In 1992, Congress passed the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) to address the impacts of the Central Valley Project on fish and wildlife and associated habitats.  Section 3406(b) identified 35 “restoration” activities that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must undertake, and established a restoration fund to pay for these activities.  Power users and water users make annual restoration fund payments, with power users also being responsible for a portion of the irrigators’ share when irrigators are not able to pay.  Upon “completion” of all restoration activities, the Secretary is to reduce restoration fund payments.

After 16 years and over $1 billion of obligated funds, only 7 of 34 restoration activities have been completed.  The Bureau of Reclamation recently concluded that the time for completing all projects is “unknown, but can be expected to require many more years,” likely “decades,” and could cost “another several hundred million dollars.”  Contributing to this delay in completion is the fact that the Bureau of Reclamation is not applying proper completion criteria and Federal and State funding has been drastically reduced.

The failure to complete restoration activities and other intervening factors (e.g., a new CVP power marketing plan, reductions in water deliveries, drought conditions, and endangered species obligations) has burdened power users with unreasonable payment obligations in the form of rate adders.  Power users have paid $203.4 million between 1994 and 2009 for restoration projects.  These payments are becoming unmanageable; they have rapidly escalated from an average of $7 million per year in the 1990s, to $26 million per year in 2008 and $37.5 million in 2009.  The CVPIA rate adders are driving CVP power costs above the cost of open market power. 

In December 2008, OMB produced an independent review of the CVPIA that concluded: CVPIA-targeted fish populations have stayed relatively the same or declined between 1992 and 2005, the original CVPIA premise of doubling fish population by 2002 may not have been attainable, and the Bureau of Reclamation implementation and other independent factors (i.e., drought, ocean currents, pesticides, introduction of new species) are responsible for a significant lack of progress.  OMB recommended a new comprehensive approach to implementing the CVPIA that links actions with scientific foundation (i.e., stop undertaking projects on an ad hoc basis), considers the larger ecological system, and integrates CVPIA with other efforts in the region.

NCPA continues to work with the Bureau of Reclamation, to provide an explicit and detailed “action plan that prioritizes CVPIA activities and a clear description of specific and verifiable actions and programs the Bureau of Reclamation will pursue to complete the unfinished CVPIA protects, and budgets for each of those activities.