Feds fault fish plan

Marysville Appeal-Democrat-2/26/10
By Ben van der Meer

The state Department of Water Resources and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. may have to take six additional months to craft a plan to restore salmon habitat on the Yuba River after two federal agencies faulted their proposal.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wlidlife Service described several areas of concern with the Draft Habitat Enhancement Plan for the Yuba and three creeks feeding into the Feather River in Butte County.

Among them are the criteria used to compare the plans to other plans, a lack of proof the plans would succeed and missing explanations of how PG&E and Water Resources would overcome obstacles.

Additionally, some parts of the plan would negatively affect the fall-run Chinook salmon, a fish also considered threatened, according to the Fisheries Service.

PG&E and Water Resources are trying to get Fisheries Service approval for either the Yuba River or "Three Creeks" plan so the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will relicense their power-generating projects on the Feather River.

To implement the Yuba River plan, the two agencies would spend about $20 million creating gravel beds, reconnecting side channels and creating a segregation weir.

Landowners along the river expressed skepticism at a meeting in Marysville last month, saying there was little evidence the plan would increase salmon runs.

"While the proximate cause of the recent declines in fall-run Chinook escapement numbers is believed to be poor ocean conditions, the ultimate cause of the longer-term declines is the loss and degradation of inland, freshwater habitats," the Fisheries Service said in its filing with the commission. "Thus, reducing the area of Yuba River habitat accessible to fall-run Chinook could further exacerbate such longer-term declines."

The Fisheries Service said more consideration should be given to restoring fish habitat on the upper Yuba River, above dams such as Lake Englebright.

Fish and Wildlife said steps to work on the riverbed below Englebright and Daguerre Point dams didn't seem likely to cause as much benefit as the proponents asserted.

"Increasing spawn habitat is an important consideration in conserving all Chinook salmon; however, increasing spawning habitat without a commensurate increase in fish passage may not be expected to attain the numbers put forward in the (plan)," Fish and Wildlife wrote to the commission.

Water Resources officials said they hadn't seen the federal agency filings and couldn't comment.

PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson in Sacramento said the utility had seen comments from the Fisheries Service and others and was working on responses.

Officials with Water Resources and PG&E said they would submit one of the plans in May; it was unclear if that will still happen, given the Fisheries Service recommendation for a six-month extension.#

As river rises, so does momentum for settlement to remove four Klamath dams

Eureka Times-Standard-2/25/10
By Erica Terence
Opinion

The river rose last night. Three inches of rain in 36 hours, a neighbor reported. Hopefully, somewhere in the high country that translates into the beginnings of an ample snowpack, which will later deliver enough cold, oxygenated water back into the Klamath all year long for fisheries to survive. Between climate change and a century of dams on the Klamath, even a good snowpack is a drop in the bucket, though.

The river rose last night.

Now it dances, muddy and wild, over and around boulders between steep mountainsides crawling in mist, down to the Klamath, out to the sea. On its way there, some of the water spills around a river bar and backs into the eddies at the mouth of the creek near my house. This creates the slack-water environment along the edges where coho salmon thrive when they are young.

But will there be any coho salmon by 2020, when politicians and power company executives promise that four destructive Klamath River hydroelectric dams will be torn down? And couldn't we take those dams out a whole lot sooner? These are common questions, and good ones. These questions have good answers.

Frankly, it would be hard to create a more ambitious timeline for removal than the one found in the dam removal settlement without bypassing bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. These antiquated dams were constructed without environmental review. It was a mistake that has cost our river plenty, and it would be imprudent to decommission them now without taking the time to do it right.

Also, collecting the money for removal takes time. The reality is that we probably can't take the dams out much before 2020, making settlement likely the quickest and surest way to get the job done -- much quicker than taking our chances at FERC (where the favored alternative is trapping fish and trucking them around the dams), getting mired indefinitely in court, or causing the settlement to collapse and starting over, for instance.

For the past nine years, our coalition has been building the case for removing the dams instead of relicensing them. We've been building this case in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) administrative record, at clean water hearings, in the courts and on the streets of Scotland, Omaha, Portland and Salt Lake City. That work has not been in vain. The dam removal process laid out in a recent settlement will rely on the record we have built.

But how can coho, spring chinook salmon and other struggling fisheries survive if farmers in the upper Klamath basin get guaranteed water supplies? What if we have another fish kill like the one we had in 2002 due to lethally low flows? More common questions with good answers.

The dam removal agreement is integrally linked to a river restoration agreement that sets a water allocation for some of the upper basin farmers based on water balancing models, radically rearranging the way water will be managed and shared in the basin.

The idea that farmers get a fixed amount of water while fish get what's left has offended some environmentalists. But a wide range of scientists have projected that what's left in the river will afford more good flow years than fish have seen in a long, long time. In the years when flows drop to dangerously low levels, an emergency drought plan will kick in, as will federal flow requirements provided in the Endangered Species Act.

Besides, look at the legacy of the dams. Fish dying from overheated water, liver poisoning from toxic algae proliferating behind the dams, people and cultures dying from lack of access to salmon. Then look at the benefits of Klamath dam removal: cleaner water, healthier rivers, and yes, stronger and more reliable fishing and farming economies.

Dam removal on one of the last great salmon-bearing streams on the West Coast is now within our reach. Legislation to support and fund the settlement agreements is expected from Congressman Mike Thompson this spring. This is our chance to make the river rise again, and with it, the salmon.#

Klamath Riverkeeper's Erica Terence was born and raised on the Salmon River, a tributary to the Klamath, and still lives there.

Feds predict better year for Calif. Salmon

S.F. Chronicle-2/24/10
By Jason Dearen (Associated Press)

After two years of canceled salmon fishing off California's coast, fishermen received a bit of good news Wednesday.

Despite a historic collapse in the number of chinook, or king, salmon returning to the Central Valley last year, federal fisheries regulators are predicting a better 2010.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council forecast that 245,500 salmon would return to the Sacramento River basin this fall.

While good news, the prediction was met with cautious optimism from fishermen hoping for a chance to fish this year.

Last year, some 122,000 chinook were predicted to return to the river, but that proved inaccurate. Instead, a record-low 39,500 chinook were recorded in 2009, down from more than 750,000 counted in 2002.

"It looks like there may be enough for a very, very small season, a little bit of fishing but not much," Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, an industry group.

"A lot of this is going to depend on how conservative the council feels it has to be. They over-predicted the last couple of years."

Still, the council has more study to conduct before any final decisions are made, said Chuck Tracy, head of the salmon section for the Portland, Ore.-based council. A final recommendation will be made during the council's March meeting in Sacramento.

The Sacramento River king salmon run is watched closely as it provides much of the salmon caught off the Oregon and California coasts.

The precipitous decline of fish returning to the Sacramento area in recent years has resulted in commercial and recreational salmon fishing seasons in California being canceled.

With California shut out the past two years, West Coast commercial salmon fishermen landed fish worth just $1.15 million in 2009 — 91 percent below the average for the previous five years, according to the council's Web site. The premium fish — king salmon — accounted for just 13,500 fish, the lowest number on record.

Overall, commercial and recreational salmon fishing contributed $17 million to the West Coast economy in 2009, the second lowest on record.

In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, fishermen and federal regulators believe large pumps used to move water around for use by cities and farms is to blame for the salmon's decline. They say the pumping blocks fish from swimming from the freshwater, where they spawn, back to the ocean where they mature.

Others cite changing ocean conditions due to global warming as another possible factor.

The council's Tracy said better returns seen to the north in the Klamath River — where more than 331,000 adult chinook are predicted to return this fall — are another good indication there could be more fish off the California and Oregon coasts to catch this year.

"It's too early in the process to say, but there's still a possibility there could be a season," Tracy said.#

Glimmer of hope for limited salmon fishing

Contra Costa Times-2/25/10
By Mike Taugher

Despite a record-low number of salmon returning to California rivers in the fall, there is a good chance that anglers will have at least some chance to fish for king salmon for the first time in three years.

Figures released Wednesday show that under normal circumstances, regulators could allow as many as 120,000 fish to be caught.

But because of the dire condition of what has been historically the state's most valuable salmon run, they are unlikely to allow that much fishing.

A third consecutive year of no fishing is not out of the question; even after regulators determine how much fishing to allow, they will have to determine how much of that to allocate to sport fishers and how much to commercial anglers.

"If we weren't faced with the collapse of the most significant stock on the West Coast, I suppose that (a 120,000-fish season) is the way they would be looking," said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff officer for the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the federal agency that regulates West Coast salmon fishing.

Instead, regulators are likely to remain cautious because last year's forecast was dramatically off the mark and there is no sign yet that the salmon fishery has rebounded.

The glimmer of hope comes from the number of juvenile salmon, or "jacks," that returned last year.

Using the historical relationship between the number of jacks returning one year to the number of mature 3-year-old fish returning the following year, regulators say about 245,000 fish should return next year.

The target for regulators is 122,000 to 180,000 fish, meaning under normal circumstances regulators would set seasons to allow 65,000 to 123,000 fish to be caught.

However, jack returns from the previous year led regulators to predict a rebound last year that did not materialize from a dramatic and surprising crash beginning in 2007 in the Sacramento River fall-run chinook, which until recently accounted for 80 percent to 90 percent of the salmon caught off the coast of California.

Instead, the number of mature salmon that returned to spawn was a record low and just one-third the number predicted, "indicating that the recovery of this stock has yet to begin," according to the management council's preseason report Wednesday.

The record-low return of salmon last year came despite the fact that almost no salmon fishing was allowed for the second consecutive year.

Scientists do not know the cause of the collapse of fall-run Sacramento River chinook, but offshore factors such as variations in food availability in the ocean and inland factors such as pollution, Delta water diversions, loss of spawning habitat and heavy reliance on hatchery-raised fish are suspected.

A representative of commercial anglers said there was a chance his members could be looking at a "token" season.

"If there is a season "... we're going to have to be very cautious," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "At best, we might be looking at a token season."

Representatives of sportfishing groups were more optimistic.

"There is no reason to keep the fishery closed in 2010," said Marc Gorelnik, an El Cerrito fisherman with the Coastside Fishing Club.

Once regulators decide how many fish can be caught, they then have to determine who can catch them. For example, how many fish should be allocated to commercial anglers and how many to those who fish for sport?

Last year was the third consecutive year that returning salmon failed to reach the targeted numbers, which automatically triggers a study to see whether the salmon have been overfished, That move is ironic because no fishing has been allowed for two of those years.

An early overview of the season's outlook will be offered by state officials today in Santa Rosa, and then federal fishing regulators will begin crafting options for the season during a weeklong meeting in Sacramento that begins late next week. Final rules will be adopted in Portland, Ore., in April.

Today's meeting is scheduled from noon to 3 p.m. at the Sonoma County Water Agency Building, 404 Aviation Blvd. in Santa Rosa.#

The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority is trying to put teeth in "area of origin" protections

Redding Record Searchlight-2/24/10
Editorial

Almost everybody, especially in dry years, complains about Southern California stealing northern water. The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority is actually doing something about it.

After two years of watching water flow past Sacramento Valley farms and toward points south, the canal authority sued the Bureau of Reclamation this month. The claim? That the bureau has systematically ignored decades-old laws that guarantee full supplies of water to the "area of origin" before it's pumped elsewhere.

The statutes in question date back to the 1930s, before Shasta Dam was built and the Central Valley Project was developed, but northern water districts have done little to enforce them. The drought of 2008 and 2009, however, brought some of the most severe cutbacks in the history of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, which supplies 16 ag-heavy water districts from Red Bluff down to Yolo County. About half the acreage watered by the canal authority is planted in permanent tree crops, making steady supplies all the more vital.

"It's in a time of scarcity that those promises made in 1933 need to be honored," said Jeff Sutton, general manager of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority.

Although late rains in the spring of 2009 averted the devastating water cuts that Reclamation had threatened this time last year, the initial water forecast - not one drop of Central Valley Project water for agricultural users - was a shock felt throughout the state.

Indeed, the threat of widespread water shortages prodded the Legislature into passing a massive water bond, which will be on the ballot in November, and overhaul of the state's water system last fall.

That package might be good for the rest of California, but it also poses a serious threat to the north. Sutton points to the revival of serious discussion about building a peripheral canal, which could increase the ability to pump Sacramento River water around the delta and to the south, as a second major motivation for the lawsuit. "We need to know if these area-of-origin laws are meaningful and provide the protections promised," he said.

The down-valley farmers are pressing the case because their livelihoods are directly at risk. If they win, however, it could bolster the water rights of every district north of Sacramento.

In the short term, that could reverse the surcharges on urban homeowners and cutbacks on small farmers that Shasta County residents endure during droughts.

In the long run, it would be a vital defense as a swelling California population and ever-scarcer water threaten to make every year a drought year.#

Plan to save Kilarc filed with feds

Redding Record Searchlight-2/22/10
By Dylan Darling

A group trying to save Kilarc Reservoir by forming a small power company wants federal energy regulators to give its idea a chance.

Evergreen Shasta Power filed 30 pages of comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday, urging it to consider the company's proposal to maintain the small reservoir near Whitmore.

The group is requesting conferences with FERC this spring, said Steve Tetrick, managing member of the company.

"We've put together a full offer of settlement," Tetrick said.

Now the company, which has the support of Shasta County and Sierra Pacific Industries, waits to hear back from FERC, he said.

In October, FERC officials toured the small power project that includes Kilarc. At that time, FERC ecologist CarLisa Linton-Peters said there is a chance the agency could keep Kilarc.

But that would go against recommendations by state and federal wildlife agencies to remove the project and plans to shut it down filed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

PG&E gave FERC a plan to decommission the century-old, 5-megawatt project along Old Cow Creek in March. The company says removing the project, which produces enough power for about 3,750 homes, will improve conditions for salmon.

Evergreen Shasta Power formed last year with the aim of saving Kilarc by maintaining power production while improving nearby salmon habitat.

Tetrick, a Whitmore rancher with experience as an investment banker, said the proposal has the support of Sierra Pacific because Kilarc is surrounded by woods owned by the timber giant.

It's not the only small power company with a plan for Kilarc. Davis Hydro in Davis is proposing to preserve the power project and utilize its canals to spawn salmon. It first announced that plan in summer 2007.

While FERC officials weigh the fate of Kilarc, which is a popular fishing hole, PG&E continues to operate the project on licenses renewed each year, said Paul Moreno, PG&E spokesman.

He said FERC will make the final decision about Kilarc, and it could be years before the reservoir is removed if that is FERC's decision.

"We are continuing to follow the process laid out by FERC," Moreno said.#

Humble salmon would be elevated to official state fish

Central Valley Business Times-2/22/10

The Chinook salmon, largest of the Pacific salmons and once in abundance in the Central Valley where they spawn in the rivers and creeks, would become California’s official state anadromous fish under a bill authored by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael.

But the bill would do more.

It establishes a state goal to restore Chinook salmon to sustainable levels within a decade. The population of the fish has declined dramatically in recent years to the point where some feel it is headed toward extinction.

Mr. Huffman’s bill also calls on the state Department of Fish and Game to work collaboratively with public and private partners to restore Chinook salmon, and to prioritize conservation planning efforts for recovery of Chinook and other types of salmon.

"Given their incredible resilience, their important role in California's history, and the critical values they provide today for both healthy ecosystems and the state's economy, it is fitting that the Chinook salmon be officially recognized as the state anadromous fish," says Mr. Huffman. "It is equally important that the state renew its commitment to recovery of Chinook salmon to levels sufficient to once again support viable tribal, recreational and commercial fisheries, and to ensure these fish will still be around for our grandchildren to enjoy and appreciate."

The bill does not specify how the fish population would be increased. But the decline has been blamed in part on the pumping of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to urban and farming users.

The salmon commercial fishing season has been closed for the last two years. Mr. Huffman says the economic impact of the closure is estimated at over $2 billion, with as many as 23,000 jobs lost.

"It is imperative that the Legislature and responsible state agencies do all we can to protect these invaluable fish populations,” says state Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, a co-sponsor of the bill.#

$7.5 million to replace useless fish ladder in Santa Paula Creek

Ventura County Star-2/21/10
By Zeke Barlow

Eight years after about $1 million was spent on a Santa Paula Creek fish ladder for steelhead trout, the federal government is looking to spend $7.5 million to build a new one because the old was deemed useless when the fish most need it.

That the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is having to complete an expensive do-over of the project highlights how difficult and costly it will be to restore populations of the endangered fish, especially in rivers that have been altered with dams or channels. Ladders are supposed to help the fish get around such man-made structures, but this one has proved more of hindrance than help.

“It just doesn’t work as anticipated,” Darren Brumback, a fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, said as he looked at the battered structure that fills up with sand during big floods.

The Army Corps is working feverishly to get the new fish ladder approved by the various regulatory agencies and out to bid by Sept. 30, or the $7.5 million in funding, which is part of the federal stimulus bill, could vanish.

The fish ladder sits about a mile upstream from the confluence of the Santa Clara River. It was part of a massive $14.8 million flood control project to protect the city of Santa Paula that turned the sides of the creek into walls of concrete.

Though the ladder works during low flows, when there is a large amount of water, and in turn lots of sediment, the pools the fish use to jump over the 17 steps along the way fill up with rocks and sand. That makes the ladder a hindrance rather than a help. The water flows over the pools and is sometimes diverted away from the ladder to the cement slab where fish can’t get up. The problem is that it’s when the water is high that the steelhead swim upstream from the ocean to lay eggs.

“They screwed up,” said Frank Brommenschenkel, a consultant for an agency which maintains a different fish ladder upstream. “I think they overlooked a very important aspect of Santa Paula Creek and that is that there are hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of rock and sand that come down there on an average annual basis.”

A 2007 study found the erosion rates in the Santa Clara River watershed are among the highest in the world, resulting in an extraordinarily large amount of sediment flowing downstream. And that clogs fish ladders.

“I think there might be some things that could have worked better, but at certain flow regimes it does work,” said Darrell Buxton, the project manager for the Army Corps in charge of building the new ladder.

Jay Field, a spokesman for the Army Corps, said the agency built the ladder to the standards that seemed acceptable then.

“We built things to the best available science at the time,” he said. “Certainly we learn things every day and perhaps there is a better way to do it today.”

Brumback said one of the problems with the ladder is that it was modeled after looking at fish ladders for salmon in the Pacific Northwest. At the time it was built, it was believed the ladders that were successful in Washington would work in Southern California, he said. Turns out, they are very different beasts.

“We learned more in the last 10 years than the knowledge that this ladder is based upon,” he said.

Buxton said there are a few proposals they are looking at to either repair or completely replace the structure. Whatever happens, it’s likely that sand and sediment will have to be cleaned out of the ladder every few years.

Brumback said a large part of the problem is that the ladder sits in the middle of a flood control project, which changes the dynamic of the river. Those changes inevitably lead to maintenance such as cleaning out the ladder, but it still should work during high flows.

“We really want to get this right this time,” he said.

Ron Bottorff, chairman of Friends of the Santa Clara River, said anytime there is that much alteration to a river, making it friendly to steelhead is very hard.

“This is a very difficult problem and not an easy one to solve,” he said.#

A dam deal

S.F. Chronicle-2/20/10

Editorial

"Hasta la vista, Klamath dams," joked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a celebratory gathering for a plan to remove four aging dams straddling the river running through Oregon and California.

Along with vintage Terminator lines, there were Indian chants and warm words among longtime foes at a peace pact at the Oregon Statehouse. The rhetoric and hoopla are deserved. A major Western water war is settled for now, with about 30 groups - farmers, water agencies, environmentalists, and Indian tribes - making nice. It may be the biggest dam removal project ever, designed to restore salmon stocks and the river itself, starting in 2020.

But an undertaking this big and complicated will take years to play out. The $1 billion-plus cost must be guaranteed, not just kicked into the future.

Reviving more than 100 miles of dammed-up river requires serious study. The coalition will need to stick together as the project bumps along over the next decade. Then there's the Klamath-ized version of the "Field of Dreams" adage: If they tear down the dams, will the salmon come?

For all these doubts, it's amazing the deal got done. Schwarzenegger, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Greg Abel, the head of Pacificorp, the power company that owns the dams, all signed off on the pact.

The water world is watching. Can four contested dams on the Snake River in Washington be removed the same way? What about prospects for peace in California's Central Valley water battles?

Big as it is, the Klamath dispute is small compared to these fights. The four dams supply relatively little hydropower and don't divert water great distances. Also, Pacificorp was facing a huge bill for building fish ladders into the dams, a cost factor that made demolition a realistic alternative.

The Klamath also became a poster-child for willy-nilly water politics, putting it squarely in the crosshairs of decisionmakers. In 2001, the Interior Department cut off water to farmers to protect salmon, touching off an uproar. The next year, the policy was reversed to give farms more water while low flows led to the death of about 60,000 salmon. The roulette game had to stop.

Dam removal along with water for Oregon agriculture remains the best hope of avoiding the past, although balancing this equation will be a test. The financing spreads the pain: Congress must come up the bulk of the bill but Pacificorp customers will see higher bills and Oregon will contribute too.

Come November, California voters, who are in a surly mood, must do their part by approving an $11 billion water bond that includes $250 million for Klamath demolition work. There could be rough times ahead on the river.#

Feinstein water transfer bill would hurt salmon, destroy wetlands, critics say

Sacramento Bee-2/21/10
By Matt Weiser

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed legislation to make it easier to transfer water to San Joaquin Valley farmers from other areas of the state, part of her ongoing effort to help farmers contending with water shortages.

Feinstein made headlines last week with a controversial proposal to amend a federal jobs bill to guarantee San Joaquin Valley farmers 40 percent of their contract water deliveries from the federal government.

Her "Water Transfer Facilitation Act" has received far less attention. It was approved by a Senate committee in December and awaits a floor vote.

The bill aims to streamline regulations surrounding water transfers among Central Valley farmers and water districts, who generally get their water in one of two ways: Some have actual rights to a specified allotment from rivers; others buy water under contract with the federal government.

In a given year, those who contract for water get only as much as the government thinks it can provide based on drought conditions and environmental need. Such is the case for many farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, who last year got just 10 percent of their contracted amount.

The system also allows for users with water rights to sell a portion of their water to another user.

Feinstein has said her bill would allow an additional 300,000 acre-feet of water transfers among Central Valley users. One way it would do so is by waiving individual environmental reviews to protect the Sacramento Valley's threatened giant garter snake. Instead, a blanket review would cover all the transfers.

But it remains unclear whether the watershed has that much water to spare.

State and federal agencies helped achieve 600,000 acre-feet of water transfers last year, an all-time record. Many of these occurred between sellers in the Sacramento Valley and buyers south of the Delta.

Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman for Westlands Water District, said many of those transfers occurred only after lengthy environmental reviews. A more streamlined process, she said, would get relief to drought-plagued areas faster.

Woolf said Westlands and other San Joaquin Valley agencies asked Feinstein to propose the transfer legislation.

"She has been working very diligently to find solutions," said Woolf, whose agency received more drought-related water transfers last year than any other. "Any relief in the transfer process will help all of California, not just us."

A variety of Northern California water interests disagree, warning that the effort would harm Sacramento River salmon and wetlands.

Waterfowl advocates, Indian tribes and environmentalists say the bill erodes a 1992 federal law that requires more water and habitat for salmon in the Sacramento and Trinity rivers. They say it could transform the Sacramento Valley by draining water from rice farms and wetlands.

"The practical effect of the bill is that it will seal the doom for the Trinity River and for Central Valley salmon stocks," said Bill Kier, a fisheries consultant to the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute think tank in Oakland, called the senator's efforts misguided.

"Senator Feinstein seems to think that species extinction is a reasonable water management strategy," said Gleick. "Taking the last bit of water from the fish isn't going to solve the farmers' problems."

Feinstein spokesman Gil Duran suggested critics are reading too much into the bill.

"Transfers help alleviate the worst impacts of continuing water shortages and should be facilitated where possible," Duran said via e-mail. "The bill does not strip away any of the assurances for (wildlife) refuges and fish habitat."

At issue is the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, a 1992 bill that sought to correct environmental harm caused by federal water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley watershed.

One goal was to double salmon populations by guaranteeing certain water flows for habitat. It also guaranteed water to 12 federal wildlife refuges in the Central Valley.

"The Feinstein bill turns that on its head – it takes away those safeguards," said Patricia Schifferle, a water policy expert who helped a coalition of water and environmental groups enact the 1992 law.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Central Valley Project, has failed to provide all the water promised in the 1992 law, according to an independent science review completed in 2008.

The 1992 act also required the federal government to spend $16 million annually to restore the Trinity River, which is partially diverted in a tunnel through the Coast Range to feed the Sacramento River. It has provided only about half that amount each year, said Mike Orcutt, fisheries program director for the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

Feinstein's bill, he said, would further restrict those payments.

Chris Unkel, western policy director at Ducks Unlimited, said there's more than fish and farming at stake. The Feinstein bill, he said, would encourage rice farmers to idle their fields if water becomes more valuable than rice.

The result would eliminate thousands of acres of rice fields that provide waterfowl habitat. Much of this water also serves wetlands at national wildlife refuges.

"It's eventually going to bleed the area dry," he said. "The unspoken, unseen impact could be pretty severe."#

Lines are drawn over Klamath dam deals

Eureka Times-Standard-2/11/10
By John Driscoll

The Hoopa Valley Tribe's unanimous vote Tuesday not to sign two agreements that look to remove four dams on the Klamath River and restore its fisheries adds to a number of environmental groups' decisions not to back the deals.

In a statement, the tribe said it was unable to resolve its concerns over the Klamath Hydropower Settlement Agreement and the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement during talks with the U.S. Department of the Interior, and so could not support the final deals.

”The settlements undermine tribal water rights, do not assure dam removal, and rely on unfunded and unspecific fishery restoration goals,” Hoopa Tribal Chairman Leonard Masten said. “We cannot stand behind deals that require the subordination of our rights, and that may never result in dam removal.”

The two agreements set a course for dam removal -- expected to begin in 2020 -- and look to improve conditions for salmon in the river while reducing but securing irrigation deliveries to Upper Klamath Basin farms. Portland, Ore.-based Pacificorp owns the dams and had applied for a new 30- to 50-year license to continue operating them when it agreed to consider a settlement.

The agreements are expected to be signed at a ceremony on Feb. 18, though those plans are not final. Members of the 28-party group that helped draft the deals but chose not to support them can change their minds and sign on within 60 days. The agreements also must be backed by federal legislation.

The Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes have all voted to back the agreements, as have a number of commercial and sport fishing groups, environmental organizations, farming representatives, and Humboldt County. The governors of California and Oregon and the Obama administration are supporting the agreements. Environmental groups Friends of the River, the Northcoast Environmental Center, Oregon Waterwatch and Oregon Wild have chosen not to sign the deals.

Friends of the River has claimed the agreements are not likely to stand up, are vulnerable to lawsuits and depend for funding on passage of an $11 billion California water bond for water projects.

”Millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies and liberal liability protection for Pacificorp is simply too much to pay for just the possibility that the dams will be removed,” said Friends Conservation Director Steve Evans. “The settlement partners need to develop an agreement that fairly apportions costs and liability to all partners, including Pacificorp, and that guarantees dam removal by 2020.”

Supporting group American Rivers, an environmental organization with years of experience in dam decommissioning efforts, said the deals may not be perfect, but they are a strong means of reviving the river and improving the economies of the basin's agricultural, fishing and tribal communities. He said the deals represent years of hard work by a variety of interests, and that it is always easy to find fault with a collaborative effort.

”I am sure some of these folks had lots of advice for quarterback Drew Brees during the Super Bowl last Sunday,” said American Rivers California Director Steve Rothert. “We choose not to criticize from the sidelines, but rather to do the hard work building agreement among dozens of formerly warring parties.”#

Watchdog's suit says hatchery fish hurt natives

S.F. Chronicle-2/11/10
By Peter Fimrite

An environmental watchdog group sued the state Wednesday for what representatives called a wholesale failure to protect native species from sickness, death and other harmful effects caused by hatchery-raised fish.

The Center for Biological Diversity accused the Department of Fish and Game of harming native trout, steelhead, salmon, amphibians and other wildlife by planting millions of hatchery fish in streams and waterways.

Studies have shown that hatchery-raised steelhead trout pass on genetic defects that hamper survival of their offspring and harm the natural balance. Nonnative hatchery fish also eat the eggs and babies of native frogs.

"The California Department of Fish and Game has utterly failed to mitigate for the devastating impacts of stocking hatchery fish on native fish and wildlife such as chinook salmon, mountain yellow-legged frogs and long-toed salamanders," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the nonprofit center, which is based in Arizona but has offices in San Francisco.

The lawsuit challenges an environmental report issued in January that analyzed the state's hatcheries and stocking programs and recommended ways to improve operations. The report, which Greenwald said favors stocking programs over maintenance of wild fish populations, was a response to a previous lawsuit filed by the center.

"We stand by our environmental impact report," said Kirsten Macintyre, a Fish and Game spokeswoman. "Unless the court instructs us to do otherwise, we will move forward with the stocking program as it's outlined."

Environmentalists claim nonnative hatchery trout have caused declines in mountain yellow-legged frogs, Cascades frogs and long-toed salamanders in high mountain lakes. Unhealthy hatchery salmon have also contributed to the collapse of salmon runs in California and Oregon over the past two years, according to recent federal studies.#

Judge keeps Delta pumping limits in place

Stockton Record-2/11/10

A federal judge turned down California farmers' emergency request Wednesday to suspend water pumping limits in the Delta, limits that are intended to protect threatened smelt.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger means regulators will follow new federal limits on the amount of water they can draw from the Delta, a delicate ecosystem that serves as the hub of California's water supply.

Wednesday's decision was the latest in what has become almost a daily series of legal skirmishes over the pumps.

Just last week, Wanger granted a similar emergency request, allowing water exporters to crank up the export pumps near Tracy because juvenile salmon - which are protected under similar rules - were not in the area. The federal government began pumping at full capacity Saturday, freeing up some water for farmers who had been crippled by two years of limited deliveries.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said unrestricted pumping risked pushing not salmon, but smelt, into extinction. Eight smelt were found at the pumps Saturday and eight more Monday as pumping sped up, according to federal data.

"(The exporters) essentially received permission to pump like mad. It brought smelt down (into the south Delta) and started to kill them," Stockton environmentalist Bill Jennings said.

Farmers throughout the fertile San Joaquin Valley argue pumping limits have caused millions of dollars in crop losses as the shortages have forced them to fallow their fields and lay off thousands of farm workers.

An attorney for the Westlands Water District, which gets its water from the Delta, said water districts plan to appeal Wanger's decision.

The state and federal government run massive pumps that siphon drinking and irrigation water from the Delta to more than 25 million Californians and the farms that produce half the nation's fruits and vegetables. The decision could cost residents as far south as San Diego about 90,000 acre-feet of water in the next week alone, the State Water Contractors said late Wednesday.

As a result of Wanger's latest ruling, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to shut off one of its five pumps today.

Those restrictions will serve to protect the smelt and salmon, and they could last until June 30.#

Ecologists say unrestricted pumping will harm fish

San Diego Union-Tribune-2/8/10

Environmentalists say a federal judge's order to temporarily allow unrestricted pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta threatens to push endangered salmon into extinction.

Last week's decision by U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger freed up irrigation supplies for farms hammered by years of drought. Farmers had complained that pumping restrictions in place to protect winter-run Chinook salmon worsened their situation.

Some of the country's largest growers pressed for the restrictions to be lifted to nurture their fields and orchards.

But the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice argue that the limits are necessary to help keep West Coast fishermen in business and protect their dwindling catch.

Wanger will hear their motion in his Fresno courtroom Wednesday.#

One man's mission: Eel River cleanup

Eureka Times-Standard-2/8/10
By Cathy Miller

John Casali grew up in a close-knit, Italian working class neighborhood, three blocks from San Francisco's Fishermen's Wharf.

It was the 1950s, a much more innocent time as he remembers it, when at 13, he and his friends started spending their Saturdays and summers playing down at the wharf, fishing out of their hand-built skiff, setting traps for squid and netting rock cod along the sewer pipes. Sometimes they'd get to go out on a sport fishing boat as deckhands. John would bring home ling cod, rock fish and squid to his grandfather, who'd make a wonderful cioppino with it.

John loved life on the water, fog rolling in, the smell of fish, the bay, the squawking gulls, the camaraderie of the fishermen. So much so that at 15 he quit school to work for the large fish markets, unloading boats, icing fish, taking orders. For John, there was never any question: He'd always live near the water.

Always a hard worker, in his late 20s he started buying distressed properties, many of them on riverfront property, fixing them up and selling them for a profit a couple years later. He's lived on the Petaluma River, the Mattole, and the Rogue River in Oregon and has lived in Southern Humboldt for the better part of the last 30 years. But it wasn't until four years ago, when he bought a house on the scenic south fork of the Eel River, that he discovered an “inconvenient truth.” Large amounts of garbage were being left on the riverbanks and creeks.

Within easy walking distance from his home, he was finding every conceivable form of refuse -- from plastic bags, bottles and cans, to hypodermic needles, rags, and human waste.

It didn't take much investigating to determine that homeless camps up the river, and to a lesser extent, residents wanting to avoid the dump fees, were the culprits.

”The amount of waste left behind by homeless people in Humboldt County, especially in Eureka, Arcata and Southern Humboldt, is shocking,” Casali said recently. “I think most people here have no idea.”

With easy access to U.S Highway 101, the fresh water of the rivers, nearby towns for necessities and plenty of forest, homeless people find Humboldt County a good environment to set up camp. Their presence here evokes strong mixed feelings in residents, however, from disgust for what some see as a lifestyle choice marked by laziness and disrespect for the environment and society, to sympathy for human beings down on their luck or suffering from addictions or mental illness.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, two trends are largely responsible for the rise in homelessness over the past 20 to 25 years: a growing shortage of affordable rental housing and a simultaneous increase in poverty.

Approximately 16 percent of the single adult homeless population suffers from some form of severe and persistent mental illness, and the rates of alcohol and drug abuse are disproportionately high.

Casali says he has no easy answers for the complex homeless problem, but he tries to help them by paying them to help clean up the watershed.

Because it's mostly hidden from view, it's easy to forget that garbage is there, unless, as Casali discovered, it washes up on the riverbank next to your home after a rain.

He says that's what spurred him to start what has, 31/2 years later, become a personal crusade to clean up the creeks and riverbanks where most of it is dumped, eventually ending up in the rivers, fouling the water, killing fish and wildlife, destroying the view and, during the hottest months of the year, making it unsafe for drinking or swimming.

So Casali decided to ask for help. He recruited willing homeless people to help him pick up the riverbanks, woods and creeksides in Southern Humboldt.

At first, he didn't keep track. But in the last year and a half, he's kept the receipts from the dump, which account for 175,000 pounds of garbage. He provided the supplies out of his own pocket, which, he admits, starts to add up.

It was NPK, the popular local indie rock band, that started the fundraising ball rolling, by doing a benefit for his Eel River Cleanup Crew (ERC) at the September 2007 Arts Alive in Garberville.

Shortly thereafter, ERC became an official nonprofit and he put up a Web site. Residents started to take notice, and now often stop to give him donations when they see him on the street.

Though he's passionate about keeping our watershed clean, Casali's frustration with this problem knows no end. With his own money and donations from the community, he has crews out cleaning up abandoned homeless camps and illegal dumpsites seven days a week, and he often goes with them.

The four-man crew recently stacked up 125 bags of garbage from four camps on a turn-out between Garberville and where the bluffs begin on Redwood Drive. A handmade sign was propped in front of the pile that read, “THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS BEHAVIOR” and, for good measure, they stuck in a “VOTE FOR CLENDENEN” sign that had been tossed in the bushes, a nod to Casali's frustration with the county “for taking no responsibility at all.”

Casali says he has contacted several different government agencies for help, but no one wants to touch it.

It's the consensus of most of the business community that this is an enforcement problem. One prominent Garberville business person who prefers to remain anonymous said, “When I hear that we should have a resource center for the homeless and hire a coordinator and a field supervisor to help them get on their feet and help them clean up their mess, that makes no sense to me. The county already has assistance services in place. This is an enforcement problem.”

Another business owner agrees. “The Department of Environmental Health, Code Enforcement and the Sheriff need to step up and do their job or deputize people to do it for them.”

Others see it differently. Paul Encimer and Kathy Epling help the homeless out of their used book store in Garberville -- giving donated blankets, food, books and sometimes donated tents to people in need. Encimer talks of putting together a consortium of investors who would buy a building that would work as a hostel, shelter, mental health office and mini-recycling center.

They've accused Casali of taking sleeping bags and blankets from the camps as part of his cleanup efforts. Casali says that the only time he's ever taken a sleeping bag or blanket is when it was in a garbage pile or had been abandoned in a spot for more than a month.

Encimer was recently seen going through a pile of garbage bags at a pickup spot on Redwood Drive from which, by his own admission, he retrieved two blankets and a sleeping bag. Epling washes them and then gives them back to homeless people. Encimer did not repack all the garbage, which the crew found scattered all over the ground and had to repack.

When asked what he's done to address this problem, 2nd District Supervisor Clif Clendenen said, “I called the owner of Eel River Disposal, Harry Hardin, and asked him to waive the dump fees of Casali's ERC.” He said it's hard to find money to pay for a new position at a time when the county is laying off people, but that he's willing to explore different solutions. “I like to look at what other counties have done so we don't have to reinvent the wheel,” he said.

Casali says he appreciates that, but the dump fees are only a small part of the “cost” of this problem. He offers his own services and use of his truck for free, but has to pay people to help him, in addition to paying for safety gloves, garbage bags, grabbers and shovels.

After a short talk Casali gave on Feb. 2 at the

Garberville/Redway Rotary meeting, Rotarian Sid Lehman stood up and declared, “This man is a saint. He's doing a great service for the community.”

Then he related a story about going to a meeting with Casali, Brian Cox, the head of the Department of Environmental Health, and Estelle Fennell when ERC first got started.

Basically, Lehman and Casali said, “This is the county's responsibility. You guys need to do something about this.”

Cox told them to find out whose property it's on and where, and the county would send them an abatement notice. Then, if they don't clean up their property, the county will put a lien on it. Casali told them, “But, 95 percent of it's on county and state park land.”

Cox replied, “Oh, we can't do anything about that.” In an article in the Independent written by Christina Bauss, Cox was quoted as saying, “There's no funding for what he (Casali) is looking to have done. The county only does clean-up on its own property.”

Meanwhile, John Casali doesn't seem to be slowing down much for his 62 years. When asked what keeps him going, he said, “I love the water, oceans, rivers, lakes. I can go down to the river and see egrets, turtles, fish. Otters will yell at me. You'll even see bald eagles sometimes. This is a special place. We need to protect it.”#

Judge eases curbs on delta pumping

L.A. Times-2/6/10
By Bettina Boxall

A federal judge has temporarily lifted pumping curbs designed to protect salmon migration in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an action that allows the diversion of more winter storm flows to farms and cities in the south.

Friday's ruling is the latest in a tortuous legal fight over Endangered Species Act protections that limit pumping from the troubled delta east of San Francisco, a source of water for 23 million Californians and millions of acres of farmland.

The decision was a victory, however brief, for San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts that have tried in the courts and the halls of Congress to loosen pumping restraints that have reduced their water deliveries.

Ironically, the ruling was issued by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, whose earlier decisions forced the federal government to strengthen protections for the delta's collapsing fisheries.

Wanger issued a 14-day restraining order, lifting curbs designed to keep migrating Chinook salmon away from the giant pumps that suck water from the south delta.

He concluded that the additional pumping would not seriously harm the young winter-run salmon moving through the delta to the sea, whereas reduced diversions were significantly hurting agricultural and urban water supplies.

"It is undisputed that every acre-foot of pumping that is foregone during this time of year is an acre-foot that does not reach the San Luis Reservoir where it can be stored for future delivery to users during times of peak demand later in the water year," Wanger wrote.

But his decision sent mixed signals about the ultimate outcome of the case. He found that plaintiffs "have not yet established a likelihood of success" on their claims against the Endangered Species Act.

Instead, Wanger ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had not performed the necessary analysis of the pumping permit and its restrictions under another federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act.

"This is not a decision on the soundness of the [permit], the analysis included in it or the actions required by it," said Chris Yates, a NOAA Fisheries Service assistant regional administrator. "We continue to stand by those conclusions very strongly."

Maria Rea, director of the NOAA Fisheries Central Valley office, said the increased pumping would probably result in more salmon losses.

The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority and Westlands Water District, the nation's biggest irrigation district, sought the injunction, along with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

"I think it has much broader implications," said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis authority, which represents Central Valley irrigators. "I would hope the federal government would take a couple steps back and take another look" at the salmon permit as well as another designed to protect the delta smelt, which is nearing extinction.

Most of last year's cuts in water deliveries were a result of the state drought, not the pumping curbs, according to government water managers.

But that has not stopped agriculture and Central Valley politicians from attacking the Endangered Species Act protections as the cause of economic hardship.

Commercial salmon fishermen, who have endured two closed seasons because of collapsing stocks, have shot back that without them, their entire way of life will disappear.#

Yurok Tribal Council votes to sign dam removal pacts

Crescent City Triplicate-2/3/10
By Nick Grube

The Yurok Tribal Council voted late last week to approve signing two agreements that will remove four PacifiCorp-owned dams on the Klamath River and bring a basin-wide approach to ecological restoration.

An official signing by all the various parties involved in the negotiations to dismantle dams, including American Indian tribes, fishermen, farmers, irrigators and government agencies, is expected later this month.

“We’re ready to go to the signing,” Yurok Tribe policy analyst Troy Fletcher said Tuesday. “We just need to figure out where that’s going to be and when. And, of course, the real work will start after the signing.”

It took several years to come to the terms to take out the four dams on the Klamath River. There’s still a lot of work left to be done, including ensuring all the funding for the project is available, completing several environmental impact analyses and passing key legislation, before the 2020 target date for a free flowing river.

Many groups have already supported signing the agreements to take out the dams, including the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, Karuk Tribe, and Klamath Tribe of Oregon.

The Del Norte County Board of Supervisors has not made a decision on whether to sign the agreements, with members saying last week that they needed more information on the local impacts.#

Water groups fight salmon plan in court

Fresno Bee-2/2/10
By John Ellis

A coalition of water districts and agencies asked a federal judge in Fresno on Tuesday to set aside a controversial salmon management plan because it reduces water deliveries to urban and agricultural users.

U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger is weighing a decision after hearing four hours of testimony. He promised a ruling by Tuesday, the date of another hearing dealing with the salmon management plan.

Among those seeking the order were the Westlands Water District, which takes in a large portion of the west side of the central San Joaquin Valley. Also among the plaintiffs were the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people.

All depend on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for water. The temporary ruling, if granted, would be in place while a more permanent measure is sought. The water agencies want the salmon management plan rewritten to allow more water to be pumped.

Federal officials had to rewrite the plan after Wanger in 2008 found an earlier set of rules did not adequately protect the endangered fish species. The rules cover salmon varieties that are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

On Tuesday, attorneys for the water agencies argued that water cutbacks when salmon are in the vicinity of the delta pumps are causing irreparable harm to water users. They also said the salmon now near the pumps are fall-run salmon -- which are not endangered -- and not the protected winter run.

"We submit there is no harm currently to the winter run [salmon], because there is no winter run," said attorney Keith Adair, who represents Westlands and San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority.

Urban and agriculture users that depend on delta water say they are losing 6,000 acre-feet of water per day because of the new salmon rules. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough water for a family of four for a year.

But federal government attorneys and their environmental allies defended the new salmon rules. U.S. Department of Justice attorney Bridget Kennedy McNeil accused the water users of "trying to eliminate protections."

McNeil also countered Adair, saying "the winter-run [salmon] are on the move and more of them can be expected in February."

Tuesday's hearing was also slated to include the delta smelt, but Wanger delayed action because the species is not currently causing water cutbacks.#

Judge hears arguments in case over California salmon

Oakland Tribune-2/2/10

A federal judge is weighing whether to relax pumping limits that are in place to protect salmon as they migrate through California's freshwater estuary.

Water districts representing some of the country's largest farms are asking for a temporary restraining order that would suspend through mid-June protections designed to safeguard the winter run of Chinook salmon as they breed and swim out to the Pacific Ocean.

Water districts are seeking the order so they can boost irrigation supplies for the state's farmers.

The persistent drought has caused major pain for farms and fisheries alike. Even with the recent storms, pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is restricted under the federal government's salmon protection plan.

U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said he would make a decision by Tuesday of next week.#

Water agencies head to court to ask for relief from Delta protection

Contra Costa Times-2/1/10
By Mike Taugher

The state's biggest water players are asking a judge today to ease new Delta pumping limits that are allowing the recent storm waters to escape out to sea instead of being stored inland for use this summer.

"Under the federal rules, the more it rains, the more water we lose," said Thomas Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, the nation's largest irrigation district.

Predictably, the hearing in Fresno today will pit water users against environmentalists, but it will also see the state and federal governments on different sides, with state lawyers supporting water users and federal lawyers on the side of environmentalists.

That puts state water officials in an unusual situation because last year they used the federal permits to win dismissal of a lawsuit over violations of the state's endangered species law.

Now, they are in another court trying to undermine the permits they used to clear themselves of legal problems in state court.

"We're very concerned about a potential train wreck that the state is trying to create, given its legal strategy," said Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. It is one of the environmental groups that has been suing to strengthen endangered species protection.

A spokesman for the Department of Water Resources said they agency would remain in compliance with the state law.

"DWR will continue to work with the state Department of Fish and Game to make sure we are in compliance," said water department spokesman Don Strickland.

In court papers, water agencies say they have lost tens of thousands of acre-feet of water over the past two weeks because of limits on Delta pumping in the permit issued last summer that is meant to prevent two salmon runs and other fish from extinction.

San Joaquin Valley farmers and other water users could see their water problems worsen when additional protections in a separate permit to protect Delta smelt kick in.

But after 2½ years of wrangling over federal endangered species law and the permits that enforce the law, a separate issue of the state's compliance with the state's endangered species law has lingered in the background.

If the federal permit standards are loosened, will the state once again be out of compliance with state law?

In 2007, an Alameda County judge ordered the state-owned pumps turned off because the Department of Water Resources lacked a permit required under the state's endangered species law.

The order was stayed while scrutiny of water delivery effects on the Delta environment shifted to federal courts and agencies.

There, the federal permits were struck down and U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno ordered new permits written. The new ones are more protective of the environment but they also come at a higher cost to water agencies.

State wildlife officials, for the first time, found the new federal permits were sufficient under the state's endangered species law, which in some ways is tougher than its federal counterpart.

That finding, made last summer, put the state's water operations into compliance with the state law.

Now the water agencies want to change the federal rules, which might allow them to take more water than the state's endangered species law would allow.#

State water officials checking for contamination from Antlers Bridge project

Redding Record Searchlight-2/1/10
By Dylan Darling

State water officials are examining whether heavy rain and snow caused excessive lake contamination last month at a massive freeway bridge project north of Redding.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board is investigating two incidents where murky runoff water poured from the Antlers Bridge construction site at Lakehead into Lake Shasta last month, said George Day, senior water resource control engineer at the water board's Redding office.

"We haven't made the determination of whether it is a violation or not," he said.

The determination should be made within a couple of weeks, he said. If the water board finds the California Department of Transportation in violation of its storm-water permit, it could be fined as much as $10,000 for each day that the muddy water flowed into the lake.

Bridge work at Antlers started in November and construction crews had hoped to take advantage of low lake levels to drive in piles and build a large platform before beginning on the bridge itself, said Eric Akana, Caltrans project manager. But the rush of water brought by recent storms shifted workers' efforts from bridge building to erosion control, he said.

"We try to cover up any exposed dirt," Akana said.

Even though workers draped large plastic tarps over dirt piles and other exposed earth, muddy water washed from the site into the lake.

As much as 4 inches of rain a day poured down near the construction site and the lake rose more than 42 feet last month - causing construction crews to retreat up the shoreline.

But Akana said the murky runoff wasn't excessive.

"The lake was just as brown as anywhere else," he said.

Akana said he spends four days a week at the work site and regularly keeps in touch with the water board. He said Caltrans hasn't done any sampling of the water to gauge how cloudy it is.

"Under these conditions the whole lake is brown," Akana said, "so where do you test?"

In investigating the muddy water, Day said the water board isn't looking at the water quality itself, but what Caltrans did to handle the storm.

"It's a matter of what kind of effort they put forward before and after the rain event," he said.

The $125 million project is set to replace Antlers Bridge with a new 104-foot-wide, 1,942-foot-long, concrete bridge with five lanes by fall 2014, Akana said. The project's lead contractor with Caltrans is Tutor-Saliba Corp. of Sylmar, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Robert Tutor, president and CEO of the company, did not respond to e-mails sent by the Record Searchlight on Friday. Tutor's assistant, who answered his phone Friday, said that was the best way to reach him.

Although the recent runoff clouded the lake around the construction site, it didn't hurt fishing, said Gary Miralles, a fishing guide with 20 years of experience on the lake.

When a big storm hits, he said most creeks, rivers and lakes around the north state become soupy brown with dirt churned up by the runoff.

"It's a natural thing," he said.#

Rewriting the Coho Story

KQED Radio-1/29/10
By Dan Brekke

A short history of California salmon: Glorious past. Grim present. Dark future. Now, the story I just got done working on for QUEST Radio [1] is about the crisis of coho salmon along our coast. But that short synopsis applies as well to coho in other parts of the state and to their larger and perhaps better-known cousins, the chinook.

Wherever you look in California, salmon are in serious trouble if they have not already disappeared. It's evident that their biggest problem is having to live alongside us. Our needs and our ability to exert our will on the world around us–to dam rivers and streams, to clear forests, to replace entire ecosystems with new ones of our own making–has wrought havoc on many species.

The collapse of salmon populations is just one example. Some of the people working to preserve and restore coho along our coasts feel that history–both the natural history of the salmon and their role in human history–can be a powerful teacher and could help save the wild fish from extinction. [5]An egg being squeezed from the vent of a female coho salmon at the Warm Springs Hatchery.

Biologists at the facility examine the eggs as part of the process of determining when the females are ready to spawn. Credit: Brandon Beach/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Biologist Rory Taylor checks on a tray of coho salmon recently hatched at the Warms Springs facility. The coho here are called "alevin"–the salmon's earliest life stage. They'll be reared in the hatchery, then planted in tributaries of the Russian River. Credit: Brandon Beach/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Charlotte Ambrose, the National Marine Fisheries Service biologist in charge of coordinating an upcoming recovery plan for coho along our coast, says she has this intertwined history uppermost in her mind. In fact, the draft of the 4-inch-thick recovery plan she's been working on starts with a chapter on the coho's history.

Ambrose calls it "a renegade move" to open the document that way, but she says she feels it's crucial to understand the past vitality of coho on the California coast.

She's fond of quoting a 1930s account of a coho run on Northern California's Garcia River: "The water was like glass … the salmon were in rows … they lay there still … every now and then one would wiggle its tail to keep his place in line. They lay there by the thousands as far as my eye could see." That's the glorious past of the coho.

But Ambrose points out that even in that lost age, coho showed a remarkable ability to handle adversity. Drought, flood, or fire might devastate a watershed and wipe out a run. But far from being "hot-house flowers," in Ambrose's phrase, coho are survivors by nature. They're prolific breeders–a single female will lay 2,000 eggs or more in its streambed nest. If they find their natal streams unreachable, they'll wander to new spawning grounds.

Ambrose thinks an understanding of the coho's history–its ever-present drive to perpetuate itself, and its past abundance–are key elements to getting people to act to save the fish. And she says small steps to improve the odds of salmon survival can be as important as sweeping ones. "It’s like a small pebble in a pond.

One small action can make a tremendous difference in increasing the probability of survival of the young, of the adults, of the eggs, of the out-migrating smolts." If we want to rewrite the next chapter of the coho's story, she suggests, get to know your watershed, and go out and volunteer to help repair it.#

More groups join Klamath agreement

Eureka Times-Standard-1/30/10
By Donna Tam

The Karuk Tribe and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations have joined the ranks of those formally supporting the Klamath River dam removal agreements.

Both the Karuk Tribal Council and the PCFFA's board voted on Thursday to sign the agreements that would begin the implementation of the largest dam removal effort in U.S. history. The plans call for tearing out the Klamath River's four main dams and improving conditions for fish and farms in the watershed.

”It has been a long time coming,” Karuk Tribal Chairman Arch Super said in a press release. “We believe these agreements are the key to restoring our river, our fisheries, and our culture. We greatly appreciate the efforts of neighboring tribes, PacifiCorp, conservation groups, federal and state agencies and the agricultural community. It took us all a long time to learn that in order to fix our collective problems, we have to work together.”

PCFFA President David Bitts said the association has been supporting the agreements throughout their development and has found many of its initial concerns addressed through the final agreements.

While there is still more planning ahead and funding to be found, he said participating groups need to move forward.

”It's time for the parties that have been negotiating this agreement to sign it and bring it to the public,” Bitts said.

Over the last several days, other parties in the negotiating process also agreed to sign, including the Klamath Tribes of Oregon, the Yurok Tribe, Humboldt County, the Klamath Irrigation District and the Klamath Drainage District. Participating groups expect that a formal signing ceremony will be held next month.

Organizations have until Feb. 9 to indicate whether they will participate. So far, only the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Northcoast Environmental Center have asked to be taken off the list.

The deals were negotiated for more than three years by representatives from California and Oregon, four area tribes, commercial and sport fishing interests, farming communities and environmental organizations.

They call for the removal of Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle dams, owned by PacifiCorp; for restoration of salmon and other fisheries; for more water for fish; and for more certain water deliveries to irrigators in the upper basin.

The dams would be removed beginning in 2020, provided a U.S. Interior Department review by 2012 finds the project to be in the public interest.#

Save your runoff -- create a rain garden

Sacramento Bee-1/30/10
By Debbie Arrington

When you plant a rain garden, the harvest isn't so obvious. But it's everywhere.

By creating berms and swales in your yard, you can imitate how nature itself captures rain. Instead of letting rainwater run off to the street, rain gardens encourage it to soak into the ground under your regular garden, building a reserve to help trees and bushes thrive.

After a three-year drought, this age-old concept is catching on again. Right now, while the rainy season is at its peak, is a good time to get started.

And soon, Sacramento County homeowners may be able to tap into rain garden rebates, too.

"A rain garden is a way to utilize the rainwater without it actually going to waste down the storm drain," says Rob Lenney of Rain Harvesting Systems in Rocklin.

It doesn't have to look like a round pond or a gravel pit, he says: "In creative ways, a landscaped garden can have channels dug in the dirt, meandering throughout the garden, where the rainwater can go where needed, as directed by the homeowner or landscape designer," Lenney says.

While looking for ways to help customers save water, engineers at Sacramento County's Water Resources Agency became intrigued by rain gardens.

"We've been studying this since 2005," says Summer Christensen, one of the agency's experts. "We thought it would be a great idea for Sacramento. It's something homeowners could do without much money."

The agency created a demonstration rain garden at the new Sacramento County Animal Care Facility on Bradshaw Road. The first county building to be LEED-certified for environmental responsibility, the state-of-the-art, $23 million complex features recycled building materials and drought- tolerant plants.

Situated near the main entrance, the 200-square-foot rain garden blends into the shelter's landscaping. Water that falls on the roof is redirected to the garden, which is a few inches lower than the surrounding sidewalk.

"We just used normal downspouts," says Christensen, explaining the collection system. "The water runs off the roof to a pipe that goes under the sidewalk to the garden. Rocks disguise the inlet and outlet. A homeowner could do this, too, or you could let the water run over land (to the garden)."

During recent deluges, the shelter's rain garden worked as designed, filtering thousands of gallons of water into the soil instead of to the street.

"It's a better way to manage runoff, and that's awesome," says Lisa Park of the county water agency. "You're not only keeping your water on your property, but (also) preventing the runoff of pesticides into our rivers. That's a big deal."

One study pegged rain gardens as a way to cut 30 percent of the pollution that reaches rivers. Besides filtering out pesticides and other landscape chemicals, rain gardens sift out contaminants such as oil and sediment from roof runoff.

Other examples are beginning to crop up locally. Soil Born Farms has a new rain garden at its California native plant nursery near the American River. And several residents have added swales to otherwise flat lawns.

"Front yards are great for this," Christensen says. "Your lot already is graded for water to run toward the street. Instead of letting it run off, the rain garden will hold it. Putting a rain garden right before the water hits the street is ideal."

Adds Park, "You don't have to take out your entire lawn. You can dedicate just a portion of the space. It can blend into your other landscaping and look nice."

How big should a rain garden be? The basic formula is to size the garden to be equal to 17 percent of the roof's square footage. For example, a 170-square-foot rain garden could harvest most of the rainfall from a 1,000-square-foot roof.

"They're designed to capture a half-inch of rain that falls on the total area of your roof," Christensen says. "During the rainy season, that could be thousands of gallons of water."

Seattle, Kansas City, Mo., Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas, have launched rain garden programs, encouraging residents to harvest what falls from the sky.

"They're very popular in Michigan and Wisconsin," Christensen says. "But they're still very new out here."

Says Park: "People don't realize how much water they use outdoors. So much of it just runs off into the street. This is something easy you can do to manage your runoff."

That runoff adds up quickly. After an inch of rain, a 30-foot-wide paved street will drain about 83,500 gallons of runoff per mile.

Rain garden costs depend on design. Landscapers familiar with rain gardens estimate their installation at $10 to $20 per square foot. That includes plants as well as soil amendments and a top layer such as mulch or decomposed granite.

Good drainage is essential; this isn't a pond. Water should soak down within 24 to 48 hours.

"You don't want to create a mosquito problem," Christensen says.

At the animal shelter, a mix of two parts sand to one part compost and one part topsoil was added to the heavy clay soil. Workers dug these amendments down 1 foot. Redwood bark mulch covers the surface.

For very heavy soils, an underground layer of sand or gravel can speed saturation. Small berms hold water in while it trickles down.

But the simplest rain garden doesn't need much: an extension of the downspout and a shovel.

That extension can be tubing or a trench. The idea is to guide the water away from the home's foundation to a shallow depression, about 6 to 8 inches down, where the water can seep into the soil.

Rain gardens can be overplanted with conventional lawn, but the contours can be difficult to mow. Many ornamental or native grasses work well in rain gardens, but the list of potential plants is actually quite long.

"You need something that can take both wet and dry," Christensen explains. "When it rains, these plants will be standing in water for a little while, but during the summer months, they'll be dry."

Master Gardeners from the UC Cooperative Extension put together many suggestions for the animal shelter garden.

"It looks gorgeous in the spring," Park says. "There's so much color: pink, purple, blue, yellow."

The shelter's plants include several that attract butterflies and bees, such as irises, lilacs, Jupiter's beard, monkeyflower and showy milkweed. among the ornamental grasses are Eulalia grass, Chinese silver grass, tufted hair grass and tussock grass.

"Instead of big plants, you could use a packet of wildflower seeds," Christensen suggests. "The price difference is huge. It doesn't have to be expensive."

Suggested plant lists and other guidelines are available online in an electronic how-to manual developed by the water agency as part of the River Friendly Landscaping Coalition. Go to www. riverfriendly.org, then click on the "Rain Gardens" link.

Sacramento County is working on a new rain garden rebate program. Under the proposal, homeowners could recoup up to half the cost of installing their rain garden.

"We hope to have this program ready very soon," Christensen says. "With all the rain, there's definitely been interest. The sooner the better."#

'Snow pillows' let public monitor snowpack online

Fresno Bee-1/31/10
By Mark Grossi

As five blizzards pounded California's high country this month, people around the state tracked the swiftly growing snowpack without leaving their offices or homes.

A remarkably accurate network of sensors fed estimates to state officials, who posted them on a Web page the public can easily use to track the snowpack, California's biggest source of water.

"You could see the snowpack increasing by 10 percent each day last week," said Fresno meteorologist Steve Johnson, a private consultant.

The sensors — called "snow pillows" — do not provide official snowpack numbers. For that, surveying crews trek into the mountains to measure the snowpack by hand, poking long pipes into the snowpack to determine depth and water content.

Those surveys form the backbone of summer water delivery forecasts, the first of which will be made in mid-February.

But the network of 140 snow pillows gives farmers and water managers a good snapshot of the Sierra snowpack, usually differing from the survey results by only a few percentage points. On Thursday, the sensors showed it is 117 percent of average for this time of year compared with 68 percent last year.

"Snow pillows are invaluable for people in the water business," said Frank Gehrke, the state's snow survey chief.

The online access provided by the state Department of Water Resources has made the network's information popular over the past decade, but the technology dates back to the 1970s, Gehrke said.

The network has slowly been assembled by various agencies and businesses, including the DWR, National Park Service and Pacific Gas & Electric. State officials say there's an average of two snow pillows added each year to the network throughout the Sierra.

The sensors are 8-by-10-foot stainless steel filled with antifreeze. Think of a waterbed. The sensors register the weight of the snow and transmit the information to a satellite, which relays the information to a ground station for processing.

The weight of the snowpack tells scientists how much water it contains. One inch of water content in snow weighs 440 pounds on the sensor. Data from some snow pillows show more than 20 inches of water in the snowpack after the storms last week.

"Snow creates a phenomenal amount of weight because of the water," Gehrke said. "Earlier versions of the snow pillows sometimes developed leaks from the weight. They have been improved significantly."

Snow pillows can be fallible, he said, especially early in the snow season. Strong wind can scour snow off the pillow, resulting in a lower weight.

Sometimes, an icy crust will form above the snowpack when the sun melts the top layer and later freezes. The crust supports the weight of additional snowfall and prevents the sensor from registering the added snow.

Later in the season, when the snowpack melts, the crust collapses and a more accurate reading can be made.

"We've learned a lot," Gehrke said. "For instance, we don't put a snow pillow at the bottom of a sloping surface. The snow will tend to move downhill onto the snow pillow and register more weight than it should."#

Tapping into anger

Sacramento Bee-1/31/10
By Matt Jenkins

On Sept. 17, the famously hypertensive Fox News commentator Sean Hannity rolled into the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, satellite truck in tow. Months earlier, the federal government had announced that it was slashing water deliveries to local farmers, after it became clear that a 2-year-old drought would grind on for another year.

Central Valley farms are muscular emblems of American-style production agriculture, growing everything from tomatoes for Heinz ketchup to organic spinach for Amy's-brand pizzas and vegetable pot pies. The farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley are confederated as the Westlands Water District, the largest irrigation district in the United States, which has a reputation for bare-knuckle combativeness.

But Westlands has fared badly in the face of both the drought and water-pumping restrictions to protect a threatened fish called the Delta smelt. Last year, farmers in the Westlands district received only 10 percent of the water they hold federal contracts for, forcing them to leave roughly 156,000 acres – about a quarter of the district – unplanted.

Hannity and many others quickly blamed the crisis on the Endangered Species Act. His retinue set up camp on a fallowed field, clipped microphones to the area's congressional delegation and began beaming the farmers' plight to the world. As a boom cam floated over the sign-toting, flag-waving throng, Hannity said, "The government has put the interests of a 2-inch minnow before all of the great people that you see out here tonight." He brandished a blown-up photo of a smelt and said: "This is what this comes down to: No water for farmers, because of this fish."

The crowd gave a hearty boo, and the cameras turned to the darling of the hour: Rep. Devin Nunes, the hot-headed 37-year-old Republican who represents the neighboring congressional district. "The liberals and the radical environmental groups have been working on this for decades: They've been trying to turn this into a desert," Nunes fumed, warning viewers: "This could happen to you."

Nunes had, in fact, been hard at work in Washington, D.C., introducing a series of amendments that would force the federal government to ignore the Endangered Species Act when it determines how much water to deliver to farmers. When his efforts failed, Westlands turned to Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina. Five days after Hannity's broadcast, DeMint introduced a similar amendment in the Senate. And that's when the needle skipped off the record.

California's warhorse Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has been a longtime champion of Westlands, but she has also tried to negotiate common ground in the state's complicated water politics. Back home, the California Legislature – after years of ignoring the problem – was working feverishly to hammer out a sweeping package of bills to relieve the crisis in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The DeMint amendment would fail, but when Feinstein learned of it, she denounced it as "a kind of Pearl Harbor on everything that we're trying to do."

At a press conference not long after, Feinstein approached Tom Birmingham, who runs Westlands, and pulled him aside. Feinstein managed a tight smile, and then shook her fist at Birmingham, who has contributed to her campaigns. "Tom, I'm angry," she said. "I'm so angry that I want to punch you."

Chastened, Birmingham later made a rare admission that Westlands had gone too far. "We just made a terrible, terrible mistake," he said in early November. "We made a mistake, and we need to acknowledge that."

For decades, Westlands farmers relied on groundwater to irrigate the 615,000 acres where tomatoes and almonds are the two most widely grown crops. Farmers raise everything from alfalfa to garbanzos to pomegranates – more than a billion dollars worth of crops in a normal year. But in the 1950s, with water levels plummeting, Westlands lobbied to be included in the federal government's massive Central Valley Project.

The effort succeeded, and with that, the district's star was hitched to the fate of the Delta. Two enormous batteries of pumps on the edge of the Delta feed the Central Valley Project and its sister, the State Water Project. Together the projects supply water to more than 1.2 million acres of farmland in Westlands and other water districts, and to more than 25 million people, primarily in Los Angeles and San Diego.

It's a complex water system, but the Delta's ecosystem is even more complicated – and fragile. It is a critical link to the annual spawning runs of California salmon and is home to more than 120 species of fish, including the Delta smelt. And, by the late 1980s, it was already becoming clear that the Delta was being pushed too hard.

The first signs of trouble appeared in 1989, when the winter run of Sacramento River chinook salmon fell so low that the federal government added the fish to the endangered species list. Then, in 1993, the Delta smelt was classified as threatened.

For a time, the state and federal governments attempted to confront the problem. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, passed in 1992, and the Bay Delta Accords, signed in 1994, both aimed to balance the water demands of farms and cities with protection for the Delta's fisheries. Yet the Delta fisheries only got worse: By 2004, smelt populations had fallen to record lows. And pumping had actually intensified over the same period.

By 2005, water exports from the Delta had reached a record high. "We have been steadily ramping up diversions from that system, year after year, for a long time," says Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We haven't yet seen extinctions, but we're on the razor's edge."

Today, the main check against extinction for the smelt is the pumping restrictions required by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinion. Because the pumps dramatically reshape the hydrology of the Delta, the biological opinion limits pumping during certain periods of the year to protect smelt and other species during key stages in their life cycles. An earlier version of the opinion was far less restrictive; in 2007, federal District Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that more protective measures be put in place.

Those pumping limitations effectively restrict the amount of water that can go south to Westlands and other water users. With the onset of the current drought in 2007, and Wanger's ruling, water exports plummeted. But the fish – and the communities that depend on them – haven't fared any better. Last year, salmon runs collapsed so badly that federal regulators shut down the state's commercial salmon fishery for the second year in a row, throwing fishermen from San Francisco to the North Coast out of work.

What has been lost in much of the coverage of the water crisis is the fact that the drought, not fish-protection restrictions, is the main factor behind the water cutbacks. Lester Snow, California's top water regulator, and David Hayes, the deputy secretary of the U.S. Interior Department, have pointedly noted that fish-related pumping restrictions accounted for only a quarter of the reduced exports from the Delta last year. An independent report by the Public Policy Institute of California puts the number as low as 15 percent.

The gigantic water package that state legislators hammered out in November may breathe new life into the ideal of balancing water extraction and environmental protection. The package requires the state to establish flows through the Delta to the ocean, a critical element for protecting fish populations. It also requires the creation of an oversight council and legal backstops intended to prevent an outright run on the Delta for more water.

More controversially, however, the package lays the groundwork for some version of a peripheral canal, which would allow water users to directly tap the Sacramento River. A canal might help untangle the snarl of competing demands: It would essentially separate the water in the Delta, shunting the water allocated to farmers and cities straight to the pumps and allowing environmental flows to be used to mimic the Delta's more natural, variable self.

But the proposal has divided environmental groups. "(The) notion that the best way to restore the Bay-Delta is to separate the fish from the water (is) as biologically unsound as it sounds," says Jonas Minton, the water policy adviser for the Planning and Conservation League. "This is an attempt by large agribusinesses and Southern California developers to take even more water."

Other environmental groups have endorsed the package. Doug Obegi, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, says that the realities of the collapsing Delta have led his group to support the plan. But, he adds, "how it's operated – whether it's good for the environment – really does make or break the project."

The price tag might break it first. All told, the projects in the water package could ring in at more than $40 billion. This November, with a $21 billion budget deficit already hanging over their heads, voters will be asked to approve the publicly financed portion of the plan, an $11 billion bond. Even if voters approve the package, relief could still be far off for Westlands: The canal wouldn't carry any water until 2018 at the earliest.

"How are we going to survive between now and the time that these long-term solutions can be implemented?" says Birmingham, Westlands' boss. "If we have to live with the existing biological opinions until 2018, there are a lot of farmers in Westlands Water District that simply will not survive."

Westlands has a defiant air of invincibility; its leaders have never blinked in the face of trouble. And Birmingham is the man charged with defending the district's interests. Birmingham tends not to mince words, and few people are as critical as he is of the effort to save the Delta. "The pumping restrictions have done absolutely no good for the fish," he says. "We've dedicated millions of acre-feet of water per year to protect those species, and they're still declining."

Westlands is in a genuinely vulnerable position. Before 1993, the Delta pumps could run throughout the year. Then the smelt was listed, and the window during which the projects could pump water grew smaller and smaller. Overall Delta pumping increased between 1990 and 2005, mainly because the pumps worked overtime when the window did open.

But Westlands, owing to the peculiarities of a complicated system of water priorities, has watched its share of the water become much less reliable. Westlands' water contracts are "junior" to cities and older irrigation districts in the Valley, which get first dibs on water allotments in a drought. And, because the pumping window is now open mainly in the second half of each year, the district no longer can take advantage of any extra water available in the Delta at wetter times of the year, like winter.

The quest to reopen the pumping window lies at the heart of Westlands' survival strategy. "What we want to do," says Birmingham, "is restore the ability of those pumps to operate at capacity year-round."

In search of relief, the district turned to Rep. Nunes and Sen. DeMint for Endangered Species Act waivers last year. Last March, Westlands – through a broader group of local irrigation districts – also sued the federal government to overturn the biological opinion on the Delta smelt.

Yet, even as Westlands aggressively challenges the biological opinions, it has been participating in a quiet series of negotiations to create a Bay-Delta Conservation Plan. That plan will likely form the heart of the Delta-management framework mandated by the new legislative water package.

Ann Hayden, a senior water resource analyst with the Environmental Defense Fund, says, "We've made some progress with the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, but we have a lot of work left to address the needs of these species that are on the tipping point of extinction."

Westlands and other water users still have not committed to any specific environmental goals in the plan. "We have to tackle the tough issues, and soon," Hayden says, adding that Westlands' support for the DeMint amendment has "led us to question how we stay at the table in good faith, when they're doing this end run around the Endangered Species Act."

The state's environmental groups are also watching to see what happens as Congress returns this month. Feinstein has been working on several fronts to help Westlands and other water users. And Birmingham says that Westlands has not ruled out asking Congress for help in getting a waiver from the Endangered Species Act.

"We will pursue every potential remedy," he says. "Not," he is careful to add, "without the express consent of Sen. Dianne Feinstein."

In recent years, Westlands has become one of the most water-efficient irrigation districts in the state. But in any year with a less-than-full supply of water from the Central Valley Project, the district runs a deficit that it must cover by buying water in the open market or by pumping groundwater.

As the entire state grapples with drier times, agencies like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and San Diego, are looking to irrigation districts like Westlands as potential sources for water transfers. Birmingham and many Westlands landowners are adamant that the district won't sell its water to outsiders. "It hasn't happened," he says, "and it isn't going to happen."

Still, the prospect of selling water does quietly figure into the farmers' calculus. "It's gotten a lot of talk," says Dan Errotabere, a Westlands farmer and board member. "We've been squeezed so hard that now people are giving up water supply to survive. If you're a financial steward of whatever operation you've got, you have to consider whether it's better to park the ground and sell the water next year."

John Diener is the nephew of one of Westland's founding fathers. Although he seems happiest dispensing folk wisdom from behind the wheel of his GMC pickup, he is known as one of the most progressive farmers in Westlands.

In November, Diener wheeled his GMC through his fields, checking on a crop of spinach. He had fallowed about 750 acres, and when I asked what happens next, Diener laughed: "We pray a lot!"

He thought some more. "We would like to see some biological opinions reviewed. And, God willing, it rains."#

Matt Jenkins is a contributing editor at High Country News (www.hcn.org), a biweekly newspaper that covers the West. A longer version of this article appeared in High Country News.

Wine grape watering clashes with salmon protection

S.F. Chronicle-1/29/10
By Jason Dearen (Associated Press)

In this cool, fertile wine growing county in Northern California, grape growers are stomping mad at a new plan to limit the amount of water vineyards can pump from local rivers and streams to protect their crops from frost — a draft regulation meant to safeguard coho salmon, a species on the brink of extinction here.

Sonoma County, next to the more famous Napa Valley, has a fast-growing wine industry — vineyard acreage has increased 30 to 40 percent over the past decade and the county estimates the businesses generate about $2 billion annually.

But now that growth has run up against federal protections for coho salmon, an endangered species that once filled the streams and rivers along California's central and northern coasts and now has crashed to nearly nothing.

In the spring, when hibernating vines start coming to life, temperatures can drop below freezing overnight, destroying the young grapes. During these frigid nights, growers spray river water onto the vines, encasing them in a protective frozen shell that shields them from the harsh weather.

Farmers say one bad night, when temperatures drop five to 10 degrees below freezing quickly, could wipe out huge percentages of their crop.

"It could, it very well could. Down here in the bottom, if we don't have the water, it's not going to get it done," said vinyard manager Paul Foppiano, standing in a low-lying field of pinot noir vines near the Russian River. Sprinkers hovered over the gnarled vines in a part of his family's 140 acres, which have been producing wine in Sonoma County since 1896.

"The problem with frost is one year you might have to run 15 to 20 nights like we did a couple of years ago," he said. "Last year we only ran three or four nights so you're not using a whole lot (of water)."

Foppiano is not against the state managing the use of river water to help protect fish, but believes accurate accounting of water use by other county growers is needed before any regulatory decisions are made.

"If the state is willing to work with us, we're willing to work with anybody," he said "But there's got to be some answer to it other than to completely cut us off. It's going to be a problem."

At issue is the continued existence of the hook-mouthed coho salmon and the threatened steelhead trout that spawn in these coastal streams and rivers — a habitat that stretches from Alaska to central California. While coho still thrive in Alaska, their once plentiful stocks in California and Oregon are under threat, federal fisheries managers say.

Under the state's proposed regulation, any pumping would be illegal unless approved by the State Water Board's management program. The new rule could be in effect by 2011.

State water regulators say using river water for frost protection is legal, but are seeking a middle ground that will protect fish and grapes while ensuring some oversight.

"The goal is not to shut (pumping) down, but to make sure it's done in a responsible manner with an eye to making sure the resources are protected," said Vicky Whitney, deputy director for the State Water Board.

With vineyards spreading quickly in the area, it was only a matter of time before the burgeoning industry ran into a water issue.

In 2008 and 2009, both drought years, pumping by vineyards resulted in the deaths of hundreds of coho and steelhead as creek levels dropped, stranding the fish. The kills were well documented in local media, spurring outrage from environmentalists and concern from federal fisheries managers.

State water officials and federal regulators said it is likely that many more fish were killed in undocumented incidents, underscoring the need for quick action.

Growers have challenged that assertion, saying the problems that resulted in the 2008 incidents that stranded and killed hundreds of coho and steelhead have been addressed.

"I question the validity of their assertions of there being several incidents," said Lex McCorvey, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, an advocate for the county's wine industry. "(Regulators) have a responsibility to step forward with that information; that way the problems can get fixed. In 2008, there were two incidents, both have been fixed so they won't happen again."

Federal studies show that pumping during cold snaps, especially in recent dry years when river levels are low, has dramatic effects on the river and its tributaries. A study presented by NMFS found that pumping for frost protection in 2004 and 2005 resulted in a 97 percent reduction in surface flow of one of the Russian River's key tributaries, Maacama Creek, and the water diversion's effects were seen throughout the watershed.

In April, after documented fish kills, federal fishery biologists at NMFS urged the State Water Board to take control of the vineyard pumping.

The water board gave the growers six months in 2009 to come up with their own management plan, but after seeing it, decided to draft their own regulations.

"The agriculture industry is not necessarily wanting to self regulate; we want to self-monitor and educate growers so they're using either no water out of the Russian River or (conservation techniques)," said McCorvey.

Meanwhile, there remains no regulation in place this year governing pumping from the Russian River, which concerns federal scientists and environmental groups.

"It is problematic for us to not have regulatory coverage, because we view the threat of frost protection activities as widespread and significant," said David Hines, a federal fishery biologist and water rights specialist for NMFS.

Grape growers say a whole year's crop could be wiped out if temperatures drop below freezing and they're unable to spray. Environmentalists say the regulations might be too little too late for the area's coho.

"The state board started looking at frost pumping issues in 1997. They've had over a decade to evaluate this issue," said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that filed an intent to sue in an effort to spur action.

"We can't have more fish kills, that can't happen," Miller said. "If there are further fish kills this spring, we'll probably go to court."#

Lawsuits battle clear-cutting in Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges

L.A. Times-1/27/10
By Margot Roosevelt

Will clear-cutting forests increase global warming? That's a contentious issue as California, which is seeking to slash its carbon footprint, wrestles over rules to manage the state's private forests.

Today, the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group, filed lawsuits against the California Department of Forestry in seven California counties to halt logging plans for 5,000 acres across the Sierra Nevada and Cascade regions. The group contends that the agency approved the projects without properly analyzing carbon emissions and climate consequences under the California Environmental Quality Act.

"Clear-cutting is an abysmal practice that should have been banned long ago due to its impacts on wildlife and water quality," said Brian Nowicki, CBD's California climate policy director. "Now, in an era when all land-management decisions need to be fully carbon-conscious, there is no excuse to continue to allow clear-cutting."

Sierra Pacific Industries, the timber company that is proposing the logging, responded that its harvesting would result "in a net sequestration rate of carbon dioxide that far exceeds any emissions that might occur." California requires that clear-cut areas be replanted, so that while logging results in emissions of some of the carbon stored in those trees, replanted areas would eventually compensate.

"This out-of-state organization...won't be happy until they have taken away every forest-related job in California," said Mark Pawlicki, director of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability for Sierra Pacific. "The plaintiffs do not understand forestry and they do not understand carbon sequestration." Dave Bischel, president of the California Forestry Assn., an industry trade group, said that the logging plans "provide significant data on the carbon sequestration benefits" adding that 40% of the state's sawmills have closed since January 2000, boosting rural unemployment.

Forests act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and storing in the trunks and leaves of trees and shrubs and in the soil. Forestry experts say that the state's 14 million acres of private timberland could be managed to sequester twice as much carbon as they do now. But the technicalities of how to accomplish that are a matter of bitter dispute between environmental groups, state agencies and the timber industry.

California is poised to adopt a cap-and-trade plan this year that would allow timber companies to calculate the extra carbon they obtain through changing their management practices, and then sell carbon credits or "offsets" to polluting industries, such as utilities and refineries, which are required to cut their carbon dioxide output. Several environmental groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, worked with industry to fashion the rules adopted by the California Air Resources Board to govern forest offsets. But the environmental community is split, and CBD is demanding that the board rescind the rules for failing to account for their environmental impact.

Today's lawsuits were filed in superior courts in Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Modoc, Shasta, Tehama and Trinity counties. "By continuing to rubber-stamp Sierra Pacific Industries' clear-cutting plans, the Department of Forestry is chopping a gigantic hole in the credibility of California's climate policy," Nowicki said. He added that, last August, Sierra Pacific withdrew plans to log more than 1600 acres following CBD lawsuits over the greenhouse gas effect. Several dozen new Sierra Pacific plans are pending.#

Target stops selling farm-raised salmon nationwide

L.A. Times-1/27/10
By Andrea Chang

Target Corp. said Tuesday that it had eliminated all farmed salmon from its fresh, frozen and smoked seafood sections at stores nationwide.

This decision includes national brands and Target's own Archer Farms and Market Pantry labels. All salmon sold under Target-owned brands will now be wild-caught Alaskan salmon; the company also said sushi made with farm-raised salmon would be made with wild-caught salmon by the end of the year.

The discount giant said it wanted to ensure that its salmon was "sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn't harm local habitats."

The Minneapolis company said salmon farms could hurt the environment through pollution, chemicals and parasites.

Julie Packard, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which worked with the retailer on changing its salmon offerings, said stocking seafood from "ocean-friendly sources" would help improve fishing and fish-farming practices around the world.

"Target's decision to source sustainable wild-caught salmon, instead of farmed, will have a real impact in the marketplace -- and ultimately, on the health of our oceans," she said.

Target operates 1,744 stores in 49 states.#

Save the salmon -- and us

L.A. Times-1/24/10
By Carl Safina
Opinion

Recently, a photograph made its way to me on the Internet: In a surging Alaskan stream, a grizzly bear stands with a salmon in its jaws, and in the shallows, a wolf -- keeping its distance -- also hoists a thrashing salmon. Your eye goes to the bear, then the wolf. But the salmon convened the meeting. Without the salmon, you'd see only water.

When salmon return from the sea, their bodies are the ocean made flesh. Their tails propel ocean nutrients upstream and into forests, rivers and range lands, where they benefit hundreds of other species. Everything else in the photograph -- trees, bushes, all the animals and plants in the forest and the water -- contains ocean nutrients from salmon.

And now add orcas to the web of life fed by salmon. New research tells us that, before salmon hit the flowing streams, they are by far the most important food for resident killer whales along the Pacific Coast.

These killer whales, like wild salmon, are endangered. Of course the problems are connected: The fewer salmon, the fewer orcas.

Hope flared in early 2009, when the Obama administration's blueprint for Sacramento River salmon affirmed this salmon-orca connection and promised to put policies in place that would result in more wild salmon. It seemed like a strong first step in protecting West Coast salmon stocks.

But then two months ago, in a swift trick no one saw coming, the Obama administration embraced the Bush administration's failed salmon plan for an even more important watershed, the Columbia/Snake River system. The Columbia and its tributaries formerly produced more salmon than anywhere else on Earth, but the once-mighty rivers now have 13 salmon stocks in danger of extinction.

Federal scientists say this decline of Columbia/Snake salmon is the largest single change to the resident killer whale's food supplies. Yet the administration's Columbia plan seems to ignore that connection. While the Sacramento plan stated clearly that increasing wild salmon stocks is important -- for the whales and for people alike -- the Columbia plan contends that hatchery salmon will be enough to compensate for further losses.

The Obama plan adopts the Bush plan's legal and scientific analysis unchanged and in its entirety. It makes a few small tweaks elsewhere, but does not require anything that would actually save fish. The most "major" change calls for additional actions to be studied -- though not necessarily enacted -- if listed species continue to decline precipitously.

The fundamental problem with the plan is that its goal seems to be to maintain endangered salmon in an endangered state rather than revitalizing them. The administration appears unmotivated to restore salmon abundance and their role in the ecology and economy. Here's what gives the administration's game away: The one salmon species that is already at levels low enough to trigger additional action in the new plan has been exempted from the new triggers.

Jane Lubchenco, the administration's point person for oceans and salmon, insists that "the actions in the plan will prevent further declines." But keeping salmon in a coma and on life support does not heal them, nor help the other species, including people, that depend on them. The likeliest outcome of a salmon strategy based on just avoiding extinction will be extinction -- and not only of salmon.

A wiser strategy would focus on restoring salmon's workhorse role for people and ecosystems. In the Columbia Basin, it would include removing four federal dams on the Snake River, which would open 3,000 miles of healthy streams above the present dams for three salmon species and double the spawning habitat for a fourth.

The Obama administration missed its first chance to hit the "reset" button on Pacific Northwest salmon strategy. But it's not too late to reconsider. It should embrace salmon abundance as the beating heart of the Pacific Northwest -- the flow of energy that connects and sustains people, fishing towns, bears, wolves, orcas, forests and the rivers and seas we all love and use.

There's another photograph I saw recently. Taken just two months ago where Puget Sound meets the Pacific, it shows a new orca calf emerging from the water atop its mother's back. The scientists from the Center for Whale Research who track orcas named her Star, hoping she will guide another seemingly intelligent mammal -- us -- to restore the salmon abundance she will need to become a mother herself 13 years from now. May she inspire the Obama administration to think again. #

Carl Safina's books include "Song for the Blue Ocean," "Eye of the Albatross" and "Voyage of the Turtle." His awards include the John Burroughs Medal and a MacArthur Prize.

California budget crisis could tie up thousands of public works projects

San Jose Mercury News-1/20/10
By Denis C. Theriault

Public works projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars could be in jeopardy starting this summer — and possibly for years to come — because of California's continuing budget crisis, state financial officials warn.

Wednesday, the Treasurer's Office renewed its concerns that a long political squabble over the state's $20 billion deficit could keep California from selling enough bonds in time to pay for ongoing projects. Without a budget in place by July, officials say, the state will have little hope of enticing investors to purchase its debt.

And beyond that immediate problem may loom an even larger one: Even if the state does make it to the market this spring, skittish investors may be less than eager to buy what the state is selling. Already, California doesn't have enough bond revenue to pay for all the projects voters have approved.

That worry — coupled with rising discontent over the state's growing debt burden — could push lawmakers and department heads into making tough choices about which projects to endorse and which to shelve.

In such a scenario, new for a state that for decades enjoyed a wide-open checkbook, road projects would compete against university buildings, for instance, and elementary schools would compete against children's hospitals.

"California has never faced this problem before," said Jason Dickerson of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

Wednesday's warning came from Steve Coony, Treasurer Bill Lockyer's deputy, as he addressed the governing board of the state's pension system operator in Napa.

Coony said 100,000 jobs could be at risk, according to Bloomberg News, and that there is only about $2 billion left from debt sales last year to keep bond-funded projects running.

Voters have authorized billions of dollars in infrastructure bonds in recent years, most notably a $42 billion measure passed in 2006 to fix flood levees, roads and schools. After a bond measure clears the ballot, the state treasurer woos Wall Street and other big investors to buy the bonds, with the debt repaid through future tax revenue.

"We need the Legislature and the governor to enact a solution to this fiscal year's budget problem that has credibility in the market," said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Lockyer's office. "A protracted budget stalemate will threaten thousands of existing projects."

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state's Finance Department, confirmed that urgency Wednesday.

He said Finance officials, who assemble the state's annual list of bond projects and submits them to the Legislature, are still working with Lockyer's office on an estimate of how much bond money to expect.

The state's most recent foray into the bond market, a $4.4 billion sales pitch last fall, fell short of expectations by hundreds of millions of dollars, officials said. Millions earmarked last year for affordable housing and land acquisition, for example, never materialized, according to one legislative source.

And with California's credit rating still the nation's worst, there's a very real chance bond sales will continue to underwhelm.

"We've got to marry up our list of infrastructure priorities with the treasurer's office's professional judgment of the volume of bonds they can sell," Palmer said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already proposed at least $2 billion in new bond spending in his 2010-11 budget proposal — cash that could potentially be on shaky ground. Money for policy initiatives such as last year's historic water compromise, also relies in part on bond money.

During an Assembly Budget Committee hearing last week, Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Mountain View, also worried that much of what the governor has proposed might not materialize.

He has joined a chorus of leaders, including Lockyer and Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, in urging the Legislature to take a more realistic, longer-term approach to planning that would lay out clear priorities for how bond money should be spent.

Part of that process, they say, should include comparing the economic benefit of bond spending — say, in generating new construction jobs — against the state's looming debt burden. Servicing the state's debts costs the cash-strapped general fund hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

"When you're thinking about selling a bond," Ruskin said in an interview last week, "you know it's going to increase the pressure on services like health and human services" — which have taken big cuts in previous budgets and are slated for more this year.

Some budget experts suggest that lawmakers themselves should take a more active role in vetting bond appropriations — a politically difficult proposition.

"Most of them are job creation projects," said Dickerson, of the legislative analyst's office. "And they all have a constituency."#

Federal Agencies' "Double Standard" on Fish Science Compels Call for Relief from Endangered Species Act

dBusinessNews-1/20/10

The public agency responsible for supplying water to more than a million acres of the Central Valley as well as 1.8 million people in the Bay Area today called on California's senior Senator Diane Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed immediately with legislation to lift some of the constraints on California's water system that have been imposed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The action comes amidst growing concerns that those constraints will prevent California from capturing and storing the water that is currently pouring into the state from an extended system of storms. Instead of being used to relieve the severe economic and environmental losses that have been caused by the combined effects of drought and federal environmental restrictions, that water will be allowed to waste into the ocean.

"We can no longer rely on the federal government to apply the law fairly and to respect the science that should be guiding their decisions," said Dan Nelson, Executive Director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority. "Instead they are applying a double standard to the science and 25 million Californians are paying the price for that inequity."

As an example of the double standard, Nelson pointed to the Department of the Interior's sudden withdrawal of support from the Two Gates Project. For more than a year, Two Gates has been touted as a means of relieving some of the water shortages caused by federal restrictions on pumping water through the Delta that are intended to benefit a tiny minnow called the delta smelt.

"They dropped Two Gates because they said the science was unclear on whether turbidity affected the movement of smelt in the delta," Nelson pointed out. "But their restrictions on pumping are based on exactly the same assumptions about turbidity. In other words, the science isn't good enough to provide relief, but it's perfectly adequate as a basis for making things worse."

The impact of those restrictions has contributed to catastrophic losses for California but without producing any beneficial effects on smelt population. According to the University of California, the federal restrictions on pumping water through the delta have cost California more than 21,000 jobs and more than a billion dollars in economic losses. But recent surveys show that smelt population has continued to decline.

"The effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act depends upon the quality of the science and the objectivity of the scientists who are charged with its implementation," said Nelson. "Serious questions about the inadequacy of the science underlying these restrictions have been multiplying for nearly two years. The federal agencies responsible for those restrictions have been ducking the questions and the court has already determined that they violated the National Environmental Policy Act when they imposed these rules without adequate review."

In 2009, water users that depend on the federal Central Valley Project received only 10 percent of the water they contracted to receive, the lowest allocation in the history of the project. Without the federal restrictions on pumping, the allocation would have been 30 percent. For the coming year, the Department of Water Resources has already announced a 5 percent allocation for State Water Project contractors, the lowest in the history of that project. Under the existing restrictions, the state allocation may rise to 40 percent if the drought is resolved, but without them, the allocation would reach 70 percent.

"Neither farmers nor communities on the westside of the San Joaquin Valley can survive another year of 0 - 10% allocations," wrote Nelson in his letter to Senator Feinstein and Speaker Pelosi. "Additional acreage will have to be fallowed, more permanent crops will be damaged or destroyed, more people will lose their farms or farm jobs, and more human suffering will be experienced in small rural communities. Therefore, we implore you to introduce as quickly as possible legislation that would provide for much needed flexibility."

The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority is a joint powers authority composed of 32 member agencies that contract with the Bureau of Reclamation for the receipt of water from the Central Valley Project. These member agencies provide water for irrigation, wildlife refuges and municipal and industrial use in approximately 1,100,000 acres of the western San Joaquin Valley, San Benito County, and Santa Clara County. In addition, the Authority serves the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which is responsible for providing water to 1.8 million people and to the vital high-tech computer industry known as Silicon Valley.#

Storms boost California snowpack nearly back to normal

Sacramento Bee-1/21/10
By Matt Weiser

A week of powerful El Niño storms has boosted California's snowpack nearly back to normal for this time of year, with several feet of additional snow expected today.

That's great news for a thirsty state battling a three-year drought. But it doesn't mean dry times are over.

"I don't think we're ready to put that last nail in the coffin yet, " said Dave Rizzardo, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources. "But signs like this are reason to celebrate."

As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, the water content of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range snowpack was 96 percent of normal for the date, compared with 77 percent just a week ago.

The total is likely to climb above normal, as 1 to 4 feet of additional snow is expected across the mountains by Friday morning.

Rizzardo said some of the heaviest snow has fallen in the state's northern mountains.

That is fortuitous, because those areas drain into large reservoirs that serve California's major water diversion systems, including Shasta, Oroville and Folsom.

But it will take more than one week of storms to bust the drought, Rizzardo said, because not all that snowfall will turn into stored water. Some will soak into the ground, some will evaporate and some must be released from reservoirs for flood control or environmental purposes.

He said it likely would take a winter 20 percent above normal to call the drought over.#

State proposes new limits on vineyards using Russian River water

State water regulators have proposed new rules that would limit the use of Russian River water for frost protection, igniting fears among grape growers in Sonoma and Mendocino counties.

“This would have a very significant impact if something like this were to be approved,” Mendocino County Farm Bureau Executive Director Devon Jones said of the proposal, which was drafted by state Water Resources Control Board staffers.

An environmental leader, meanwhile, called the proposal “a mixed bag” in terms of its protection for endangered salmon and steelhead.

Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, credited the water board staff for “at least thinking about some good things in terms of regulations.” But he remained skeptical, fearing the proposal might rely too much on the voluntary cooperation of farmers.

Federal officials and environmental groups have called for the state Water Resources Control Board to set regulations to ensure adequate water in the river and its tributaries for fish during frost season.

On freezing nights in spring, many growers spray water over their vineyards to protect the vines from damage. The irrigation water freezes and encapsulates the green buds in ice, keeping the plant tissue safe at a constant 32-degree temperature.

But federal officials said frost protection in 2008 and 2009 stranded and killed both coho salmon and steelhead. The strandings occurred on Felta Creek, a tributary of Dry Creek, and on the Russian River near Hopland.

The Endangered Species Act prohibits human activity that results in the death of protected fish. The National Marines Fisheries Service opened an investigation in 2008 and has yet to announce the results of the inquiry.

On Tuesday the water board will hold its third workshop on the issue in the past year. In preparation, staff members last week released their proposed rules.

Essentially the rules require farmers to show that any water diversions or well pumping for frost protection won’t harm fish.

One way to do that is to become part of an approved “water demand management program.” Another is to convince the state board that the diversions will have “a negligible effect” on flows in the river or its tributaries.

Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Wine Grape Commission, said growers are concerned the new rules may set them up for failure.

“How do you prove you’re not having an effect?” Frey asked.

Both growers and environmentalists noted that under the regulations, the pumping of some groundwater could be illegal if it is determined to be “subterranean flow,” meaning it is hydraulically connected to the river or a stream.

Growers wondered if that was setting some new precedent. But water board spokesman William Rukeyser the state has long regulated sub-surface water that can affect stream flow in a waterway.

The frost protection issue may focus new attention on those water users who don’t hold approved rights to divert from the river or its tributaries.

Growers have complained that it can take many years to obtain such rights from the state water board. Environmentalists have called on the state to shut down illegal diversions.

How many such diversions exist is a matter of debate. Rukeyser said the state has counted about 800 ponds or reservoirs in the watershed for which no permits or written authorization apparently exists. Many may turn out to be exempt from regulation, he said, and it is unknown whether any are tied to vineyards.

No action will be taken at Tuesday’s meeting, Rukeyser said. The board must provide a comment period of 45 days for any proposed action. And once the board acts, the new rules must be reviewed and approved by the state Office of Administrative Law. As such, it remains uncertain whether the new rules will take effect during the coming frost season, which begins in March.#

Cool reception for salmon enhancement plan on Yuba River

Marysville Appeal-Democrat-1/13/10
By Ben van der Meer

Representatives from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Department of Water Resources told a fish story Wednesday evening. Yuba River landowners weren't exactly biting.

The proposal by the two agencies to spend $20 million to enhance habitat for spring-run Chinook salmon on the Lower Yuba River got a mixed response at a Marysville meeting. Comments on the proposal are being taken until Feb. 18.

"A lot of what you're going to hear is conceptual in nature," said Paul Kubicek, a fisheries biologist with PG&E, at the hearing's outset. "There's a lot of detail that needs to be worked out."

Under the proposal, DWR and the utility company would add gravel to create spawning beds on Deer Creek and an area below the creek on the Yuba, and reconnect side channels in nine areas along the river to provide habitat for juvenile rearing.

A segregation weir to split spring-run and fall-run salmon could also be part of the plan, depending on studies of its potential effectiveness.

The goal would be to expand habitat enough to spur an additional 2,000 to 3,000 new salmon in the Yuba's spring run, though Kubicek and other speakers acknowledged their focus was only on the habitat and not on any salmon numbers. To do such work, the two agencies need landowner approval to access the river.

But while those landowners didn't disagree salmon runs on the Yuba — particularly the spring run — have been in marked decline, they questioned whether the proposed habitat expansion would be worthwhile.

"The problem is not that there's not enough spawning ground, it's that there's not enough fish," said Joe Wurm, 47, who lives on the river in the Hallwood area. He later said, "It's all for show. If they took the same $20 million and spent it on a hatchery, they'd get thousands more fish."

Speakers from DWR and PG&E, though, said a hatchery wouldn't produce the same kind of self-sustaining populations that habitat expansion would, and would dilute the salmon's gene pool.

The two agencies must submit a habitat restoration plan for approval to the National Marine Fisheries Service as part of getting relicensed for Feather River hydroelectric power plants by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Yuba River plans will vie with similar plans for three Butte County creeks. A decision on which plan to submit won't be made until May, officials said.

Restoring habitat was an alternative to an unwieldy and costly "trap and haul" program to take salmon from the Feather River below the Oroville Dam and put them back in the water above it.#

Project to place fish-saving gates in delta stalls

Oakland Tribune-1/14/10

A plan to place two removable gates in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to keep threatened fish from getting killed by water pumps has been put off—indefinitely.

San Joaquin Valley farmers favored the "Two Gates" proposal as a temporary solution to the water crisis hitting the state and slowing deliveries from the freshwater estuary.

Years of drought, coupled with environmental restrictions on pumping, have forced farmers to idle thousands of acres and contributed to the collapse of the commercial salmon fishing industry.

Department of Interior officials say the project had to be put off so experts could review the science underpinning the project, which was aimed at protecting a native fish called the delta smelt.#

Redding could be fined for sewage spill caused by crane collapse

Redding Record Searchlight-1/13/10
By Scott Mobley

Redding could face up to $30,000 in fines for Monday's sewage spill into the Sacramento River during a construction crane failure, a top water quality official said Tuesday.

Two investigations have been launched into the crane accident, and the sewage spill is being reviewed.

The city may escape fines if the state decides the spill was purely accidental rather than caused by negligence, said Ken Landau, assistant executive officer for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Sacramento.

"We don't issue fines if it truly appears to have been an accident," Landau said. "This spill is still under review."

Officials think the hook and pulley on the end of the falling crane arm swung into the sewer pipe anchored beneath the Cypress Avenue Bridge deck, puncturing it and causing the spill.

The leak allowed an estimated 1,300 to 1,800 gallons of raw sewage into the river over roughly four hours and 20 minutes before crews patched the pipe.

Redding could be fined $10 for every spilled gallon of sewage, plus $10,000 for each day the spill occurred, Landau said.

State water officials are awaiting results of bacteria counts the city conducted Tuesday in the river south of the bridge.

No one was injured and no cars or trucks were damaged when the long arm of a 90-ton Manitowoc 222 crane suddenly dropped onto the bridge deck just before 1:45 p.m. Monday.

City officials have said they think a hoist cable in the crane's arm, or boom, snapped. Kiewit Pacific Co., a major construction firm that owns the crane, has not commented.

Cal-OSHA opened a crane safety investigation after the Monday accident, said Erika Monterroza, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Industrial Relations.

The agency's Crane Certifier Accreditation Unit certifies crane safety inspections and researches the cause of crane accidents throughout the state.

Cal-OSHA documented 158 accidents up and down California from January 1997 through December 1999. Of those, 73 percent involved mobile cranes like the one that failed Monday, according to the report.

Kiewit has opened its own investigation into what caused the machine to fail, said Jon McClain, a structural engineer for the city and project manager for the $72 million Cypress bridge widening and replacement.

"The investigation has started, but there hasn't been any timetable established for reaching a conclusion," McClain said. "My guess is that the team reviewing the accident won't release any information until they're through."

The crane's base sat on the southern bridge deck, which Kiewit is using as a construction staging area for building the middle span.

After the crane arm fell, its twisted wreckage was draped over the two-lane gap between the northern and southern decks of the bridge. Kiewit crews are working mainly in that gap, building the piers anchoring that middle span.

Only a foot or 2 of the 265-foot-long boom jutted across the concrete barriers onto the bridge's northern deck, where eastbound traffic flows.

Monday's accident will likely halt bridge construction work for several days, McClain said. But Kiewit should still finish construction by its December deadline, he said.#

Muir Beach work on flood plain aids endangered fish

Marin Independent Journal-1/10/10
By Mark Prado

More than two dozen volunteers turned out Saturday morning to work on a Muir Beach flood plain, a place where young endangered and threatened fish will be able to catch a breather, increasing their chances of survival.

The North Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited, based in San Rafael, organized the volunteer effort, which saw native blackberry, hedge nettle and mugwort planted in the flood plain near the parking lot at Muir Beach.

"This flood plain will allow the little fish to get out of the main channel when Redwood Creek floods," said Bob Flasher, who is working on the project for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. "They can get behind the logs we put here, or plants, and get out of the current. If they stay in the current and wash out to the ocean they are eaten and that's it."

The Big Lagoon and surrounding flood plain was once an integral part of the ecosystem at Muir Beach. Fed by waters of Redwood Creek, it allowed spawning fish a place to stop, rest and get fat before making their trip out to open sea.

But in the 1950s, the 12-acre freshwater lagoon - which had another 13 acres of surrounding wetlands - started to disappear, choked to death by fill and levees put in by ranchers so the area could be used for cattle grazing.

Sediment from development and the parking lot at Muir Beach further damaged the lagoon and wetlands, turning the latter into dry meadows. The areas now have been contoured and volunteers are getting them back to their original state.

"By putting the plants and woody debris here, there is habitat where fish can mature before going out to sea," said event organizer John Lucas of the North Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Lucas stood in the middle of the muddy flood plain, surrounded by busy volunteers - including students - who kneeled close to the land to put in plants.

"When this floods, the fish will be able to use it," he said.

The work is part of a Golden Gate National Recreation Area multi-year restoration project that also includes moving the parking lot to restore the natural flow of the creek.

It's hoped the efforts will help endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. The construction of several nearby ponds will also provide habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog.

The coho salmon, in particular, is in dire need of more habitat with federal officials concerned about the potential extinction of the species as counts continue to diminish.

Also Saturday, the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network, Girl Scouts and community volunteers teamed up to restore critical riparian habitat along Lagunitas Creek in West Marin to help the coho salmon.

Volunteer efforts are critical, said Novato resident George Starn, president of Trout Unlimited, as he surveyed the work at Muir Beach.

"This is about our sixth time out here," he said. "We do a lot of volunteering. It's important because the fish are important."#

As Rainier's glaciers recede, debris chokes rivers

The fallout from Mount Rainier's shrinking glaciers is beginning to roll downhill, and nowhere is the impact more striking than on the volcano's west side.

"This is it in spades," said Park Service geologist Paul Kennard, scrambling up a 10-foot-tall mass of dirt and boulders bulldozed back just enough to clear the road.

As receding glaciers expose crumbly slopes, vast amounts of gravel and sediment are being sluiced into the rivers that flow from the Northwest's tallest peak. Much of the material sweeps down in rain-driven slurries called debris flows.

"The rivers are filling up with stuff," Kennard said from his vantage point atop the pile. He pointed out ancient stands of fir and cedar now up to their knees in water.

Inside park boundaries, rivers choked with gravel are threatening to spill across roads, bump up against the bottom of bridges and flood the historic complex at Longmire.

Downstream, communities in King and Pierce counties are casting a wary eye at the volcano in their backyard. There are already signs that riverbeds near Auburn and Puyallup are rising. As glaciers continue to pull back, the result could be increased flood danger across the Puget Sound lowlands for decades.

"There is significant evidence that things are changing dramatically at Mount Rainier," said Tim Abbe, of the environmental consulting firm ENTRIX. "We need to start planning for it now," added Abbe, who helps analyze Mount Rainier's river systems.

Similar dynamics are playing out at all the region's major glaciated peaks, from Mount Jefferson to Mount Baker, said research hydrologist Gordon Grant, of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Ore.

Climate experts blame global warming, triggered by emissions from industries and cars, for much of the ongoing retreat of glaciers worldwide.

North Cascades National Park has lost half of its ice area in the past century. Mount Rainier's glaciers have shrunk by more than a quarter. "Every year it's been either bad or really bad," Kennard said. "This year it was really, really bad."

Glaciers buttress immense moraines and stabilize steep slopes. As they pull back, the vulnerable terrain is exposed to weather and tugged by gravity. All recent debris flows on Mount Rainier have occurred in recently deglaciated areas, Grant said.

"The whole mountain is covered with unstable debris, it's steep - and then you put a lot of water on it," he said.

Most debris flows are triggered by heavy rain. Climate scientists disagree on whether the entire Northwest is being hit by significantly stronger storms than in the past, but there's no doubt that's the case at Mount Rainier, Kennard said.

Precipitation records show more intense rainfall. According to stream-flow data, what was once a 100-year flood on the Nisqually River now occurs every 14 years. In 2006, a November storm dumped 18 inches of rain on the park in 36 hours, sweeping away a campground and closing the park for more than six months.

"Even without climate change, you've got to say: 'Whoa, something is going on here,' " Abbe said.

Debris flows can carry boulders the size of buses and sweep staggering amounts of gravel and sediment into rivers. The bed of the Nisqually River below its namesake glacier has risen by 38 feet since 1910, largely as a result of debris flows from the margins of the rapidly retreating ice, Kennard said.

The park visitor center at Longmire, with its stone buildings and National Park Inn, now sits more than 30 feet below the Nisqually River. The park constructed concrete-reinforced berms to keep the water at bay.

Every river bed in the park is rising, or aggrading, because of the influx of gravel, Kennard said. The rate of buildup has increased nearly tenfold over the past decade.

The result is a constant and costly battle to keep popular recreation areas throughout the park open. It's a battle that's being lost in many places, like the Westside and Carbon River roads, which are partially closed.

Like conveyor belts, the rivers move the gravel downstream toward more heavily populated areas. A surprise flood that hit the city of Pacific in January 2009 can at least partly be blamed on volume reduction in the White River caused by accumulation of sediment, U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Chris Magirl said.

Magirl, who has examined aggradation rates and historical records for downstream river stretches, sees similar buildup in several locations. But channels appear to be deepening in other places, including portions of the Puyallup and Cowlitz rivers. That type of variation is expected in such a complex system, Magirl said. But the long-term outlook for the rivers is not good.

"The potential for glacial retreat to add new sediment is historically unprecedented," he said. "Clearly, water and rock are going to flow downhill."

Glacial retreat may be aggravating the flow of sediment, but the basic process is as old as the volcano itself. Past eruptions have unleashed mud flows that smothered surrounding valleys and reached all the way to Puget Sound.

From the 1930s through the 1980s, Pierce County dredged gravel from the Puyallup River system almost every year to reduce the risk of floods, said Lorin Reinelt, program manager for the county's flood-management plan.

Most dredging ended by the early 1990s, as concern for fish habitat took precedence. Officials also realized that digging out gravel provides only a brief fix, at best, Reinelt said. "In many cases it just fills back up during the next event."

Communities now are trying to figure out what rising levels of gravel and sediment from Mount Rainier will mean for future flood risks - and what they can do about it.

Short of relocating Longmire, dredging is the only obvious way to keep the river from swallowing the park complex, Kennard said. Downstream, Reinelt said, a more effective approach might be to move levees back to give the rivers more room to spill their banks, meander and deposit gravel without impacting homes or businesses.

"This is a pretty significant issue," he said. "It seems like we're on a trajectory that's not likely to reverse any time soon."#

First phase of Tehama-Colusa fish passage project funded

Funds have been awarded to begin construction of the $220 million Fish Passage Improvement Project at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $21,455,605 contract to West Bay Builders Inc., of Navato, to construct a bridge, siphon and water conveyance channel to connect the headworks of the Tehama-Colusa and Corning canals to the fish screen and pumping plant.

“This is a significant milestone,” said Ken LaGrande, chairman of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority board of directors. “This is certainly a giant step forward for the project.”

The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority and the Bureau of Reclamation are the lead agencies for the fish passage project.

A second contract for fabrication of the pumps and motors is expected to be awarded this month. A request for construction bids for the fish screen and pumping plant have been issued.

Completion of the fish passage project is expected by spring 2012, under an accelerated schedule, in an effort to meet court-mandated completion requirements, and to meet the needs for agriculture water supply in the 18-member Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, which serves Tehama, Glenn, Colusa and Yolo counties.

Within those district members, the canal authority manages irrigation for 150,000 acres with a direct annual economic benefit of $250 million and an overall regional economic benefit of $1 billion, said Jeffrey P. Sutton, general manager of Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority.

The Fish Passage Improvement Project was established to protect the canal authority’s ability to deliver irrigation water to farmers and at the same time protect fish passage. Included in the project is construction of a positive barrier fish screen and a pumping plant, according to the canal authority.

When the fish passage project is completed the Red Bluff Diversion Dam gates will no longer be operational.

Implementation of the project didn’t come without a fight from Red Bluff, which lost a lawsuit against the project in 2008.

According to Red Bluff authorities, the project will effectively replace the Red Bluff Diversion Dam and cause economic hardships on the city in the amount of $4 million annually by eliminating Red Bluff Lake, which hosts a number of water-related sports events.

Funds for the project comes under the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – also referred to as the stimulus package – designed to spur economic activity.

Red Bluff Fish passage on track

The pumping plant that will replace the Red Bluff Diversion Dam gates is on track to be completed by its target date of May 2012.

In a presentation to the City Council Tuesday, representatives from the Bureau of Reclamation laid out what has been completed and what still needs to be done on the Fish Passage Improvement Project.

All project designs have been completed and construction will occur in three phases, Bureau of Reclamation representative Lauren Carly said.

The first phase is building a bridge and siphon on the right side of the project site. On Tuesday the bureau announced the contract for this phase was awarded to a Novato-based construction company.

The second contract award for supplying pumps and motors is expected to be announced in a few days.

This second phase will include fabrication of the pumps and motors.

Bids for the third contract will be solicited at the end of the month with the award contract anticipated in May.

Construction of the fish screen and pumping plant will be the last phase of the project.

The pumping plant will replace the dam gates that will be permanently raised in two years as ordered by a federal judge.

Completion of the project will ensure that farmers who need water get it while migrating fish can pass unimpeded.

The pumps are being designed to supply up to 2,500 cubic feet per second of water from the river to canals operated by the

Tehama- Colusa Canal Authority and Corning Canal.

The project will cost an estimated $230 million. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act covers $109.8 million. Other funding includes federal water-related grants in the amount of $114.7 and a state bond of 5.5 million.

Most of the money will be spent on labor contracts and supplies, Carly said.

The project is under the direction of the canal authority and the bureau.

The city is not involved in the project, but revenue can be created from out-of-town workers staying here and the project could create job opportunities for locals.

A number of smaller contracts for various projects that need to be completed at the site will be available soon. Carly encourages local businesses to apply for these contracts.#

First contract awarded for fish project at Red Bluff Diversion Dam

Construction on the first phase of the $230 million Fish Passage Improvement Project at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam should begin "shortly," a U.S Bureau of Reclamation official said Wednesday.

Brian Person, superintendent of the bureau's Northern California area office in Shasta Lake, said representatives from his agency will meet at the site with the recently named contractor for the first phase within the next few days.

On Tuesday, the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority - the bureau's partner in the project - announced that the first of three contracts had been awarded. The $21.5 million contract was awarded to West Bay Builders Inc. of Novato, canal authority General Manager Jeff Sutton said in a news release.

Initial work includes building a bridge, a siphon and water-conveyance channel to connect the headworks of the canals to a fish screen and a pumping plant. A second contract award, for making the pumps and motors, is expected early this month.

Solicitation for bids on the third contract - for the fish screen and pumping plant - is expected in late January.

Person gave the Red Bluff City Council a project update Tuesday night.

"Their goal is to have the whole plant operating by May 2012," City Manager Martin Nichols said.

The city challenged the project in court because it means the end of Lake Red Bluff - formed each year by lowering the gates of the diversion dam - which it claims is a recreational asset worth $4 million annually. The suit was settled in April.

The pumping plant and fish screen are being paid for with $109.8 million in federal stimulus funds, $114.7 million in other federal money, plus $5.5 million in state bond funds.

By diverting water from the Sacramento River into the canal system, the project is designed to continue water deliveries to 150,000 acres of cropland while improving passage to spawning habitat for endangered salmon and green sturgeon.#

Analysis under way for 2010 salmon season

State biologists will be crunching numbers and counting fish over the next several weeks in a process that will determine the quality of the West Coast salmon season this year.

Early reports that poor adult salmon runs in the Sacramento River system foretell a bleak season have begun to circulate, but biologists are cautioning that it's far too early to tell.

It will be early February before biologists have a clear perspective on the potential for commercial and sport salmon seasons in 2010 -- particularly important after two years that devastated the California salmon fishing industry.

In 2008 and 2009, commercial salmon fishing was shut down on much of the West Coast because of dire predictions for salmon runs in the Sacramento River watershed, the key fishery for the region. In 2009, big estimates for returns to the Klamath River allowed a token 10-day ocean sport fishery in the Eureka and Crescent City areas.

Eureka commercial fisherman Dave Bitts said that he's fed up by media and other reports claiming 2010 may be a bust, too. He said it's too soon to know what kind of a season fishermen have to look forward to in the coming year.

”We're not going to know until February,” Bitts said. “That's just the way it is.”

While some hatcheries in the Sacramento River system are reporting poor returns of 3-year-old adult fall chinook salmon, others have reached their quota for spawners, said California Department of Fish and Game spokesman Harry Morse.

Adult fish aren't the best indicator of the abundance of salmon in the ocean in the coming season. A better measure is 2-year-old salmon called jacks, a certain number of which return to the river early. A clear picture of how many jacks swam up the Sacramento River has not been put together yet, so it's not possible to estimate how many adult fish may be at sea this coming year.

”What we're doing right now is tabulating all the information including the jack count,” Morse said.

Federal and state fisheries biologists also must consider runs of chinook and coho salmon in other rivers on the coast in determining how many can be taken, when, and in what areas.

The Klamath River salmon run -- which can stifle fishing opportunity in the ocean if it is poor -- appears about average so far, said California Department of Fish and Game biologist Wade Sinnen. But a careful analysis needs to be done to determine how many adult fish and jacks swam up the Klamath and Trinity rivers, he said.

”Really, it's too early,” Sinnen said.#

Marin's coho salmon on the brink of extinction

Marin's endangered coho salmon population is on the verge of collapse and immediate steps will likely have to be taken to prevent the species from going extinct, according to federal officials.

For the third straight year the number of coho egg nests - which spawn the next generation of fish - are down significantly. There is still about a month left for the fish to return to the creeks in which they were born to spawn, but even if numbers improve, environmentalists and habitat managers believe action is needed to save the species.

"We are at a point of trying to prevent their extinction," said Charlotte Ambrose, coho salmon recovery coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. "We are in an extinction vortex. The species is collapsing."

Ambrose noted a federal recovery plan for the fish that will be released later this month has now morphed into an "extinction prevention plan."

"The situation is grim," she said.

Coho salmon have a three-year life cycle in which they hatch, live in creeks for a year and go to sea for two years before returning to their birth sites.

"With three bad years we could lose the population," said Paola Bouley, watershed biologist for the Lagunitas-based Salmon Protection and Watershed Network.

That the species - known as the Central California Coast coho salmon - is in trouble is not a surprise. The federal government listed the species as "threatened" in October 1996 and in June 2005 it was re-listed as "endangered."

But in the past three years the number of fish returning to streams in its range, between Mendocino and Santa Cruz, has taken a precipitous drop.

Marin's Lagunitas watershed has one of the largest remaining populations of wild coho salmon in Northern California, but the fish virtually vanished last year. While this year has been slightly better, it is still well below average.

"We have had an OK beginning to the season, and it's better than last year, which was abysmal, but we still have a way

Male (top) and female coho salmon spawning in the shallow gravel streambed in Lagunitas Creek adjacent to Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Samuel P. Taylor Park. (IJ photo/Jeff Vendsel)to go yet," said Greg Andrew, fisheries biologist for the Marin Municipal Water District, which manages the watershed. "We really need some good storms."

While the water district keeps enough flow in the creeks for fish, the species responds better to storms, which create runoff and are a natural invitation for the fish to begin swimming from the oceans upstream into creeks to spawn.

The life cycle of the coho is rigid: In the winter, fish return to the streams in which they were born to spawn and then die. Young fish hatch from eggs in the gravel in the spring and then spend another year in the streams feeding and growing while seeking refuge in deep, cold pools. After enduring a summer and winter they head out to sea in their second spring to feed along the productive California coast. Fish return to their streams from the ocean to spawn, die and continue on the cycle of life.

In the 1940s, there was a statewide peak of 500,000 coho. But today's native coho population is 1 percent of that - a decline caused primarily by a loss of free-flowing creeks and rivers that have been affected by development, culverts, dams and other obstacles. Development along creeks fills creekbeds with sediment, limiting oxygen for fish. Coho are gone from 90 percent of California streams that once supported the species.

The county imposed a two-year moratorium on building near creeks in the San Geronimo Valley - set to end Feb. 11 - aimed at protecting fish habitat. Applauded by some, the moratorium raised the ire of some residents who remain concerned about proposed development guidelines in the area.

Changes in ocean patterns possibly due to climate change, flooding and even the Cosco Busan oil spill may be having an effect, experts said.

A robust population could withstand such forces, but for an already ailing species the factors are enough to shove the fish into oblivion, Ambrose said.

"A lower abundance of fish simply cannot withstand these things," she said.

Bouley agreed.

"When you have a population close to extinction, something small can have a great impact," she said last week, standing along Lagunitas Creek as she watched a female coho create a nest. "We need to produce more and healthier fish in the watershed. It's a numbers game.

The more that you send out the more that will come back. They have survived changing ocean conditions for generations, but now when they are bouncing near the bottom they are vulnerable."

Ambrose said action will likely have to be taken sooner rather than later if the species is to be saved.#

Autumn chinook run falls short

Salmon didn't make the big fall comeback in Central Valley rivers that anglers and nature lovers yearned for, raising the likelihood of a third year of fishing restrictions.

Some areas saw more fall-run chinook return from the ocean to the Sacramento River and its tributaries. This includes the American River, where the state's Nimbus Hatchery spawned about 40 percent more salmon in 2009.

But the run as a whole seems likely to turn out the same or slightly smaller than in 2008, which was the smallest year ever recorded.

"We are really upset," said Dick Pool, president of Pro-Troll Fishing Products, a Bay Area manufacturer of salmon fishing tackle. "Every appearance is the fall run returns this year (2009) may set a new record low."

The Central Valley fall chinook is arguably the most important salmon run on the West Coast. It makes up virtually all of the commercially harvested salmon in California and Oregon.

The run's poor condition led regulators to ban all commercial salmon fishing in both states in 2008 and 2009. Recreational fishing was banned in 2008 and severely limited in 2009.

The cause is likely two-pronged:

• Poor ocean conditions, which reduced food supplies.

• Problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where young salmon contend with pollution, water diversions and non-native predators on their migration to the sea. Studies have estimated only about 8 percent of young salmon released in the rivers survive to reach the ocean.

The biggest disappointment in 2009 came on Battle Creek, where the number of fish spawned at the Coleman National Hatchery was about 35 percent less than in 2008. Coleman is normally the biggest single producer of salmon in the Central Valley.

The hatchery releases young salmon in two groups each April, 10 days apart. Few of those released in late April of 2007 returned in 2009.

"Overall, it was a pretty poor return. The expectation was we were going to see more fish," said Jim Smith, project leader at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs the hatchery. "Unfortunately, we can't find what I would call a 'smoking gun' to tell us what caused the differentiation."

There may be more worrisome news in the numbers.

Early analysis of new tagging data suggests the fall run consists mostly of hatchery salmon, and that wild-spawners are a small share of the modern-day population, said John Williams, a consulting hydrologist in Davis who has analyzed the initial data.

This finding could result in the fall run being protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, which could halt fishing permanently and add another layer of limits on California water supplies.

The fall run is the only Central Valley salmon species not already protected by the act.

"What it looks like, really, is hatchery fish are not supplementing naturally produced fish; they are replacing them," said Williams, author of a comprehensive scientific review of Central Valley salmon.

Hatcheries were built to replace salmon production lost when dams excluded fish from historic upstream spawning areas. They succeeded for decades in producing bountiful salmon populations.

But more recent studies show that hatcheries gradually weaken a species, producing fish with less genetic diversity that are less able to fend for themselves in the wild.

State and federal fisheries managers in 2007 began tagging a portion of hatchery salmon to track their success. Each fish had its adipose fin removed and a tiny coded wire tag inserted into its nose.

When the fish is caught, the missing fin is a prompt to recover the coded tag, which records where and when it was bred.

A full review of those data won't be done until later this year. But after an early look, Williams surmises hatchery salmon now make up 90 percent of the fall run.

"At this point it's clear that if you didn't have the hatcheries, you couldn't have a fishery," he said.

Doug Obegi, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said no one wants to see the fall run on the endangered species list.

His group successfully sued to impose stricter controls on Sacramento Basin water management to protect salmon. He said the new rules could help salmon as they begin to take effect this year. But the rules are being challenged by water users who fear cutbacks in their supplies.

"The fall run has become the backbone of the state's fishery and it would really become a disaster if it was allowed to fail and be listed under the Endangered Species Act," Obegi said. "I really hope we haven't gotten to that point yet."

There were two bright spots in the 2009 salmon run.

First, the salmon that did return seem to carry more eggs. As a result, the hatcheries appear likely to meet their production goals for young fish.

Second, the number of 2-year-old fish returning to spawn, called "jacks," was better than in 2008.

Most of the run each year consists of 3-year-old salmon. But some are 2-year-olds, which often indicates how many 3-year-olds will return the following year.

"Hopefully that's a good sign for next year," said Anna Kastner, manager of the state Department of Fish and Game Feather River Hatchery.#