Thank you for your article regarding the January 18, 2024, Letter from Colusa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gary Evans to Governor Newsome entitled “A Better Pathway for the Bay-Delta.”
While I believe there are a lot of great aspects for the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (“the Voluntary Agreements”), I am very disappointed that Colusa and Glenn County will likely bear the brunt of the agreed upon curtailments with long lasting negative consequences to our farm economies and the health of our watershed.
Supervisor Evans correctly mentions that 2022 Colusa County rice acreage declined approximately 87% and I would note Glenn County rice acreage declined approximately 75% of its acreage but he did not mention how the pain of the curtailments was severally disproportionate on Colusa and Glenn Counties.
Butte County was able to produce on approximately 85,000 or only a 17% decline – compared to the measly 19,753 acres produced in Colusa County.
Supervisor Evans also did not mention that the Voluntary Agreements allow for up to 35,000 acres of rice acreage fallowing in the future; where is this going to happen, in Glenn and Colusa Counties or in Butte County?
Supervisor Evans also mentions that the proposed Bay Delta curtailments would have a severe impact on the proposed Sites Reservoir to “… a point of irrelevance” but he fails to mention that the current plan for the Sites Reservoir will compound the decades old poor drainage problems in the Colusa Trough rather than help fix the drainage problems.
The health of the Sacramento River and the Bay Delta depends on healthy drainage practices for its tributaries and the Voluntary Agreements do nothing to fix the drainage problems for the Colusa Trough.
Currently the groundwater at the Colusa and Sacramento National Wildlife Refuges are contaminated by mercury and the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge also has contamination by the hexavalent form of chromium according to the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge Water Management Plan published in 2011 (page 9) and the Voluntary Agreements have no proposals to address these contamination issues. Likewise, the Colusa Basin Drain is on the USEPA 303(d) list for several contaminants including mercury and the Voluntary Agreements are silent about remedying the water contamination in the Colusa Basin Drain and several other tributaries to the Colusa Basin Drain.
Finally, in addition to drainage induced contamination, the current plan for Sites will leave the Colusa Basin Drain channel, between the Davis Weir at the south end of the Colusa Refuge to the Balsdon Dam near College City, high and dry during summer months. How is this a better pathway for the Delta or Colusa County?
Supervisor Evans: Colusa County and the Colusa Subbasin, which includes Glenn County, deserve a better deal. The Voluntary Agreements as currently drafted may be a better pathway for some in the Sacramento Valley but when you look at what happened in 2022 rice acreage, it looks like we got the raw deal while our neighbors on the east side actually had a bumper year for rice crop revenue, due to the extraordinary spike in rice prices.
Sincerely,
Ben King,
Colusa