75 



the financial side of things. We would like to see that level two 

 funding stay as reimbursable. 



Mr. Miller. Those historically were what? Those were 

 nonreimbursable on Bemie Sisk's theory that there was nowhere 

 to send the bill — nobody to send the bill to — ^the ducks and the fish 

 and what have you? All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair- 

 man. 



Mr. DOOLITTLE. Thank you. OK. Let us see. Mr. Radanovich. 



Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Moss, do you 

 agree with Secretary Babbitt's assessment in October of '94 that 

 the amount of water required to restore and sustain the San Joa- 

 quin River fishery would clearly go beyond the reasonable, prudent, 

 and feasible criteria of the law itself? 



Mr. Moss. Yes, I do. 



Mr. Radanovich. Would you care to expand on it? Well, in con- 

 junction with that — expand on that and this other statement, and 

 that is if you can give us an idea of the terms of the impact on the 

 agricultural communities that have resulted from an uncertainty in 

 long-term water supplies that resulted from even the declaration of 

 this study? 



Mr. Moss. Well, to answer your last question first, that was 

 clearly demonstrated during the workshops that were held by the 

 Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation in consid- 

 eration of the San Joaquin River Comprehensive Plan where in a 

 series of five workshops we had over 5,000 people, not just farmers 

 but barbershop owners to truck dealers, to, you know, the person 

 that, you know, flips the hamburgers come out and be represented. 

 Some of them, you know, testified for the first time in their life on 

 an issue. 



Clearly, the public in the Friant Division was able to clearly 

 draw a nexus between the potential of losing water down the San 

 Joaquin River and their jobs, and that potential exists along these 

 lines. The San Joaquin River doesn't have enough water to support 

 both the salmon fishery and continued agricultural production in 

 the Friant Division. We have water supplies which have ranged 

 from about 350,000 acre feet up to, you know, the full contract 

 amounts of 2.2 million in the past. 



If we were to try to keep a fishery alive in a dry year where we 

 only have like we had in '93 and '87, '88, and '89 less than 100 per- 

 cent of our what we call class one supplies or less than 800,000 

 acre feet. And you take 4 or 500,000 acre feet out of that for a fish- 

 ery, you are talking about reducing your available supply in those 

 years which would have to be considered a very short year even 

 further — taking half of it. And the year that we only had 350,000 

 acre feet, if you take, you know, that much for a fishery, then you 

 are taking all of the water supply. 



And you have to recognize that on the San Joaquin River cur- 

 rently water is kept in the river below Friant Dam to a point called 

 Gravelly Ford. Gravelly Ford is where the last riparian diverter on 

 the river exists. And the reason it is called Gravelly Ford is for one 

 reason, and that is because it sucks up a lot of water. 



In order to get water beyond that point, you have to put more 

 water in. Our analysis is that it would take for every acre foot you 

 want to get to Mendota Pool, for example, which is only 15 miles 



