Dear Editor,
Thank you for your update regarding the Sites Authority Water Right. I think most people including myself believe that Sites should be granted the right to store excess Sacramento River flows, but I believe most people are unaware that Sites is also seeking to store the flows from Stone Corral and Funks Creeks. On average these flows are estimated by Sites to be approximately 15,000-acre feet but could reach closer to 50,000 acre feet in my opinion. At $ 1000 an acre foot the value of this water would be $ 15 to $ 50 million per year.
While hopefully the Sites water right to the Sacramento River will be settled next month the Water Right Hearing for these creeks will continue into next year. I believe that this water belongs to the riparian landowners downstream of these creeks and this right was established by the natural flows of the Colusa Trough before the Colusa Basin Drain was excavated in the footprint of the natural water way of the Colusa Trough. Delevan Refuge also relies on these winter flow to maintain is riparian and seasonal wetland habitat connected to these Creeks that run through the Refuge. Many of these landowner expressly retained their riparian rights in the easements granted for the excavation of the Colusa Basin Drain across their property.
I believe that it especially important now for landowners who the channel of the Colusa Basin Drain and the 17 creeks in the Colusa Subbasin that flow into the Colusa Basin Drain to claim the seepage rights and beneficial water use from the natural flows from these creeks to prove there surface water rights and the seepage benefit to their groundwater rights. It would be an ironic misappropriation of property rights if someday these creek flows were stored in Sites and then used for costly recharge to mitigate the subsidence in Arbuckle that would be paid for by downstream groundwater users under the water allocation and groundwater trading program that has been proposed by the Colusa Groundwater Authority.
If you are interested in the history of the need for the Colusa Basin Drain due to the flooding caused by the boom in rice plantings and the senior water rights retained by landowners under the easements that were granted by these landowners I refer you to the 1920 Report of the California Water Commission – California State Water Commission, Third Biennial Report of the State Water Commission of California, 1919–1920 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1921), Appendix K. The history of the Colusa Trough and the common term of easements granted is on Pages 156-158 and there is a real interesting discussion of rice on Pages 71-73. You will have to slog through the overall Appendix and find Appendix K.
Sincerely,
Ben King
Colusa, CA