Central Valley Project Reform Act

Summary

Central Valley Project Improvement Act - Prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from entering into any new short-term, temporary, or long-term contracts or agreements for water supply from the Central Valley Project (CVP), California (a Bureau of Reclamation facility) for any purpose other than fish and wildlife before certain requirements have been met. Provides an exception to such prohibition for long-term contracts for the sale of the CVP water to California water agencies for municipal and industrial purposes. Requires the revenues from such long-term contracts to be covered into the Restoration Fund established by this Act. Authorizes the Secretary to renew any existing long-term repayment or water service contract for the delivery of CVP water for up to 20 years, provided that the Secretary has analyzed such contract's impact pursuant to Federal environmental laws and complied with applicable State environmental laws. Requires the Secretary to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement on CVP water contract renewals. Establishes the terms and conditions for all new and newly renewed or amended CVP water contracts for agricultural, municipal, or industrial purposes. Places restrictions on the transfer of water under contract to users in California. Requires contractors to: (1) meter ground and surface water; (2) ensure that drainage discharges meet all applicable State and Federal water quality standards; and (3) make all CVP water subject to contract available pursuant to a specified system of tiered water pricing. Directs the Secretary: (1) to establish and administer an office on CVP water conservation best management practices that develops criteria for evaluating the adequacy of all water conservation plans developed by CVP contractors; (2) to periodically review and evaluate all existing conservation plans submitted by contractors to determine whether they meet conservation and efficiency criteria; and (3) in developing criteria, to grant substantial deference to the recommendations of the Final Report of the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program. Provides that all increased revenues received by the Secretary as a result of increased water prices established under this Act shall be covered to the Restoration Fund (and, to the extent that such funds are actually expended, credited toward the reimbursable fish, wildlife, and habitat restoration costs established under this Act). Authorizes and directs the Secretary to operate CVP so as to: (1) protect, restore, and enhance affected fish, wildlife, and related habitat; and (2) permit the use of CVP water for fish and wildlife purposes. Directs that mitigation for fish and wildlife losses incurred as a result of construction, operation, or maintenance of the CVP be concurrent with or prior to such activity and be based on the replacement of ecologically equivalent habitat. Authorizes and directs the Secretary to: (1) develop and implement a program to ensure that, by the year 2002, natural production of anadromous fish in Central Valley rivers and streams will be sustained, on a long-term basis, at levels not less than twice the average levels attained during the period of 1981-1990; (2) assign to 1.5 million acre-feet of project yield, upon enactment of this Act, the primary purpose of implementing the fish, wildlife, and habitat restoration purposes and measures authorized by this Act, subject to specified requirements; (3) develop and implement a program to mitigate fully for fishery impacts associated with operations of the Tracy Pumping Plant; (4) develop and implement a program to mitigate fully for fishery impacts resulting from operations of the Contra Costa Canal Pumping Plant No. 1; (5) install and operate a structural temperature control device at Shasta Dam to control water temperatures in the Upper Sacramento River; (6) meet flow standards and objectives and diversion limits set forth in all existing State regulatory and judicial decisions which apply to CVP facilities; (7) investigate the feasibility of using short pulses of increased water flows to increase the survival of migrating juvenile anadromous fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Central Valley rivers and streams; (8) develop and implement a program which, to the extent possible, will eliminate losses of anadromous fish due to flow fluctuations caused by the operation of any CVP storage facility; (9) develop and implement measures to correct fish passage problems for adult and juvenile anadromous fish at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam; (10) rehabilitate and expand the Coleman National Fish Hatchery by implementing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Coleman National Fish Hatchery Development Plan, and modify the Keswick Dam Fish Trap to provide for its efficient operation at all project flow release levels; (11) develop and implement a program to restore the natural channel and habitat values of Clear Creek, construct new fish passage facilities at the McCormick-Saeltzer Dam, and provide flows in Clear Creek to provide optimum spawning, incubation, rearing, and outmigration conditions for all races of salmon and steelhead trout; (12) develop and implement a program for restoring and replenishing, as needed, spawning gravel lost due to the construction and operation of CVP dams, bank protection programs, and other actions that have reduced the availability of spawning gravel in the rivers impounded by CVP facilities; (13) develop and implement a program for closure of the Delta Cross Channel and Georgiana Slough during times when significant numbers of striped bass eggs, larvae, and juveniles approach the Sacramento River intake to the Delta Cross Channel or Georgiana Slough; (14) construct a barrier at the head of Old River to be operated on a seasonal basis to increase the survival of young outmigrating salmon that are diverted from the San Joaquin River to CVP and State Water Project pumping plants; (15) deliver firm water supplies of suitable quality, in support of the objective of the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture, to maintain and improve wetland habitat on units of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the Central Valley of California, the Gray Lodge, Los Banos, Volta, North Grasslands, and Mendota state wildlife management areas, and the Grasslands Resource Conservation District in the Central Valley; (16) establish a comprehensive assessment program to monitor fish and wildlife resources in the Central Valley and to assess the biological results of actions implemented pursuant to this Act; (17) develop and implement a plan to resolve fishery passage problems at the Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation District Diversion Dam; (18) assist, if requested by the State of California (the State), in developing and implementing management measures to restore the striped bass fishery of the Bay-Delta estuary; and (19) evaluate and revise, as appropriate, existing operational criteria in order to maintain minimum carryover storage at Sacramento and Trinity River reservoirs sufficient to protect and restore the anadromous fish of the Sacramento and Trinity Rivers. Directs the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee to investigate and provide recommendations to specified congressional committees concerning: (1) alternative means of improving the reliability and quality of water supplies currently available to privately owned wetlands in the Central Valley and the need, if any, for additional supplies; (2) water supply and delivery requirements necessary to permit full habitat development for water dependent wildlife on 120,000 acres and feasibility means of meeting that water supply requirement; (3) measures to maintain suitable temperatures for anadromous fish survival in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by controlling or relocating the discharge of irrigation return flows and sewage effluent, and restoring riparian forests; (4) opportunities for additional hatchery production to mitigate the impacts of water development on Central Valley fisheries where no other feasible means of mitigation is available; (5) measures to eliminate losses of juvenile anadromous fish resulting from unscreened or inadequately screened diversions on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, their tributaries, and in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta; (6) measures to eliminate barriers to upstream migration of adult salmonids in the Central Valley; and (7) construction of temperature control structures on Trinity, Lewiston, and Whiskeytown Dams to conserve cold water for fishery protection. Requires the Secretary to: (1) investigate and report to specified congressional committees on all effects of the CVP on anadromous fish populations and the fisheries, communities, tribes, businesses, and other interests and entities that have now or in the past had significant economical, social, or cultural association with those fishery resources; and (2) develop readily usable and broadly available models and supporting data to evaluate the ecologic and hydrologic effects of existing and alternative operations of public and private water facilities and systems in the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Trinity river watersheds. Directs the Secretary, commencing in the water year following the year in which this Act is enacted, to: (1) charge full cost for the delivery of CVP water (other than water delivery under a water rights or exchange contract) used in the production of any crop of an agricultural commodity for which an acreage reduction program is in effect, unless the Secretary of Agriculture determines that the domestic stocks of the program commodity are inadequate to provide for a reserve that can reasonably be expected to meet a shortage caused by foreseeable disruptions in the supply of the commodity, subject to specified requirements; and (2) allocate reductions in contract deliveries of CVP water, when hydrologic or weather conditions are deemed by the Secretary to necessitate such reductions, first to contracting districts or agencies by amounts which equal the amount of CVP water (other than water delivery under a water rights or exchange contract) used in the district or agency in the preceding water year to produce crops of an agricultural commodity for which an acreage reduction program is in effect under the provisions of the Agricultural Act of 1949. Establishes the Central Valley Project Restoration Fund for the receipt of revenues and funds provided by this Act. Provides revenues for the Restoration Fund by directing the Secretary to impose an annual operations and maintenance charge on CVP power and water sales. Specifies that the charge shall be added to the costs of CVP water and power sales in a manner that results in rate increases of equal proportion as measured against total revenues received annually from each sector. Authorizes the Secretary to provide funding to non-Federal entities to implement actions authorized by this Act and for specified purposes. Bars the Secretary from expending any funds on construction of capital facilities for which the State is required to contribute a share of total costs until the State has agreed to meet such cost-sharing requirements. Outlines additional authority granted to the Secretary by this Act with respect to the CVP. Specifies that: (1) this Act does not and shall not be interpreted to authorize construction of water storage facilities; and (2) contract modification required solely to implement the provisions of this Act shall not subject CVP contractors, including exchange and water rights contractors, to the provisions of the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982. Sets forth reporting requirements. Authorizes the Secretary to purchase: (1) from willing sellers at fair market value agricultural land and associated water rights and other property interests which receive CVP water under a contract executed with the United States; and (2) agricultural land which, in the Secretary's opinion, would, if permanently retired from irrigation, improve the quality of an irrigation district's agricultural wastewater and assist the district in implementing specified agricultural wastewater management activities, or which are no longer suitable for sustained agricultural production. Establishes: (1) the Central Valley Project Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee (to make recommendations with respect to fish, wildlife, and environmental restoration actions identified in this Act); and (2) the Central Valley Project Transfer Advisory Committee (to report to the Congress and the President on all issues associated with the transfer of CVP facilities and assets to California). Directs the Secretary to investigate and, if feasible, develop and implement a program using dredged material to restore, protect, and expand San Francisco Bay and Delta wetlands. Authorizes appropriations.

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Documents

6 official files

• Reported in House (text)

  Reported in House · EN

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• Referred in Senate (text)

  Referred in Senate · EN

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• Introduced in House (text)

  Introduced in House · EN

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• Engrossed in House (text)

  Engrossed in House · EN

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• Passed House amended

  summary · EN · 18 June 1992

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• Introduced in House

  summary · EN · 7 May 1992

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