Other Environmental and Water Laws

The division of water rights in California. Click for larger image.

Source: State Water Resources Control Board, 2008.

The historical agencies of California responsible for post-1914 appropriative water rights vastly overcommitted water from the Bay-Delta’s Central Valley watershed streams. In September 2008, the State Water Resources Control Board reported to the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force that while the Central Valley watershed of California has an average annual runoff of 29 million acre-feet, the face value of water rights granted by the state to appropriative water right holders amounted to 245 million acre-feet.

This means that for every acre-foot of real water in the Central Valley watershed, 8.4 acre-feet of water on paper has been promised by the state where only 1 acre-foot may actually be diverted.

Small wonder so many streams in California are dry in the summer, and the Delta’s ecosystem is crashing. Small wonder too that a water rights system premised on priority appropriation generates water shortages so easily when California’s weather fails to deliver rain and snow—as it regularly does. (One in three water years in this watershed is considered either dry or critical by the State of California.)

The State Water Resources Control Board further reported to the Delta Vision Task Force that:

There are 100 rights [in the Central Valley watershed] with a face value of 500,000 [acre-feet annually] or more that account for 84% of the total face value of the water rights within the Delta watershed. The Central Valley Project and State Water Project hold 75 permits and licenses within the Delta watershed that account for 53% of the total face value of the water rights within the watershed.

The Central Valley Project and the State Water Project also have some of the most junior appropriative rights in California, with a face value of approximately 130 million acre-feet. By themselves, the face value of state and federal water rights exceed average annual Central Valley watershed runoff (29 million acre-feet) by a factor of 4.5. The California Department of Finance originally filed for these permits back in 1927, while other rights were filed for in the late 1930s. In terms of water appropriations, this is quite late in California history, since some pre-1914 appropriations date to Gold Rush days.

Other Laws