but create havoc with water-develop- 

 ment engineers because they calculate 

 their yields based on what the stan- 

 dards are currently, and then the 

 standards change in 10 to 15 years. 

 So they are continually trying to 

 figure out what is going to be the 

 next set of standards. This is a 

 thorny issue between the Federal Gov- 

 ernment and the State. We have also 

 adopted water quality control plans 

 for the Central Valley and the delta 

 under our Clean Water Act authori- 

 ties. Here we had some legal guid- 

 ance, but we did not have a clear set 

 of principles that should be follow- 

 ed. We also were in the process of 

 having or experiencing a very exten- 

 sive drought in California and 

 everybody was clamoring for the 

 same block of water. It didn't 

 take very long before we had what 

 I called an "ah ha" experience. 

 You sit down and you go "ah ha," 

 that's what the problem is. 



Our first major discovery was 

 that if there was an easy political 

 answer to the problems of water 

 supply in California they would 

 have thought of it 50 years ago. 

 There was simply no easy way out of 

 the problem. First, you are not 

 going to please everybody, so what- 

 ever decision you come up with it 

 is going to have to be legally and 

 technically defensible because you 

 are likely to be sued no matter 

 what you do. First, take the prob- 

 lem apart, then divide it into 

 bite size pieces and then start 

 chewing away on the pieces. The 

 other thing we had to do was to re- 

 cognize that we were not going to 

 solve all the problems all at once. 

 You have concerns with basin devel- 

 opment and export development and 

 we had to pick out those that were 

 most important and try to resolve 

 them. Who should protect the delta 

 was the first issue we were faced 

 with? Was it the in-basin users 



who are diverting water within the 

 basin or the exporters? There are 

 many types of exporters in Califor- 

 nia. 



In addition, you have the 

 rather large State Water Project 

 and the Central Valley Project which 

 are delivering water to the San 

 Joaquin Valley in Southern Califor- 

 nia. The water law in California 

 states that exporters are the last 

 to be considered in the system re- 

 gardless of the kind of priority 

 or the way the development projects 

 were built. The State Water Project 

 and the Central Valley Project were 

 the last of the exporters. I will 

 give you a brief example of how we 

 applied this concept in California. 

 First of all, we had to develop a 

 rational policy of what protection 

 should be afforded fisheries. In 

 this case, I will give an example 

 of striped bass survival. Luckily, 

 we had a rather large amount of 

 data on striped bass. The informa- 

 tion indicated that flow and diver- 

 sion rates out of the delta affected 

 striped bass survival, particularly 

 young striped bass. We determined 

 that had the project not been built, 

 there would have been a stiped bass 

 index of around 71. A striped bass 

 index is a relative number that in- 

 dicates the relative abundance of 

 young fish in the estuary. With 

 those same relationships, we deter- 

 mined that the existing plans that 

 we had at the time would have pro- 

 vided an index of around 63. We 

 then went about developing standards 

 that would try to achieve this in- 

 dex 63 goal at the mitigation level 

 in the estuary. In the standards 

 that we developed, we require much 

 greater protection in wet years 

 than would have been experienced 

 historically and we tried to allow 

 for lesser protection in critical 

 dry years. Yet, we still try to 

 get the overall protection needed 



Mi, 



