(water flowing) (soft music) - [Narrator] 140 years ago, California's pioneers
first harnessed the rivers and turned the Valley into a garden. Now, California is more crowded. It's hotter and drier, and the water has become more precious. This is where our story begins. - Actually, I have never met somebody who farms in the central Valley who doesn't love clean
water, abundant wildlife, beautiful natural areas. - I do think about the rivers. We live here as well as farm here. I spent summers going up to Tulloch Lake which is part of the
Stanislaus river system. - I was raised on the river. My parents raised me and
my brother in the river. I live on the river. And so for me, it's an emotional thing is in addition to our livelihood. - Our water supply comes
85% from the Toulumne river. We take people on tours of the system from here, who we don't know
where their water comes from. And they're so impressed
when they see the big pipes and the treatment facilities. But especially when you
come into the national park and you get your first
view of O'Shaughnessy dam, which is actually dwarfed by the majesty of the granite watershed behind
it is a pretty awesome site and it takes people's breath away. - We were blessed in California with the greatest water
source in the world, the Sierra Nevada. No one has like we got it. With the fertile land that we have, the climate that we have only
five places in the world. We're just a dot on the
map with four others to have the climate,
the soil that we have. - As I got older, I mean,
I remember at one point I talked to my dad and
I noted all the canals. My dad said something
that I didn't forget, which is, if we didn't have these canals, everywhere we live would be dust. And everything green that you
see is because of the canals that you walk by every day. And I think that's right. I mean, one out of every
three jobs in our community comes directly or
indirectly from agriculture. None of that would exist if
we had not harnessed the water that crisscrosses across
all the irrigation districts across the central Valley. - If you're gonna say something important about water in California,
you have to expect that somebody is not gonna
be happy with it entirely. - For those of you not familiar, I mean, this water quality control panel, I covered it last year. The headline we put on the article at KQBD was the biggest California
to water decision you've never heard of. The state water board is
looking at the three tributaries that go into the San Joaquin river. And they're setting
essentially flow criteria. How much water needs to be
in there for the environment. - This is an assault on farm workers and farm workers family. - [Woman] Virtually, all of
the work almonds, artichokes, lemons, pistachios, and processed
tomatoes grown in the U.S. come from that States central. - [Woman] The research
argued that diverting water would place endangered
species like Chinook salmon and Delta smelt fish at risk
according to the health. - It's not sustainable to
overt develop agriculture when you have a limited water resource. - This is a massive reallocation of one of our most
important natural resources. In this reallocation there is
no guarantee of any benefit to our communities, to our
environment and for our farms. - [Man] It would divert
water used for agriculture to restore fish populations. People have been speaking
now for the past two hours in front of the state water board. - [Woman] There, that up, they
wanna see in a herd of plan. - [Man] Laborers in
Merced County are furious with the latest water plan submitted by the state water board so much so that the
Merced irrigation district is planning on suing. - The ecosystem needs to
feel some of the benefit when we conserve water. - I believe we are in a
fight for our survival. (instrumental music) - There's no doubt that
conflict over water is something that's been
happening since the Dawn of time. - The Tuolumne river today
doesn't look like it did 150 years ago. - So they built La Grange
dam, completed in 1993. And in 1904, we started delivering water to the farmers in Modesto
because that's when we got the canal, main canal completed. And then we delivered
water to the farmers. And that was called the
breathing a paradise Valley and probably the greatest
thing that ever happened in California ever, because right here with the water I'm talking
about and what those people do, they feed the world with this body. - Our forefathers were visionaries and they had the vision to build Don Pedro and then new Don Pedro some years later and turn an otherwise arid landscape into the productive agricultural
region that we have today. And in fact, it's the fifth largest most productive County in the nation. - It's a lot natural
about how we manage water in California. And we get a lot of profit out of that. And in some ways we sustain
a lot of agriculture. Most of us wouldn't have our lawns, wouldn't have our fields. Many of the rural economy,
I should the rural economy would be much poorer if we
managed to water naturally in California. And in terms of water quality,
a lot of us would be dead. So as an engineer, I think
we should have some pride in what we've done. We have some problems,
definitely in terms of keeping the environment alive. - People have turned to the
rivers of the central Valley on their heads. We've done a lot, we've
changed the hydrology. It's almost opposite now. The river flows that we
see, the ebbs and flows. They're almost opposite
what they were historically. So in the past, we made some decisions based on some incomplete information. We're learning now that some
of those decisions we made need to be fixed. - Why to California's fight over water. Well, they fight because
there's either not enough of it or there's too much. And both those conditions
can cause problems. When it rains in California, it pores. The worst flood in the
history of this continent turn the vast central Valley
into the central ocean in 1862. And we built dams first
to help stop those floods. And later we realized they could also help during the dry years because
scarcity has its own problems. And they're obvious. You've got 40 million
people in this state, all of them get thirsty
and they get hungry. You need water to meet those needs. About 160,000 gallons a year for the typical California family. So we have to have dams to
store water for the dry days. And the dryer gets, the
more of that stored water people want. And that creates its own friction. - Extensive gravel mining,
gravel pits were formed in the channel. Some of that is done by gold miners. Some of that by people who are
mining and selling aggregate, all of which changes
the way the river flows. Today it's much deeper, wider, and the water moves much slower
than what is most conducive for a native salmon fishery. - I think both rivers are at this point, unfortunately dominated
by non native species. Obviously wasn't the case historically because most of our non-natives were intentionally introduced
by state and federal agencies. The Toulumne, we got a larger population of Smallmouth bass
'cause the slower water, shallower water, we believe the Stanislaus has a larger population of
Largemouth and stripers. 10, 20, 30 years ago, there was a point where they were harvesting 80%
of the available population each year in the ocean. What that did was drove
salmon back to the rivers at younger ages. Whereas salmon used to
come back as four, five and six year old fish. Everybody's seen the picture
of these beautiful big salmon. Now they're more likely to survive if they come back as two
year olds or three-year-olds because each year you spend in the ocean, you have a greater likelihood
of dying and not returning. So you're not gonna reproduce. So we've artificially selected for salmon that returned to the
rivers at a younger age over the last three decades. - To preserve our bod life,
to have fish in our rivers is the morally correct thing to do. It's the ethically correct thing to do. And I think the majority of
Californians are in favor of it. - What we learned along the way
is that there's a whole host of other species that are also in decline because of the loss of Riverside forests in the central Valley. - That's what our current water war in the Northern San
Joaquin Valley is about. The people living here
have created reservoirs to store much of the
water from the rivers. And now some groups and their allies on the State Water Board want
more of that stored water. (instrumental music) - Today is August 21st, 2018 at 9:40 a.m. And the meeting's called to order. - If we don't solve the salmon
issue on the Merced river, it's always gonna be used as a target. - Historically more than
60 to 70% of the flow is from the Toulumne,
Stanislaus and Merced are diverted between February and June, starving the Bay Delta and
estuary of vital fresh water needed to protect fish. - 'Cause I am utterly
convinced that flow alone isn't gonna solve the
issue of salmon recovery. - These people came in to California and multiplied to 38 million people and dammed up the rivers,
diverted up all the water, the planet's getting hotter. - Fresh water flows
are needed to make sure that most of the people in
California get clean water. - But to really solve the problem, what really needs to happen
is a complete restructuring of water rights to reconsider
not only residential usage but even more so agricultural usage. - There are people on
both sides of this debate, those who don't wanna see any change, they wanna maintain the status quo. And there are others who would
see our entire communities destroyed to put the river
back into its native system, not diverting any water for
people or food production. And frankly, neither one
of those voices are helpful in this conversation. - But I think you gotta
ask yourself one question, are we here to actually find a solution or are we here just to keep people going and creating bureaucracies that keep going on and on, on, and never actually achieve anything. - The people in the district themselves are going to be impacted in a
way that they cannot survive. If the Bay Delta plan
goes as they envision it, they're basically asking
us to carry our bags and get out of here. - This is an Ag community. A lot of times when
the state gets involved and they think that they're
doing the right thing, there's unintended consequences. And I think the unintended consequences for taking an overt amount of our water or any significant amount,
that would devastate not just our farmers but all the workers, all of the ancillary businesses
that go along with that. It would just be devastating. - Everything is important
to when you've got a complex animal that lives
in multiple environments over multiple years,
everything impacts them. As a researcher, when you see,
not to be overly dramatic, but really your life's work. I've been doing this for 26 or 27 years starting here on the Sacramento but I've certainly done more research on the San Joaquin basin
than anywhere else. And to see the government
just not even dispute the information, just to omit it. How does that lend any credibility
to government documents and the requirements that
they're imposing on people? - We need to look at all the
rivers that flow to the Delta to come up with a comprehensive solution. And it's not fair to
just pick on one river, the Toulumne and exclude all the others. And in fact, that's exactly what the state water
resource control board did with their plan. They basically have not
looked at all the rivers. Some of the rivers are gonna look at after they've finished with us, although frankly they're never
gonna be finished with us. - This is one of the bread
baskets of the world, one of the most productive
agricultural regions you will find anywhere. And billions of dollars of
crops are run through this area every year. That's people's livelihoods. The value, the cultural heritage. These communities were founded
by people that depended and built these reservoirs
and worked this land with their own hands. And so there's just a rich connection between the four rivers that run through this assembly district and
everyone who lives here and the work that goes on here. - [Narrator] What do
farmers bring to the Valley? First, they brought life
when they diverted water from the rivers to turn a dry desert into the world's largest garden. For generation upon generation,
they've brought food to California's tables. But their success has come at a cost. Some see them as villains, some as heroes. - If you think about your garden at home, if you grow tomatoes or
something in your garden, you can't grow them without water. Food doesn't grow without water. It takes water to produce the
jeans that you're wearing, it takes water to produce the phone that you're talking on. It takes water to do everything. Using water to grow food is
I think one of the best ways we can use water. - How do you have a farm without water? It's a myth that there are non
water, thirsty food plants. There are plants you can
choose not to plant every year as opposed to a perennial
plant like a Walnut that you have to keep alive. No matter how much
production you're getting, if you wanna get a crop next year, even if today's crop fails, you gotta do the same amount of water,
'cause you gotta keep them healthy for next year's crop. So you can't say it's a bad water year. - A lot of people blame farmers
for spoiling the rivers. And a lot of other
people ask, is that true? Well, it's a complicated question. But food has been grown
in California for as long as there have been people. It didn't take long for
the get rich quick dreams of the 49ers to turn into
visions of beautiful farms. All they needed was water to
make those visions a reality. When John Muir, the greatest
conservationists of them all, walked across this Valley into the Sierra. He called it the flowery
best place I ever walked. And he said and this is a quote, "Storage reservoirs should be
built at the foot of the range "so that all the bounty of the
mountains can be put to use." - Water comes out the tap, it's a miracle. They don't know where it comes from. Where do they get their
food, at the grocery store. Oh, but if I go to a farmer's market, I can get it from an actual farmer. A family farmer from a working landscape, those are the kinds of things they like. They don't recognize that in
the Turlock and Modesto area, that's the majority of people,
are those family farmers. And people don't take the
time to get to know them and understand them. - My name is Janie Gatesman
and my titles would include farmer's daughter, farmer's
wife, a farm partner, a mother and Ag appraiser. I'm actually a fourth generation farmer. My grandfather who started
our family's operation continues to this day. - In the Turlock irrigation district, the average family farm is below 40 acres. We're not talking about
corporate agriculture. These are farms that are
often multigenerational. These are people who are many
of them have a second job, but many of them, their whole livelihood is predicated on a reliable
and affordable water supply. - In a farming family, we
measure so many important dates by planting dates because almond orchards usually last 20 to 30 years. I remember when my husband
came to my parents' house to pick me up for our first official date, we had just planted that orchard and that orchard is 20 years old now. It reminds me I've been with
him for a really long time. We got this lease the year
that the twins were born and we planted the trees
the year they turned one. Trees are one-year-old
already when you plant them. So the trees and the
twins are the same age. And in this picture, the twins are one and so are the trees. This lease is a 25 year lease. So we're pretty excited that
the twins will be 25 years old when this lease ends. We're hoping this ranch will
put them through college. When you look at an orchard, you realize what a long investment it is,
especially for young people like my husband and I
who put a lot of money and a lot of time into
putting in this investment. But when you put it in
terms of a child's life, this investment is going to take us through the entire childhood
of our youngest kids. It really, I think shows you
what a longterm commitment farming truly is. - There was a huge drought in the '70s when I was a girl, we saw
the stress our parents had because of how bad the
water situation was. This is probably in the mid to late '70s. I knew it was happening. I could see their stress, but
then when it's your own income and your own children,
you're tying to feed, then it gets to be a worry
if there's not enough of it. - We about 1900 farmers in
Merced irrigation district growing well over 50
crops, mainly nut crops, tomatoes, corn, and sweet potato. Sweet potatoes. The area where they grow here
is that one of the only areas in the world if not the only area where you can grow them organically. - I think we have a situation
where you've got less than 1% of the population of the
United States who are farmers. And so people really
don't have a good window on the methods that are used farming and how necessary water is. We are squeezing every
last drop of efficiency as we can out of the
water that we're using, because we don't wanna be wasteful. Lentils use more water than almonds. - [Man] I've heard that. - But that almonds get a bad rep, right. And it just becomes
part of the vernacular. And it becomes a fact
that people just know, even that they don't really know, they just heard it somewhere. - We use sensors in the
ground called soil probes and they send all kinds of electronic data to my husband's cell
phone or laptop computer and tells him where he
has dry spots in the soil, where the soil might be a little wetter. - We did a three year long study. I've seen it done on grapes
and we actually did it on almonds. And they approached me with this and said, "Hey, look, we wanna do something. "We're gonna put two feet of
water on an almond orchard "in January." And a normal usage for
a normal summer season, growing season is three and a half feet. So putting two feet of water in January, and the way we did it was
we did six inches of water every Monday. And so for four weeks we
put six inches of water on a Monday. And it was basically the study was to see if it would damage the trees. And the easiest way to answer
is it didn't hurt the trees. So we were able to put
the two feet of water on every January and no visible
damage, no production damage, nothing to the trees. And when water hits the
groundwater, it disperses. But they were able to tell
that that water did get down into the groundwater. And so if it's making it
down into the groundwater, it's making an effect,
whether it's a major effect or just a little effect,
it did make an effect on the groundwater. And what they did also find because what we were doing
is we were using rainwater and which is very
comparable to the snow water that we use during our irrigations. And so it was a filtering and diluting some of the pollutants that
were in the groundwater. - There's been a
widespread misunderstanding about efficiency in agriculture,
agricultural water use. The biggest or one of the
biggest sources of groundwater recharge is that return
flow from agriculture. A few years ago, there was
large environmental organization that had a large report saying
that there was 3 million of acre feet of additional
new water could be made if you had drip irrigation
throughout agriculture. They didn't quite understand
that three million acre foot was already being used by somebody. It was going into recharge of
the groundwater for droughts. Groundwater is the
biggest reservoir by far, almost by 10 times in
the state for drought. We have about 40 million acre foot of total surface water
storage capacity in the state, we have more than 400 million
acre foot of storage capacity in the groundwater basis, particularly in the central Valley. - The amount of water I
have to use is governed by the needs of the tree. And it doesn't matter how I
put the water in the ground, these trees need about, they
need what comes down from rain plus about three acre
feet of water a year. So if I put that on with
flood or a micro sprinkler or drip, the trees still needs
the same amount of water. The only efficiencies you're looking for, or trying to avoid evaporation, the water just going into the
air is that of the ground. We've got some buried drip lines. The system I have in it was
just a supplemental system, it's not enough to sustain the tree. We flood irrigate this orchard,
but in between the flooding, I can give them a little
boost with this Berry drip. We're looking for how much
stress the tree is under from water. If you're measuring the
waters down in the roots and it's being pulled up to the leaves, as the leaves evaporate,
it's pulling more water up. And the greater the tension is, the greater the stress the trees under. (instrumental music) Okay, the leaf has to go in the chamber. So I put it up through
this gasket, the stem, let me see to come out and
I tightened down the gasket, put it in this chamber. We're looking for moisture
to start coming out of a cut into the stem. And as soon as we pressurize
the chamber until that. We see that happen, then we
stop and we take a reading. So we're using this compressed nitrogen to squeeze that leaf and push
water back out of the stem. When as soon as I see moisture, I stop and see how many
bars it took to do that. (instrumental music) That's four and a half. So I have a chart that
university developed, it tells me how much
stress the tree is under at four and a half with
today's temperature and today's humidity. So this tree is pretty happy. How much water does it
take to produce any protein that you consume? You need to consume some protein. So where is it gonna come from? What's the healthiest protein. And then if you wanna throw
in coefficient of water use per unit of protein to get, and if you're comparing one
type of protein to another, I think that may be valid. You have more validity
than just throwing out it's a gallon per almond. - To put in a welfare
about a 40 acre ranch would cost about $150,000. That includes the pump, usually. If you're looking at a bigger
well that produces more water for a larger acreage, you can be anywhere from 500 to $600,000. Here in Oakdale, if you
go South in the Valley, where you have to go deeper for water or deeper to get good quality water, you're looking at quite
a larger cost than that. - Every year there's risk for each crop. And then you have risks that could... There are risks, things that
kill your entire orchard and there are risks to the markets. People say, do you wanna go to Las Vegas. I said, no, I face that
kind of risk every day, I gamble for a living. Why would I wanna go do it for fun? - Not growing food here
would seem to be a crime against humanity. The conditions are that perfect
as long as you have water. Generations of farmers have figured out how to turn this Valley
into paradise valley. Some have even called the garden of Eden. The father of Israel's
irrigation movement in the 1890s came here to learn about irrigation. Modern farmers are
figuring out how to make every drop of water go
further or at least far enough to grow the most incredible
fruits, vegetables, proteins the world has ever seen. That's why Ag is a $50
billion industry in California and 12 billion of that comes from the Northern
San Joaquin Valley, which is fed by the Stanislaus,
Toulumne and Merced rivers. - We create 80% of the
world's almonds in California. We create more milk than anywhere else, the best cheese, right,
Peaches, everything.. We create it here in the Valley. - If they don't have water, the only thing they'll be
able to do with their land is either range land, or winter wheat, which is obviously
infinitely less profitable than almonds or pistachios. - While the economy for most of the people that live in Modesto is
based on agriculture anyway, Ag is 80% of our economy. So every job, every
librarian, every teacher, every post office guy,
that's all based on Ag. If it wasn't for Ag, those
jobs wouldn't even exist. - But let's not only talk about farmers. Let's talk about the cities. This is a community that is growing faster than any pace in California. We are at the cusp of changing. - [Narrator] Three rivers
flowed down from the Sierra into the San Joaquin
and out into the Delta. Rainbow trout, raccoons,
belted King Fisher, salmon and humans all depend on them. That's why it's absolutely vital that we understand how they
work and how they don't. The key is science. - My name is Doug Demko. I'm a fisheries biologist
and the president of Fishbio. I've worked on the
Stanislaus river since 1991 and the entire San
Joaquin basin since 1991. We do very intensive
research and monitoring 365 days a year all year
long, they're monitoring one life stage or another
of either Chinook salmon, rainbow trout here. - Okay, here we go. - We're definitely seeing
questions we can't manage for. But what's more disturbing
to me is a lot of times we don't even recognize what questions we should be answering. - We're arguing with new
folks in new cubicles that we've never had to and
we're trying to educate them. And they're bringing up
issues that have nothing to do with water transfers out of reservoirs. And it's becoming more
and more of a problem. Some of the state agencies
are making it very difficult for us to finish whatever
process we need to finish with them. - For instance the weird
project it's just intended to identify and count the
number of upstream adult salmon. We had to get 14 permits. We actually had to get
permits from entities that I had never heard of,
and didn't know they exist. You're getting signatures from people that have never been
on the Stanislaus river or the Tuolumne river and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just getting the permits. - There was another study
plan that was developed to do a followup study to the 2012 study. So it was improving upon
what we did in 2012, which was really groundbreaking work. It was the first study of its
kind in the central Valley to put together predator
abundance, predation rates, and then relate that
back to survival metrics. We sought to do a follow
up study in 2013 and 2014. And we could not get the permits from the fisheries agencies to do so. - Crazy that a fishermen could go up to this upper Toulumne
river, catch a rainbow trout, kill it, cook it and eat it. But I was literally
called by a federal agent and told not to snorkel
a Creek or he would come and arrest me and put me in jail. So is it a matter, is
he protecting the fish or is he protecting the
department, his agency, the fact that they don't want
that information collected. It's easier to get a permit to do research from a communist government
than it is to get a permit to do research in California. - It's our belief that
they are trying to get to an end point using science. So they're choosing the
studies that they like because that's where they wanna end up. And they're not looking at our science, they're not respecting our science. - If we're talking 25 years of data, those are really powerful data sets. What we found was that over the
15 years that we've done it, that pulse flows don't
attract salmon upstream the way people think they do, the way the agencies think they do. - Take the velocity studies,
they showed the rivers had to be flowing fast to
help push juvenile salmon down the rivers and into the Delta. It makes sense, but a
virtually identical study done two years later showed
that it was far more complicated than just flow. Salmon need fast water,
they need slow water, they need muddy water. They need food and they
need places to hide. The environmental movement and the state had staked all their plans to save salmon on that first study. So they refuse to accept the second. Here's the thing, it was done
by the exact same scientist. If we can't even agree on the science, it will be impossible to
agree on the solution. (instrumental music) - The Toulumne is always winning
one of my favorite rivers. And so it's nice to see
disagreement taking place there. I think it's very significant
because the Toulumne, first off from the
perspective of native fish other than salmon has always
been a pretty good place. - Toulumne river though is
much flatter and much broader. It would be their
traditional Chinook stream if you're thinking about it,
a stream, that's gonna produce a lot of Chinook. At least the river, as it
exists today below the dam. - If you don't restore floodplains, if you don't restore more title Marsha, if you don't restore more edge habitat, forcibly might not do any good Because you need to have a
place for these fishing go. If you're just putting those flows we change to big levees and
pushing in fish out to sea, maybe they'll get there a little faster but there'll be so smaller. Their Chevallier rates
would still be very low. - We have invested about $30
million in the Toulmne river. So we would be foolish to think that we haven't learned something. - And if you're losing 96%
of your salmon juvenile upstream in the river
habitat, the best habitat, you still have a section of
the Toulumne river to go. You still gotta go down the San Joaquin and then either pass Stockton or old river and through the Delta. I mean, really nothing survives
and a lot of the years, nothing survives out in these rivers. And for people just to
ignore the non native predation problem, it's disingenuous. It's crazy. - And we came up with
a program that we felt was more effective in protecting fish than the state water board's plan. - The second study that I
find absolutely fascinating is a study that was done by Dr.
Mann Fangue out of UC Davis. And it has to do with
the thermal suitability for Amicus rainbow trout
on the Tuolumne river. What we found is that through
a series of aerobic testing, the fish on the Toulumne
river are thermally suited to a temperature threshold
much, much higher than the EPA guidelines of 2003. So to the tune of about four degrees. Well, four degrees makes a
tremendous amount of difference when you talk about water
supply and water supply being the only way to address
temperature in the river. - California fish are different than fish from Northern forms. And we've shown that they appeared to be more thermally tolerant or they can tolerate higher temperatures than their Northern more
cold water counterparts. Our data suggests that
fish from the Southernmost distribution of this Chinook salmon range or Micah to some degree
are doing pretty well at warmer temperatures warmer
than we would have expected. And temperatures warmer
than fish from the North, fish from Northern populations, warmer than those fish can tolerate. So we have evidence that tells
us there's something special about central Valley fish. It's favorable in terms of their ability to tolerate slightly
higher water temperatures, but how high is sort of
the jury is still out. How much do we think
that will protect them from a future climate. We call temperature the abiotic
master factor for fishes. They speed up as temperatures increase as a very direct relationship between the fish's body temperature and the water temperature. And so a warmer fish is
gonna evade predators faster to a point, but as it gets too warm their ability to do that is gonna decline because you push them
outside of their optimal. That kind of information,
I think can be very helpful when you're asking
questions about how to spend sort of spend precious
cold water resources. - We see a significant benefit in improving the floodplain habitat. - You can create floodplain habitat, you can engineer it down
to contemporary flows. So, whereas at this point in
time in the Toulumne river, it may take eight or 10,000
CFS to inundate a flood plain, it's gonna benefit native
fish in the Toulumne river. If we create floodplain habitat, we can engineer that down to a lower level such that it's inundated every
year or every second year or every third year. - If you boil it all the way down to the most fundamental
level, show that 90% of the juvenile salmon
in the Toulumne river that leave on an annual basis are eaten by predators species. So no matter what we do
to improve the fishery in the upper reaches of
the lower Toulumne river, if 90% is going to be lost to predation, we're back to square one
right out of the gates. - So what these restored
floodplains do for salmon is they provide slow
velocity, warm water habitats for a very small amount of
time, just a few short weeks during the migration period. - It's silly to just ignore the problem and say, Oh, it's not predators, to think that you're gonna
release a little bit more water to dramatically improve their survival. And our estimate was 96%. Okay, so what if we were off? What if it was 50%. Show me a study anywhere in California, show me a study anywhere in the West coast where they found 50% loss of
juvenile fish or any animal during their migration
that's gonna be ignored. - Over the last 10 years,
Turlock and Modesto and the city and County of San Francisco have attempted to work in good faith with the state water board. The reality is the regulation
that the water board is attempting to impose on this community won't fix the problem. The problem meaning continuing decline of returning salmon spawners. (dramatic music) - We're a small piece of the picture, we're a small piece of the flow puzzle. We're a small piece of the salmon puzzle, but nonetheless we are
part of the picture. And the Merced river is
important to our community, but it's also important to our region. And it's important to
this state as a whole. And I don't know that
we can restore the river to what it was before. I don't know that anybody
knows what it was before. We recognize that we've built some dams. You also have to recognize
that there was mining on this river extensively that's changed the location of the river,
the makeup of the river. There's levees all up and down this river in the San Joaquin,
there's farming in what may or may not have been
floodplain areas in the past on this river and on the San Joaquin. Merced irrigation district was probably the first proponent to begin initial conversations
seven or eight years ago. And we tried vehemently
to come to resolution. Ultimately we were unable to. And then we put our best
foot forward a long time ago based on science, based on
the best science on the river, quite frankly. - The document talks about
that there'll be 1100 fish that would be increased that would make it into the San Joaquin river. Maybe the Merced will get 200 of them. And our point was is it
worth to destroy an economy for 200 fish? - We should not be responsible
for what we can't control. We will work on the Merced river, we'll do the restoration that are needed on the Merced river. But as the fish moves
out of the Merced river, that is someone else's issue. These fish here are good fish. They have survived a lot. And if they go to the ocean
and they make it into the wild and be able to come back, that's amazing as to what they have, what is facing them, what's waiting for them downstream. - I don't see a way forward to success the way it's being handled right now. We have engaged with the
state in this last round. And quite frankly, we just
are still not moving forward. - The Stanislaus has
steeper gradient upstream near the dam, has two or
three miles of Canyon habitat, which is prime rainbow trout habitat and steelhead. We found is Stanislaus has a really strong rainbow trout population, on
average about 18 to 20,000 fish per year, much more than Toulumne. The San Joaquin basin is the
Southern extent of junk rain in the United States. So it would make sense
that they've adapted to be able to withstand
slightly warmer temperatures. - Typically environmental flows
that are coming out of dams are cold and that water,
the colder that water is, the furthered and the
more of it is actually further downstream it'll
keep the temperatures cool. Those cool temperatures are
where the natives thrive. - California, we just had
a record six year drought. New Maloney's was practically empty. The water coming out of there was warm. We saw a lot of fish die because of that. Another important point
about the biological opinion on the Stanislaus river. When it came out in 2008
and required more aggressive flow releases from the reservoir, NIMS is biological opinion
didn't have any data on rainbow trout in it. They didn't know how many rainbow trout. So you have a biological
opinion that declares the species as threatened in this range requires more aggressive water releases, but you don't have a basic understanding of the abundance of the species
you're trying to protect. It's just a basic fundamental question. And you can't manage something if you don't know how many there are and you don't understand
their life history. - We feel that the
science we've been doing has proven a lot of things to us. More water's not necessarily better. The Stanislaus river is
already the most impaired river in the state as far as an impaired flows. We run between 34 to 40% already. How much more do we need to give? - So the only real chance of
salmon has is to get caught up in the artificial currents
created by the giant Delta pumps. Then they can be rescued
and trucked around the Delta to San Francisco Bay. The natural methods of
salmon coming up and spawning and then coming out on
the flows, no longer work and no amount of additional
water is gonna fix that until you fix the problems
of prediction, turbidity, lack of food and lack of cover. And over pumping. - Hatcheries are a key component to maintaining a fish population, but there's opposition from
some groups that it disrupts the native wild population. I would suggest that there probably aren't too many wild salmon. There's been so much interbreeding
with the hatchery fish because they've been present for so long that we may have missed
a chance to take actions to protect the wild native gene pool. But if our goal is to maintain
a healthy salmon fishery, we've already seen that hatcheries can be a key component to that. - The more we can encourage
wild spawning of the salmon, even if they're hatchery salmon,
the better chance we have of maintaining these populations
for the indefinite future. - The environmentalist
don't like hatchery salmon. If we were truly committed, if our one number one goal
was to help out the Bay area salmon fishing industry, we
would be having more and more hatchery salmon. And you can even do stuff like
you can take hatchery salmon and you can truck them right to the ocean. So they don't get eaten by the predators. - The reason the state takes
30 million hatchery fish to the Delta, dumps them in the Delta is A, they won't survive in the rivers due to the production problem
that they won't recognize. They put the fish in the, they survive. They get to the ocean,
harvested, majority of them, at least half of them harvested
by the commercial fishery and then the rest return to all the rivers throughout the central Valley. And that's the key for the
Stanislaus and Toulumne rivers that don't have hatcheries
and don't want hatcheries, they'd rather have local
naturally produced fish. And instead what we're getting back is these random state bread hatchery fish from other systems. - The question is not simply
solved by hatchery production because the fish that are
released from hatcheries don't necessarily replace wild fish. They may be quite
different than wild fish. And so if we want healthy ecosystems that support wild native salmon and trout, hatcheries won't do that for us. Hatcheries kind of are
the origin of hatcheries were to supplement fisheries
and to try to increase fisheries production. But they do have some
negative consequences. They can mess with wild fish genetics. They're not a perfect solution. - It's not unrealistic to
you think we can repopulate our rivers with salmon, but
they are not going to be the same salmon that were
here 100 or 150 years ago. These are the salmon than we have today are adapted for a very
different kind of environment. - We're still looking for
solutions that allow people to survive, if not thrive. We're looking for
solutions that the farmers, the salmon, the people West
and South of us can live with. For that to happen,
environmentalist have to realize that farmers are part of this solution. And the farmers have got to
understand that conservationist are not the enemy. And all of us must recognize
how important this is to every person. - It is a limited water supply. That's why we have to be
as efficient as possible, both on the human side and
the environmental side. What will happen with
the river in the longterm as we continued to have populations grow. And as we continue to be
the part of the ecosystem that we are, that's one of
the things that it's hard for us all to get our brains around, is that we can't have nature
just be nature by itself. We are part of that nature now. - [Narrator] 200 years
ago, it was the rivers that shaped the waterways
and marshes of the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta supporting
millions of native fish. Today, the Delta is a
system of levees and pumps that 24 million people
depend on for drinking water. Those pumps can literally
reverse the tides, sucking away fresh water. Almost 60 invasive species
compete with salmon and smelt to survive. Scientists and officials
are now trying desperately to undo all the damage
this estuary has suffered. - We ask a lot out of the
Delta, just like we ask a lot out of groundwater, we ask a
lot of all the water bodies in the state of California,
much of the world. But the Delta is sort of
at the nexus of it all. It's sort of the major hub in the system. - But there's a fish conflict. Recent work at the state
water resources control board has reviewed the requirements
of instream fish flows on the San Joaquin tributaries. There is a school of
thought that more flow will improve fish
conditions and contribute to the health of the Delta. But then there's another
school that's thought that says if you just
simply put more water down these narrow channels,
it's unlikely to provide any health benefits to the fish. (slow music) - I currently serve as the vice chairman of the Delta Stewardship Council. It's a state agency
that was created in 2009 to coordinate some 200 local
state and federal agencies that all have some responsibility
or regulatory authority for managing the Delta, the
West coast largest estuary. The Delta Stewardship Council's charge is to restore a healthy estuary. We view this as an emergency room and until somebody provides
a do not resuscitate order for smell or salmon or any other species, we are required to do everything we can to try and reverse the trends. And science is a key component. Salmon in the Delta is a fascinating fish. They don't live in the Delta,
they use the Delta as passage. They begin their life
upstream on the tributaries, Sacramento, San Joaquin rivers. And at the point where they are old enough and large enough to begin moving out, they migrate through the Delta
and spend most of their life in the ocean. - What happens to salmon and the Delta? The short answer is that they die. There's a lot of rain,
five of every 100 salmon who swim out of our rivers
might make it through the Delta to the ocean. But most years it's two, sometimes three, sometimes none per 100. They're eaten by non native predators. It's that simple. There's 1,000 miles of levees. And 95% of those Delta
levies are covered in rocks and concrete chunks that prevent erosion. There are pumps at the edge of the deltas that can siphon 15,000
cubic feet of water a second out of the Delta and send
it South to desert farms and thirsty cities. - The Delta in its current
condition is highly altered from what it was 150 years
ago, but it's still an estuary. The difference is 150 years
ago before reclamation projects began to create islands for farming, 50 to 100% of the Delta was wetted depending on the time of the year. And it provided a great food
web for all of the species, both aquatic land and
avian species in the Delta. Now we have channelized the Delta and reduced the wetted area to 5% and therein lies a huge food web problem for the aquatic species the fish, because it's that land water connection that stimulates the food. It's just not happening as it used to. Most of the levies in the
Delta have been rocked, call it armoring, it's
chunks of rock that prevent the scouring of water
from eroding the levees. It really is a flood protection, but it's created a hostile environment for fish that reside in the Delta, or as in the case of salmon and steelhead that pass through. Salinity in the Delta is a key issue because obviously with farming
going on about 500,000 acres of the million acres of land in the Delta, you can't put salty water on crops and expect to produce much. Recently, the state water
resources control board has been looking upstream,
both in the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers
to find additional sources of water to help contribute
to lots of factors, including salinity control. - If you take the rocks off the levees, the Delta islands will flood. And the farmers who own those
islands will lose their land and their equipment and their crops. If you turn off the pumps,
people in Los Angeles and Riverside and San
Diego will get thirsty. If you cut back on pumping too much, the farmers near Fresno and Bakersfield won't have enough water
to grow their tangerines and their nuts and their tomatoes. And we'll all go hungry. If you dredge the Delta
channels to make them deeper and colder to help the
salmon, you kick up mercury from the old gold mining days, which flowed down from the rivers and that poisons every living thing. And if you don't let enough
water flow into the Delta, then you let salty water
from the ocean float up and that ruins even more land. We're damned if we do,
we're damned if we don't. - The Delta is a challenging
place for little salmon because we have non native
predators that will impact their route. There's also lots of
artificial sort of waterways and things that they have to navigate. - Take a big net and pull out
a fish in the Southern part of the Delta, you'll find
90% of the fish biomass is non native fish. - Predation is the big
problem, that's the main issue. And the predators are
generally invasive species, many types of bass, including
Striped bass, right. So 90 to 95% of the salmon
that would lead this river or the Toulumne or the
Stanislaus, they don't make it to the ocean because
they become fish food. (soft music) - I mean put a plug in frustrate
bass as a positive thing, they've been around since the 1870s, they're fully adapted to our system now. If we suddenly got rid of Striped bass, you might see an explosion
of other species, which actually compete
with the juvenile salmon, or you might see an
explosion of other predators, that channel catfish for
example, or even Larchmont bass. Other predators might become more abundant because you've eliminated the top dog. - When you look at the
size of Largemouth bass that are harvested from the Delta, they've gone up in the last three decades. I mean, we planted the Florida
strain of Largemouth bass, the large mouth bass that we had that were originally
planted by the government way back in the day, apparently
weren't growing fast enough or getting big enough. So in the '80s we planted
Florida strain Largemouth bass in the Delta. And after that time,
they showed that, yeah, in fact, the Delta bass
now get even bigger. - The Delta is probably
the most studied estuary in the world. We have a lot of data. We have a pretty good
understanding of how things work. It's because of the complexity,
is layer after layer, after layer of influences
on any particular matter that you select. It makes it very difficult
to find easy answers. - So there's no simple
solutions to any of this. - The Delta islands have
been farmed for 150 years. And during that time through
erosion and oxidation of the peat soils, there's
been land subsidence. So a number of the islands
or bowls in the central Delta now, 20 feet or more below sea level that's unsustainable and
Delta growers recognize that. They don't provide a great
space for title habitat, the kinds of habitat that
Delta Stewardship Council believes would be the best suited for improving native fish
population conditions. The single biggest factor
affecting salmon in the Delta is food supply, that
they're starving to death. And the narrow channels
that we've talked about, the rip wrap, the lack
of land water connection, the reduced flood plain
from a historic standpoint, all of these factors
diminish the food web, the primary food production for salmon and other species that depend upon that. So flow matters. The Delta Stewardship
Council is of the belief that if we improve
floodplain and inundation and rearing habitat and
improve the food web, that's the most likely chance of improving conditions for salmon. And water will be involved in that. But it's a time, it's not volume. - You're making the assumption there that we can fix the Delta. First off, you have to recognize that when you talk about
Delta as the killing fields, we're really not talking
about the entire Delta, we're talking about the
South and central Delta. When you're talking about
the North and West Delta, you get much better habitat for salmon and they can actually make
it down the Sacramento river and out to sea. On the other hand, in the
South and central Delta, that's where if a fish coming
out of those San Joaquin or the Tuolumne or the Stanislaus river, gets down into that nasal of channels where the water is warm, where
there are lots of predators of various sorts, where it's
very confusing to be a fish as you kind of go out to
sea, you have a hard time to find your way out to sea there. It's ironic that the
survival rates of salmon that are salvaged at
these big pumping plants in the South Delta, and then trucked down to the main estuary down
to the San Francisco Bay. Those salmon have much
higher survival rates than the fish that you're
trying to get through the Delta. So maybe that suggests a solution. You'll find a way to trap
these fishes are going down and truck them around. - At some point, if we
wanna keep natural runs of Chinook salmon healthy upstream, the Delta may have to
become a migration corridor where those fish are just passing through as quickly as possible. - It's really great if you
can get them to the ocean relatively quickly and
before it gets too warm, because a number of bad things
can happen as it warms up for the salmon, including disease and all sorts of things. - Trucking salmon through the Delta is a compromised strategy
because we recognize that especially kind of
getting the juvenile salmon to swim through the
South and central Delta is just about impossible. You have 99.9% mortality in most years. - But to think that you
can manage one species, let alone multiple species without having a proper understanding of their life history is just foolish. - The problem is that nobody trusts in the Delta region, anyway,
nobody trusts government to do what the operating
conditions say they will do. It's a huge, huge problem of trust. The system can be engineered
and it can be managed to balance the needs of water
supply and ecosystem health. But the operating rules based
on best available science and adaptively managing
and learning and changing, it's all possible. But there's so many conflicting interests and there's such a of trust right now. And for many years, it
makes it very difficult to land on solutions that are agreeable to the warring factions. - And it doesn't get any
easier when angry farmers and angry or conservationists start knowing on each
other, throwing big money Ag from down South and big money
industry from our cities and the big green environmental groups who depend on a crisis to raise money. And the people actually
trying to get stuff done get drowned out, so to speak. - I don't think everybody's
gonna be happy about the Delta. I don't think anybody
will be completely happy about the Delta. In fact, it's sort of a game of chicken. Everybody knows that the current
Delta is not sustainable, but nobody is going to
be the first to volunteer to give something up, to achieve somewhat sustainable future for the
Delta because that would weaken their negotiating position. It's a very difficult and awkward dance. And we'll see that when the
voluntary settlement agreements, as well as everything else that we do, that the state really
has to sort of come in and negotiate that sort of
like the cop that comes in and breaks up the game of chicken between overzealous
teenagers and sports cars. - [Narrator] California's
enduring dilemma is water, where to find it, how to share it, how to care for the rivers
and streams that provide it and everything that depends on it. More dams, more
hatcheries, desalinization, river restoration or perhaps
something more basic. - Really river restoration
to us is about people, it's about restoring function
to our river corridors for people, it's based on
a combination of factors around the physical conditions,
the biological conditions and the social and economic
conditions of an area. Where a community is willing
to accept and able to support river restoration is where
it's gonna be successful. - OID has had success with a
project called Honolulu bar up between Oakdale and Knights ferry on the Stanislaus river. It was kind of a high Island
out in the middle of the river. And so what we did is we
kind of knocked it down and created a couple of low flow channels to go around. By creating those low flow channels, you created more spawning
areas for the salmon that run on a river. And I think what it's done is it's provided those nesting areas and it's allowed the fish to
not be able to get challenged by the high flows. And I think this is allowed
a little bit of a sanctuary on the river for them to
go ahead and lay their eggs and start the cycle all over again. So for us, it's been a
very successful project. - And we've learned a lot
about the Toulumne river. The expenditure of those
funds has been invested in about 37 studies. And from those 37 studies,
we've created a host of models that support river operations
and predicted benefits to the fisheries. Filling in the gravel pits was one of the sort of main drivers and the projects that we
undertook years ago in the '90s. For the special run
pools that we filled in, we've seen a dramatic
improvement in predator levels specific to those defined areas. - Dos Rios ranch is 1,600 acres right here at the confluence of the
Toulumne and San Joaquin rivers. And it took about five years, about 21 amendments to
the purchase agreement and nine different funding partners to bring the money together
to buy this property for conservation purposes
from a very willing landowner, very supportive landowner. Three years ago, we were
able to do some work on the floodplains of Dos Rios ranch where we mimicked a flood
with our river pumps and put hatchery fish into
the flooded habitat areas of Dos Rios ranch, and
watched how fast they grew. They grew at rates faster
than any of the other recorded salmon foraging on flood plain studies that have been done on
Kasamnas or on Yolo bypass. We're really excited to know
that on the San Joaquin system, we can grow floodplain fatties. The same way that you've
heard about elsewhere in the central Valley. Proof of concept is a
really important part of recovering any wildlife,
particularly salmon. - We have a lot of projects on the books, several of which we have
applications for permits into California fish and wildlife, and we're waiting for them
to approve our projects. There's a lot centered
around predation control and potentially erecting
weirs in the river, barriers to prevent a non native fish from moving upstream during critical times of the salmon life cycle. So there are additional
projects waiting in the queue but we need the state to greenlight them before we can proceed. - My impression is that the
voluntary settlement agreements are probably our best
hope now to have effective environmental management
are some of these systems because they provide a more flexible way of combining the management of
the habitat, physical habitat and the water habitat together. They provide a way of bringing the powers of the stakeholders that the legal powers and the legal resources and the resources of the stakeholders and
the regulatory agencies and the environmental
management agencies together to work in common goals. - So our agreement with the
state talks about flows. It talks about improvements to the river. So it talks about, for instance
improving spawning grounds, it's about predator control. So it's basically a
whole suite of options. And I think we're talking
about spending 38 million bucks on these actions. So the point is it happens immediately if we come to an agreement, so that's better for all concerned. - And it's about finding the right balance between what's good for people and what's good for the fish
and the other habitats, okay. Once again, related to
science and everything else, we can start this right now, all right. And we don't have to wait any longer because the longer these settlements take, we're not doing anything
that would be a benefit to the fish. - San Francisco does have
a lot of political cloud. A lot of people listen
in San Francisco speaks, but we are partners on the
river with Turlock and Modesto. We have been working with them for decades on our mutual needs there. It involves us working with the districts to spend $25 million
over the last 10 years on scientific studies to
understand the Toulumne river and try and figure out
what's best for the river in terms of the environment and
most efficient for the river in terms of using our water there. San Francisco has a very
keen interest in that. We hope the voluntary agreement works out, but we've gotta protect our interests. And if we end up having to go to court, we have to go to court. Don't want to, but it's
gotta do what you gotta do. (dramatic music) - Also, when you're
talking about threatening the water supply of 2.6
million people in the Bay area, you better have really good stuff because you know the
people in the Bay area are gonna zealously protect our water. We actually are gonna
protect our water too. And they just they're clueless. The water board staff is often clueless. And so it's gonna be a nightmare for them if there's not a voluntary agreement. - We don't need to choose
between a clean environment, a healthy river and a strong economy, that there are paths forward together. And that's really what we
ought to be working on. This notion that it must
be one or the other, and you find extremes on both sides. You find folks that deny or
ignore the real world impacts on the habitat in and around these rivers. And then on the flip side,
you talk to some folks who live up in the Bay
area and get their water out of a faucet and pick up
their food at whole foods. I guess they think it
grows there in the store. - From my perspective,
we have to have our eyes on the prize. We have to be focused on the outcome. But if we can agree, and between
the environmental community and the water purveyors
to utilize the assets, the flow, the non flow measures
and the financial assets that are on the table now,
and focus on the objective, I think we can continue to do good things. - We've learned so much
over the last decade about this river that must be integrated into whatever settlement we reach. For example, we're learning
a lot about interconnectivity of the food web and how
floodplains are so important to give the outbound baby
salmon a place to hide and a place to grow large
enough that they can make it out through the Delta, which
is really just a minefield of areas for them to be consumed by non native predator fish. (instrumental music) - There are a lot of
people in the Bay area who are strong environmentalist. I'm a strong environmentalist. A lot of people I work with
here in the PUC are as well. But we have a greater responsibility. We have to provide water
and we have to take care of the environment. And that means being as
efficient as possible in both of them. - [Man] The right way to solve a problem is through voluntary
agreements and negotiations. - Water is not a partisan issue. We can't think about it with, Republican and Democratic goggles, is
we've gotta be able to talk to folks that don't live here and we've gotta be able to
take them to those supermarkets and show them how much their consumption depends upon our way of life. If you really care about, and
you like having almond milk in your latte, if you really like having that really nice cheese, that
depends upon water resources being secure in the central Valley. We've gotta make that
case and show people. - There's gonna be some
reductions in agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. When you look at implementation of the sustainable
groundwater management act, that's a loss of on average,
about 1.8 million acre feet per year. That's about 600,000 acres of land that are coming out of production. You don't wanna just take
out 600,000 acres by lot because we'll be taking
out too many almonds and not enough low value crop. So water markets, I think, are essential to making this all work. - Now, the negotiations over
the voluntary agreements appear to have bogged down and
a lot of people are asking, can the process work? Well, it has to. The only alternative is
to go to court and fight over who's right to use
the water as the strongest or the oldest or the most
imperative or the most righteous. That can turn into an
all or nothing solution mandated by the courts that
either destroys the economy of one million Northern San
Joaquin Valley residents or allows the plight of the
salmon and the other fish in the river to get worse. - But the problem is
we're stuck in a world where your gain is my
loss and water rights have dictated at all. And those that choose
to improve the situation have gone around water rights. And that's really what
the state water board did. They simply, instead of
respecting the water rights of folks that have
livelihoods and communities on those rivers, they chose to just take. And when one side just
takes, it doesn't leave room for a compromise and
consensus and opportunity for everyone to work together
to everyone's benefit, the rivers and the communities. - Part of it is just to really
know what these rivers do and what the alternatives are for farmers as well as for the fish, my own feeling is always
the best thing to do is go out and get wet, go on the river and see what it's like
experience the flows. Recognize that living
river is really something very special. - Getting people like
water users, resource users to team with government agencies and with environmental groups
to do the work cooperatively to build the trust. When people come out here and see the work the irrigation districts
doing the San Joaquin basin, they could spend time on the river. They see the commitment that they've made and that the millions of dollars
that they've been spending for many districts,
they gain I think, a new and better understanding of how committed private entities are. The resource users are to
being stewards of the river. - We can find ways to
move forward together. And I think on the flip
side of that debate is the notion of voluntary agreements and settlements that
you've seen up and down the state of California
in different waterways. And that's really where
the focus needs to be here. We're not going to
decrease the populations of these communities in
the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, they're gonna increase because the cost of
living in San Francisco and San Jose and Los Angeles
is increasingly more expensive and unattainable, frankly, for most folks. And that's driving population growth. And so how do we restore
the habitat of the river but also provide enough
water for these communities and enough water to feed the
farms that are feeding America. (instrumental music) - I don't think we're asking
too much of the river. I think we sell ourselves short
when we describe the river and water in California
as an issue of scarcity. We're smart, humans are smart
and we're social creatures. When you put a bunch of brains together, you come up with some good solutions. So yeah, the rivers have been taxed. We know that, but we also
know that we have solutions at our fingertips. Dos Rios ranch is a proof of concept that we can do a whole lot more with the limited resources that we have. It have to mean shutting off a
whole component of the system or shutting down a whole community that relies upon the river. - Some folks would say, well,
let's just give up on them. I tend to think that's not right. That with a properly managed
and well thought out portfolio over a period of maybe a few decades, I think it was what
it'll take to figure out what the fish really need
and what the best way is to provide it to them and what business and organizational model we can develop that will sustain that. A lot of times, the technology
you need for managing water for any purpose is not all that elaborate. But the hardest part is always the people. How do you organize the
people and get enough people to pay at the right
places and the right times so that you can in an organized
way, provide that water, provide that infrastructure,
provide that habitat that's necessary to keep crops growing or fish growing or birds growing. - We talked about this
a lot at river partners. This is urgent. We've made corridors and
the results are astounding and they're impressive. There's a lot more work
that needs to get done. - So we're trying to address that to create a sense of urgency about the work that needs to be done. I'm hopeful in 10 years from now, we'll have a regional permit approach that will allow larger scale
habitat restoration projects. And we will, in 10 years have begun to see the improvements in the food web and hopefully resulting
conditions for primarily salmon. But what we're learning as this
settlement process continues is the interconnectivity and
how we're all linked together in the Delta. And certainly the Delta
has a lot of things that need to be fixed
in order for our salmon to return back to the Toulumne river. - Having a reliable,
healthy, safe food source that's domestic is really important. As we enter a new world where pandemics and other health issues
and huge populations become increasingly a challenge, we have to have food available and that supply chain of food,
that the production of food that happens here, that
happens with this water. And so I guess when you asked me, does the whole state have a responsibility to make sure this area
has water, yeah, they do. We all have a responsibility. And again, that's part
of having a common future and working together towards it rather than continued division, fighting and stealing of water. - But absolutely we'd
all like to do better. And that difference that
we're always dissatisfied with where we are and not happy
being the best on the curve is what makes California
really a great place as a dynamic economy and society. And so I'd hate for us to lose that and then become complacent. So to some degree, I hope
we keep fighting about it because that'll help
us keep getting better, but we are gonna fight about it. - Instead of fighting a
fight that takes water away from people or relieves
people of their water rights, we should be figuring out
how do we create a world where everyone has the confidence where people aren't afraid to share, 'cause in today's world,
nobody's gonna share. - Bringing together people who wanna see the other side be successful. That means farmers and farming interests coming into a room and wanting to see the side of the moderate
environmental groups succeed. And that means moderate
environmental groups coming into the room with farmers and wanting to see their
way of life continue and their farms to thrive. - We have no interest in deciding who gets this drop of
water and who gets that. But what we're here to do
is restore river corridors to benefit people and the environment. That's our mission. Our entire approach is to envision how things might be better and try to encourage others
to come along with us. - We have a government office right now who has publicly stated we need to encourage voluntary agreements. We need water districts,
farmers, environmentalist, cities, counties to all come together and put solutions in play
that benefit everyone. I know we can do it,
but it can only happen if the political leadership
continues to force it because otherwise organizations,
cities, districts, people with financial considerations, environmentalist who
don't wanna compromise are all gonna fall back into the habits of litigation and fighting. And litigation and
fighting gets us nowhere, doesn't improve the habitat. Doesn't improve the security
of the economy in this area. We gotta do better. - The debate around if
we're giving something up in exchange for recovery
of wildlife is a construct, it's artificial. And when people get to know each other and really start to talk about
where they're coming from and where they'd like to go together, it's clear we all wanna
go to the same place. - [Narrator] Our hands have
worked hard to turn this Valley into a garden that feeds the world. To keep it growing, we must
continue to teach others so that they will care
for it and protect it as they work with it. When we place our rivers and
our Valley into younger hands, they must know that without these rivers, there is no Valley. (instrumental music)
