level rise.

Congress should act soon to simply halt all water rights if land use conversion removes it from its agricultural purposes, even if it is due to loss of productivity due to soil pollution. This will create a major shift in protecting our national agricultural resources by making all farmers perpetual stewards of the land, in exchange for a government-developed supply of water.

This proposal would bring the ag lobby to arms like you've never seen it, but it will be good to force them to show their hand (and strong arm behind it!)

George Miller is one of the few members of Congress who could kick off something like this. Congressman Henry Waxman in Southern California could be his strong ally. Senate allies will probably have to come from outside California, as our incumbent Senators Feinstein and Boxer are already owned by the ag lobby.

When the Peripheral Canal was stopped 25 years ago, I started calling the San Joaquin Valley the new Metropolis of SacroBake, home to 30 million future California residents, unable to grow even a backyard garden in this newly created desert, wondering where their next water will come from: the sky or the good graces of the water managers who control any water coming from the ground or aqueducts and still able to pass the health standards set for salinity? Listen to NPR audio track on California Delta Faces Salty Future.

The world may yet mark us down as one more society that crumbled because of mismanaged irrigated agriculture and a self-imposed victim of too much Salt of The Earth.

Letter to Senator Joe Simitian re Electing Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors

Please read the letter and if you agree,
please email Senator Simitian through this link:


Senator Joseph Simitian
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Senator Simitian:

Recently, the Board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District has asked Assemblyman Joe Coto to carry a bill through the State legislature to amend the District Act as it pertains to electing the Board of Directors as representatives of our community. I respectfully request that you consider introducing a separate bill in the Senate or request substantial amendment of Mr. Coto’s bill. The local delegation of state legislators from Santa Cara County should seize this opportunity to apply the democratic process to management and protection of our local watersheds.

For the past forty years, the Water District board of directors has had five elected directors and two directors appointed by the Board of Supervisors, coupled with budget approval by the BOS, after the District Board review and adoption. This system had a severely distracted Board of Supervisors giving approval to a budget they hardly ever glanced at, let alone vetted for policy compliance and economic or environmental prudence. I called this system the Dilution of Democracy, which involved the appointment of a supervisor's “friend” to either of the two at-large seats on the Water Board to sit as full voting members with the five elected directors.

These appointments were made by alternating north /south appointments between the members of the Board of Supervisors. The boundaries for the residence requirement for the South County appointed seat had about 5-10% of the county’s population while the other seat included the remainder of the County, but actually excluded some cities with Hetch Hetchy contracts. Last year the County finally relinquished this hold on the Water District and the District Act was amended in Sacramento to remove the two appointments and eliminate the BOS budget approval requirement.

It is these two vestiges of old political inertia, scheduled to end on Dec 31, 2009, that has the District Board expressing their desire to keep the number of Board members at seven, using new seven yet-to-be-gerrymandered districts of equal numbers of eligible voters. I believe we deserve and can create a political body that has more practicality than simply preserving the number seven for the available seats on the board of directors.

I hope you will agree that the Water District’s Board, first of all, should represent the very nature of the flow of water, and should be organized by watershed. This is not a new idea for the Water District. When I was first elected to the Board in 1972, there were five separate taxing zones in place, representing the major watersheds in the county: East (Coyote, Silver-Thompson, Penetencia Creeks), Central (Guadalupe/Los Gatos/Alamitos), North Central (Calabasas, San Tomas, Saratoga) Northwest (Baron, Matadero, Stevens & San Francisquito) and South (Uvas/Llagas/Pajaro).

In order to establish the basis for equal representation, each of these watersheds would have to again become separate taxing entities for which watershed activities could be assessed per watershed and not subsidized by other zones with a “revenue surplus.”

The water supply function of the Santa Clara Valley Water District is basically run as a business for the benefit of the entire county. Other water supply wholesalers also operate within the county borders, namely San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and four regional water recycling programs operated within Santa Clara County. This makes for a very complex approach for getting water to people, through their many water retailers, comprised of both municipal and private/investor-owned utilities.

Since the watersheds probably do not have equal populations, each watershed council should have weighted voting when they meet to manage the Water Utility Enterprise as the “Water Supply Board.” A major benefit of this approach is that watershed boundaries cannot be gerrymandered. They are created by nature and will remain the same, regardless of changes in land use and population.

As the Water Utility Enterprise is run as a business, each watershed council represents the resident-shareholders of each watershed, so each council would have a vote in proportion to its population, using the well known and accepted corporate model. This should take care of the equal representation requirement of the government code. The weighted vote for each watershed can simply be adjusted after each 10-year census.

As these Watershed Council members come together as Water Supply Board, still wearing their watershed hats, if you will, they will be more apt to balance the needs of both the human inhabitants AND the instream/riparian needs within the community. This is a somewhat parallel concept to the city councils acting separately as the Redevelopment Boards while still being elected council members.

Watershed Councils should be elected in open, non-partisan, consolidated primary elections with runoffs in the next general election. Appointments to fill vacancies should be required to gather at least 10% of the registered voters’ support in their electoral Districts and should do so using electronic communications appropriate to the current community standards, sort of like getting fans on Facebook, for example.

As the District is an essential service provider to the cities and the County government, these organizations should have a stronger voice in advising the Water District. A water commission currently exists that includes an elected member of each city, the County BOS and a Water Board member. This group should meet at least quarterly, and more often under drought or flood emergencies, and should be required to read and formally comment on the Water District budget before the Board takes final action to approve its annual or two-year budget.

Other advisory committees should be encouraged by the State’s enabling legislation. Agricultural subsidies, if allowed, should apply to ALL water applied for irrigation of a food crop, not just for commercial food and fiber. Water subsidies for food crop irrigation should be passed on through retailers to consumers. Just as individual home water banks were created during the '86-'91 drought, home/food water banks can be similarly created and monitored through efficient and modern electronic means and be an essential tool for emergency drought management, during a state- or locally-declared emergency.

I am hoping that we can construct a body that works as well as nature, so our politics reflects both the force and delicacy of nature and the human spirit.

Thank you for your consideration of this progressive approach to structuring the Water District’s governance. I will be happy to meet with you or your staff at your earliest convenience.

Never Thirst!

Patrick T. Ferraro, Former Director
Santa Clara Valley Water District. (1972-1995)


Reader comments welcome. Send Senator Simitian your comments.

An Earth Day Celebration that will give us our watersheds forever.

Dear Water Brothers and Sisters in the Valley of ValleyWater.org

This Earth Day, the political stars are in alignment. It's a day Sacramento politicians can use to demonstrate that our democratic, of-the-people powered, government can craft for our county, a political system that moves us continuously forward toward local watershed stewardship and a more integrated governance structure, in respect for this most precious element, WATER.

Specifically, a hearing is scheduled on Earth Day, April 22, in Sacramento to consider a bill authored by Assemblyman Coto, D-SanJose. The current status of the proposed legislation, AB 466 today, is linked here and printed at the end of this post below:

The bill, as drafted, allows the Water District Board to create seven new political boundaries from which, seven water directors would be elected to the governing Board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

I have proposed a more natural alternative.
Within a letter to Senator Joe Simitian,
a natural governance structure was offered for
how we elect our local water policy directors.

Please read the letter in the linked post above
and,if you agree, please follow the links to
tell Senator Simitian that you would like him
to ask for changes in AB 466. Tell him you want a
bill to allow us to elect local water directors

by watersheds rather than 7 gerrymandered political districts.

CURRENT BILL STATUS

MEASURE :  A.B. No. 466
AUTHOR(S) :  Coto (Coauthors: Beall, Fong, Ruskin, and Torrico)
 (Coauthors: Senators Alquist, DeSaulnier, and Maldonado).
TOPIC :  Santa Clara Valley Water District.
HOUSE LOCATION :  ASM
+LAST AMENDED DATE  :  04/15/2009


TYPE OF BILL :  
                Active
                Non-Urgency
                Non-Appropriations
                Majority Vote Required
                State-Mandated Local Program
                Fiscal
                Non-Tax Levy

LAST HIST. ACT. DATE:  04/16/2009
LAST HIST. ACTION   :  Re-referred to Com. on  L. GOV.
COMM. LOCATION :  ASM LOCAL GOVERNMENT
HEARING DATE :  04/22/2009

TITLE :  An act to amend Sections 13.2 and 20 of, to add Sections
 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, and 8 to, and
 to repeal and add Sections 7, 7.1, and 7.3 of, the Santa
 Clara Valley Water District Act (Chapter 1405 of the
 Statutes of 1951), relating to the Santa Clara Valley
 Water District.

Spring Loose, Down the Rabbit Hole

The Spring celebrations continue across every culture throughout every continent in the Northern half of planet Earth. The Persian New Year of Iran is celebrated as Narouz. The Jewish descendants of Abraham hold Seder and remember again their end of slavery in Egypt. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the Jewish festival of Purim is probably adopted from the Persian New Year. Christians celebrate the equinox with new life from death, nature's familiar cycles, projected so closely onto their new age rabbi, Jesus, the Christ.

Easter is the Spring celebration I grew up enjoying. Even after my spirituality evolved from the Jesuit (Society of Jesus) school variety into an Earth-based connection to the divine, we continued to celebrate Easter with egg hunts with our young children.


Today, I wish people of any culture the universal greeting of Happy Spring as we continue to ride our beautiful planet on this annual path around the Sun.

San Jose Gets Back to its Roots

Yesterday, April 4, 2009, the Master Gardeners brought us back in time as they sold heirloom chilies and tomatoes at the San Jose History Park. While this location was not as earthy as the previous sales' location at Emma Prusch Park at Story & King, having the plant sale at the History Park was a fitting and timely reminder that this used to be called the Valley of Heart's Delight, as it grew and processed millions of tons of produce which fed much of the nation.

Today we feed the world information and communication technology, beginning with the silicon chip, which eventually became our new delight and namesake. Laptops, PC's, cell phones and digital storage devices have replaced canned tomatoes, fresh cherries and locally-grown eggs and meat products.

But despite all this advancement in technology and economic benefits, we still require food on a fairly regular basis. A strong message is creeping across our mass consciousness that we need to grow our food locally. As Michael Pollan suggests:" We need to (at least) shake the hand that feeds you."

People are joining Community Supported Agriculture (CSA's) and at least meeting each other in neighbor's homes where shares are divided and bagged for pickup.Our community gardens all have long waiting lists. A big boost was Michele Obama digging up part of the White House lawn on the Spring Equinox and planting an organic garden.

But on this weekend, hundreds of people showed up and quickly filled the adjacent parking lot and whisked off thousand of Chili pepper and tomato starts. Spring gardeners, being energized by the warm sunshine, actually also parked and walked along Coyote Creek for several hundred yards from the Happy Hollow parking lot to the History Park.

I bought just 5 starts from the Master Gardeners, including a had-to-have chili pepper called Neapolitano. I then ventured out to observe what wares and plants other vendors were selling. The old town square gazebo's nearby even had an old gent lecturing on the essential nature of water to gardening, I didn't think that I should intervene with a political discussion of managing mandatory water rationing and, at the same time, planting food that requires three to five feet of irrigation during the summer growing season.

A couple brave Water District employees also were present in a nearby kiosk to answer questions. I would have loved to hear all those conversations as well. But I was certainly not going to reduce, in any way, the enjoyment of so many eager gardener-citizens out on a Spring Saturday morning. Instead, I am hereby quietly rejoicing as I watch as the people of San Jose bring our community back to its roots.

Tap Water

My friend, Niki, in Houston sent me this link this morning, of two white 'mercan woman selling glass bottles sporting a label with a picture of a tap and the words tap water.
$12.95 plus shipping, with $2 going to UNICEF.

Below is my response:

Niki,

When I watched this, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But then I noticed they allowed posting of comments so I did:

" I'll send $2 to UNICEF directly and skip the the considerable carbon footprint of shipping me a glass bottle with the unnecessary and silly label. Are you people just putting me on?"

I thought they would quickly delete my comment. Instead, they posted a comment on my blog.

So I guess they really do have the heart to help people everywhere have safe drinking water through the Tap Project. So click through and make a donation today.

Never Thirst!