Chico Enterprise Record – 3/28/05
By Ari Cohn, staff writer
Under blue skies Saturday, about 20 people turned out to tour Bidwell Ranch's wildflowers and wetlands.

With each step, their feet sank a few inches into the damp soil. The perfect weather, abundance of green grass and yellow, blue and white flowers might have led them to feel far-removed from a decades-old controversy over developing the property. But that was not the case.

For the tour served not only as a lesson in the dynamics of the land's fragile ecosystem, it also was meant to rally the troops for an April 5 Chico City Council meeting on the future of the 750-acre site, which sits adjacent to the northern edge of the entrance to upper Bidwell Park.

The Butte Environmental Council, Friends of Bidwell Park and the Bidwell Ranch Conservancy formerly called Stop Bidwell Ranch sponsored the tour, said Hilary Locke.

"We're just using this opportunity to let folks explore the land," she said. "It's a good time for wildflowers."

She asked those in attendance to show up for the City Council's discussion about the land.

"We want to let them know we want to keep Bidwell Ranch wild," Locke said.

Biological and botanical consultants Josephine Guardino and John Dittes served as the tour guides. The pair hammered home how rare and valuable are the seasonal wetlands called vernal pools on Bidwell Ranch. They also stressed that the pools are not solitary pinpoints that need to be fenced-off, but are part of a larger ecosystem that could be jeopardized by nearby development.

It was an argument that the one city councilor in attendance, Ann Schwab, found convincing.

From the Ice Age

Bidwell Ranch's vernal pools likely were created during the Pleistocene Era, which spanned from about 1.8 million to about 10,000 years ago, Dittes said.

"Vernal pools generally get a bad rap because most of the year they look like dried flats. Some people think they're just mud puddles but they're not. They're highly evolved ecosystems unto themselves," he said.

The land was formed by a series of volcanic flows and now sits on a fan of alluvial soil deposited by erosion from stormwater and flooding. It can be characterized as grassland and savannah.

Bidwell Ranch nominally is open to the public, but is surrounded by barbed wire and access is blocked by a locked gate. Visitors are supposed to ask the city's Parks Department for a key to get in.

Most of its green grass is exotic, and probably came over with the Spanish, Dittes said. Some of the invaders have a deleterious effect. For instance, medusa head grass forms dense mats that choke out native species, he said.

Nevertheless, many native species call Bidwell Ranch home. One is rosy meadowfoam, which is more common than its cousin, the endangered Butte County meadowfoam. Both varieties are found at Bidwell Ranch.

"In expansive areas it looks like fluff or laundry detergent spread across the plains," Dittes said.

The vernal pools support rare animals as well, like the spade foot toad and the California tiger salamander.

"They tend to have a lot of rare species in them," Dittes said. "Most of these plants aren't found outside of California and many are found only in small regions of the state."

He pointed out how plant species group together depending on how far they are from standing water. Coyote thistle puts out a spike-like leaf when its growing in the water, but the leaves branch out when the pools dry up, he said.

"Some species have to live inundated part of the year and terrestrial part of the year," he said. "You have to picture this in July and August to really appreciate the extremes through which this system cycles."

Around the edges of the pools one can find flowers like goldfield, yellow carpet, white popcorn flowers and tidy tips, whose blooms are about the size of a half-dollar and have white fringes around a yellow center.

"This is a classic assemblage of vernal pool species," Dittes said. "Every species has its own little zone or niche."

Guardino said Bidwell Ranch is part of a system of vernal pools stretching up and down the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges. It's part of the Pacific flyway for migrating birds, she said.

"They stop along these vernal pools," Guardino said. "These pools are absolutely necessary for the ducks to fuel up and make the journey. They're so rich with food sources."

Dittes said 90 percent of California's vernal pools already have been destroyed.

"Landscapes like this are rare and they're becoming more rare," he said.

Unintended Consequences

Dittes and Guardino oppose a plan unveiled last week by developer Rick Coletti to develop about 200 acres of the property. Coletti has offered the city of Chico $30 million for the land, and has suggested that the city use the money to help bridge the $25 million to $43.8 million gap needed to complete a network of community and neighborhood parks.

Coletti's proposal would allow him to build up to 1,000 homes on the site.

Last week, Coletti said he envisions a high-density residential development similar to the Doe Mill neighborhood, as well as a commercial area, at the subdivision's center. The homes would transition into larger lots moving outward, and would terminate in a 550-acre buffer zone of open space between the subdivision and upper park. The open space could be placed into a conservancy so it could never be developed.

But builders have been throwing out development plans for Bidwell Ranch since the 1980s, and so far none have been successful. In 1986, a public vote halted a proposed 4,500-unit development called Rancho Arroyo. The city of Chico bought the land in 1997 for about $4 million.

More recently, city officials have debated a proposal from resident Bob Best to sell about 305 acres to developers.

Last October, the City Council split 3-3 on whether to change Bidwell Ranch's zoning from residential uses to open space. The land remains zoned for residential use. But two new city councilors Schwab and Andy Holcombe have been elected since then, and both have expressed interest in changing the land's zoning to open space.

City officials received Coletti's offer after directing city staff on Jan. 25 to solicit bids for the purchase of the property. Two other offers, one made by a group of investors including Dan Kohrdt and another by Chico State University, involve turning the land into a mitigation bank.

That is, when an entity intends to develop another property with environmentally sensitive areas, that entity can buy into the mitigation bank to offset the loss of those areas.

Guardino said buildings and pavement do not absorb stormwater runoff, which could be flushed down into the vernal pools, overwhelming them and "blowing them out." Development also could introduce contamination by heavy metals and other pollutants, she said.

One has to look at the vernal pools as a large network, not as isolated ponds, she said. Building 1,000 houses nearby will have an effect on that system, she said.

"Even though we draw a line around these vernal pool complexes down here, will we affect the ecology of it? Will birds still want to use it? Will we affect the hydrology?" Guardino said.

Dittes used the role of solitary bees as an example. The bees don't form colonies, but burrow into the ground in the drier uplands, a possible area of development. There, they make ball of nectar from flowers around the vernal pools and lay egg on it. The bees are important for spreading genetic material between pools, Dittes said.

"If you build up there to protect the wetlands, how will it affect other species important to the ecosystem like the bees?" he said. "If you take the bees away, what's going to happen to the vernal pool flora?"

The point, he said, is that the city can't simply rope off the pools themselves and build around them without creating harmful effects.

"As development encroaches, places like this will become incredibly valuable," Dittes said. "If you're going to value that ecosystem, you're going to have to protect it in its entirety."

City Councilor Schwab said she had been convinced.

"This is an incredible resource that the city needs to make sure remains as it is. It's clear to me that you can't preserve one piece of it because of the impacts on the ecosystem," she said.

"This land is disappearing and this is one of the last chances we have to preserve this system. I don't think you can develop part of this property and not affect the rest of it." #

Oroville, Butte County -- From the intersection of state Highways 149 and 99, Dove Ridge appears to be just an average stretch of the upper Sacramento Valley -- almond orchard surrounded by well-grazed pastureland.

Dove Ridge's real wealth, however, can be found on the five spots where the threatened meadowfoam plant grows and in the 233 acres of shallow pools inhabited briefly during the year by tiny fairy shrimp. The 1/2-to-1 1/2-inch- long crustaceans with antennae and 11 pairs of paddlelike legs live in shallow sheets of brackish water, known as vernal pools, and also occupy a spot on the threatened species list.

"I fell in love with them," said Angi Orlandella, who ran a tanning salon before joining Dove Ridge as its director of technology and landscape applications.

The tiny shrimp are worth big money to Dove Ridge, which sells credits for $70,000 apiece to developers in Butte and eastern Tehama counties to fulfill their requirement that their projects minimize harm to the two species.

"We were profitable in our first year," said Steve Mardigian, manager of Loafer Creek LLC, which owns the 2,400-acre Dove Ridge spread and its 466 development credits.

Dove Ridge is a conservation bank that seeks to turn a profit by protecting habitat and threatened species.

Conservation banks allow developers to fulfill their requirement to mitigate the effect their projects have on sensitive habitat by purchasing "credits'' at off-site locations where similar habitat is preserved in perpetuity. For developers, it's often less expensive to buy the credits than to try to save the habitat on the project site.

The banks are playing a bigger and bigger role in development throughout California -- commercial, residential and public works.

In most cases, mitigation banks can reduce the cost of residential housing -- even in high-priced places like the Bay Area.

"If your property has wetlands or a threatened species, there is less space available for construction because those things must be protected. Less homes built means prices go up," said Nathan Botwinkel, a Santa Rosa real estate broker and owner of Vernal Pool Technologies. "Off-site mitigation usually protects more pristine wetlands and often at a cheaper price."

Meadowlark Homes came to Botwinkel with a small project in Santa Rosa on property with some wetlands on it. Without a conservation bank, he said, the developer probably would not have attempted the project because protecting the wetlands on-site would have taken too much property out of use.

California leads the country in mitigation banks -- a similar method of restoring wetlands -- and conservation banks with more than 100 scattered from Redding in the north to San Diego in the south. The vast majority are privately owned and operated.

More than 4,000 acres in California are in wetlands mitigation banks and 38,000 acres in other types of conservation banks. More than 300 of the banks operate nationwide according to the National Mitigation Banking Association.

"The goal is to find a good spot in the landscape or the watershed to site your bank to assure long-term sustainability and help people who need mitigation," said Craig Denisoff, senior vice president of Wildlands Inc., which created California's first private mitigation bank near Sheridan in Placer County in 1994.

Wildlands now has 70 employees, three regional offices and 19 banks -- one in Washington state -- either established or proposed.

Credits aren't cheap. In the Bay Area, with its sky-high land prices, a credit can cost $200,000 for an expensive venture like wetlands conservation, Denisoff said. A percentage of the credit purchase price is used to create a trust fund that will preserve or restore the bank's acreage in perpetuity.

The rationale behind the banks is that larger protected areas should offer better species protection than small, isolated patches left surrounded by new development.

"All your eggs are in one basket -- that's the downside -- but there are enough banks, and they're spread out enough that there shouldn't be a problem," said Susan Hill, who coordinates conservation bank approval for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Sacramento office.

Mitigation banks have been around since the 1980s, but in 1995 the federal government issued guidelines on establishing privately owned banks and, by doing so, created a new industry.

"The industry was developing organically before that, but people were struggling with the fact there was no clear regulatory authority or agreement among federal agencies," said Chris Kelly of the Conservation Fund in Larkspur.

Previously, most of the banks had been operated by public agencies like Caltrans, water districts or local governments.

There was just one private commercial bank in the nation in 1992, according to a 2002 study in the National Wetlands Newsletter. Of the 214 mitigation banks in operation when the study was conducted, 135 were privately owned.

In 1996, California began promoting conservation banks as a better way to protect the state's 250 endangered species of plants and animals. It isn't easy setting up a conservation bank. Like its financial counterpart, it takes time and money.

For Dove Ridge, mapping the site took 2 1/2 years.

Mardigian said he and Orlandella had "walked along 4 square miles looking for needles in haystacks" to find fairy shrimp, tadpole shrimp and meadowfoam -- the threatened species that the conservation bank intends to protect.

The tedium of that experience -- and re-examination of the acreage by several federal and state agencies -- pushed Dove Ridge to invest in creating a new mapping technology using lasers and monitors.

Dove Ridge's silver, two-story, shed-shaped headquarters now holds millions of dollars in monitoring, mapping and computer equipment. A Bell 407 helicopter is parked outside near several all-terrain vehicles.

Four state and federal agencies also had to be satisfied before the conservation bank could go into operation. The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over wetlands. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had final say over species protection. The state Department of Fish and Game was involved. So was the Environmental Protection Agency.

"It can take years sometimes to get a bank approved,'' Denisoff said.

In December 2003, after more than three years, Dove Ridge won final approval to sell credits. It's first big sale was 89 credits to Caltrans, which is doing a road-widening project nearby.

Said Botwinkel: "I call it the Kevin Costner 'Field of Dreams' theory -- if I build a mitigation bank and spend thousands of dollars before anyone comes, will they come?" #

The judgment this week effectively halts the town of McCloud's plans to sell water to Nestle for a proposed $120 million water bottling plant that supporters said would revitalize the village at the base of Mount Shasta.

The deal would have given Nestle, the world's largest food and beverage company, up to 521 million gallons of the town's drinking water for as little as $300,000 a year. The 50-year deal could be extended for a century with little control by the unincorporated town.

A group called Concerned McCloud Citizens sued the McCloud Community Services District to block the deal after learning of its terms. Siskiyou County Judge Roger Kosel ruled Monday that the district abused its discretion by not performing a review of the project's environmental impact before sealing the deal.

"I think it says you can't kind of try to come in under the radar and negotiate a deal without really informing the public and doing the required environmental review before the deal is finalized," said attorney Don Mooney, who represented the citizens group.

A spokeswoman said the district did not have a comment on the ruling. Nestle said it would move ahead with its environmental review of the project.

Mooney said the district and Nestle could strike a new deal once environmental reviews are conducted.

Nestle proposed tapping into natural springs that bubble up on the side of 14,162-foot Mount Shasta and bottling the waters under its Arrowhead label at a plant that would be built on the grounds of the sawmill that closed two years ago.

Critics of the water sale said they felt blindsided when they learned details of the pact, although public officials said they disclosed outcomes of the negotiations and followed the proper rules.

"There are many, many people in McCloud now who will not take their eyes off of this precious resource," said Diane Lowe, one of the women who formed the citizens group. "We have a major battle to continue, but we've passed a small hurdle."

The deal has divided the town of 1,300 people, a former company town that once provided everything from housing to Christmas gifts for children.

Supporters point to the lack of jobs and an unsteady economy since the McCloud River Lumber Co. sold out in the 1960s. They see Nestle Waters North America, the nation's biggest water bottler and a division of the Swiss multinational, as a savior of sorts. The company had expected to open the plant next year and said it would eventually employ 240 workers.

Critics have questioned whether a provision letting Nestle drill wells would dry up aquifers or whether wildlife would be harmed downstream in the McCloud River, a popular fishing spot.

Others wonder if the town is getting enough money from a company that stands to profit by selling the community's own precious resource.

"If they gave us our fair share it wouldn't be bad," said Alice DeBon, an innkeeper in town. "They can't just take us to the cleaners." #

Redding Record-Searchlight – 3/24/05
By Don Thompson, Associated Press staff writer

SACRAMENTO -- The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Wednesday it will not renew its license to operate the Kilarc-Cow Creek hydroelectric project in eastern Shasta County, dedicating the water instead to threatened salmon and steelhead trout.

"You'll see a great increase in fish life," said Mike Berry, senior fishery biologist at Redding's state Department of Fish and Game office.

State and federal wildlife officials and environmental groups praised PG&E's agreement, which they hope will spur similar decisions by other utilities as several hundred dams come up for re- licensing in the next few years.

In the spring, the Whitmore-area dam diverts up to 50 cubic feet per second from tributaries of Cow Creek, Berry said.

Unless a third party takes an interest in the expiring project, that water will again flow into 3.8 miles of Old Cow Creek and 3.9 miles to South Cow Creek, Berry said.

The shallow, approximately 5-acre Kilarc Reservoir used by fishermen would no longer collect water for the project. Instead, anglers will find more fish in their native habitats, the nearby creeks, Redding Fish and Game fishery biologist Randy Benthin said.

"There's several miles of streams that will be rewatered, and the trout population will respond accordingly," he said.

In winter, the reservoir would likely diminish to a few inches deep, creating a seasonal wetland for migrating ducks. In spring and summer, it would dry out, Berry said.

Abandoning the 5-megawatt Kilarc-Cow Creek project 30 miles east of Redding makes unique sense both financially and environmentally, company and wildlife officials said.

It's one of the few hydroelectric projects that aren't upstream from other state dams or federal water projects, so removing the dams, powerhouses, aqueducts and forebays would revive fish habitat by restoring the natural flows currently diverted from South Cow and Old Cow creeks. The creeks flow directly into the Sacramento River, giving the chinook and trout the ocean access they require.

"Dams block 90 percent of the former historic habitat for salmon and steelhead in the Central Valley," Steve Evans, conservation director of Friends of the River, said from Sacramento.

"It's the main reason why so many salmon and steelhead runs in the Central Valley are endangered or threatened," he said.

And the numbers pencil out for electric customers and investors, said Randy Livingston, PG&E's senior director of power generation.

The utility's operating permit expires March 27, 2007, and its renewal application was due this Friday. But the company said it became clear new licensing requirements would drive up the cost beyond the benefit of the power the complex produces, enough for about 5,000 homes.

The utility approached wildlife officials and environmental groups a year ago offering to remove the hydroelectric facility, the first time any of the officials could recall such a proposal.

Some other company could seek to buy the facility and renew the license, but the officials said that is unlikely to make economic or environmental sense.

"If PG&E can't operate it at a profit, I don't see how anybody else could," Evans said.

PG&E would operate the facility until its license expires, then seek to operate year-to-year until the two powerhouses and their associated water diversions are decommissioned, under the agreement signed Tuesday between the utility and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Game, National Park Service, California State Water Resources Control Board, National Marine Fisheries Service, Trout Unlimited and Friends of the River.

The 3.2-megawatt Kilarc Powerhouse was built in 1904 on Old Cow Creek, while the 1.8 megawatt Cow Creek Powerhouse on South Cow Creek was built in 1907.

More than 30 other 50-year hydroelectric licenses will expire in the next few years across California, encompassing several hundred dams, said Michael Hoover, deputy assistant field supervisor at the Fish and Wildlife Service Sacramento office.

Usually, licensing decisions before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission spawn battles between the operators of the water or hydroelectric projects and wildlife agencies and organizations.

That's why the usual critics lined up Wednesday to laud what they termed PG&E's historic agreement, one they hope will be repeated as the licenses come due.

"It is a smart business and ratepayer decision. How cool is that?" said Chuck Bonham, director of Trout Unlimited's California Water Project. #

It targets costly measures for plants and animals listed currently listed as endangered
Inland Empire Press Enterprise – 3/23/05
By Jennifer Bowles, staff writer
A private-property rights group filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration Tuesday, seeking to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to re-examine dozens of endangered species in California to determine if they remain threatened with extinction.

The lawsuit, hoping to cut costly protective measures for species that don't need them, names 193 species in the state -- including 33 plants and animals across Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- that have yet to undergo five-year reviews as required by the federal Endangered Species Act.

"The (Act) should be protecting only those species that actually need protecting," said Robin Rivett, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based group that represents farmers, cattlemen and timber companies.

"The government may be wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on species that don't need protection, instead of using those dollars to protect the species that are truly at risk," Rivett said.

Jim Nickels, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said he couldn't comment on the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The lawsuit names as defendants Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Matthew Hogan, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the agency itself.

But Nickels said only a handful of species in California have had five-year reviews. "Like everything else, it's a workload issue," he said. "So much of our work is driven by lawsuits, some tasks get pushed to the side."

A founder of one of the Inland region's leading environmental groups said while he believes the Pacific Legal Foundation is legally correct in its lawsuit, he'd rather see the money spent on buying and protecting habitat.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service presents a review of endangered species to Congress every two years that tells lawmakers whether the species are improving, declining or stable, said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, which has an Idyllwild office.

The lawsuit names several Inland species, including the desert tortoise and two birds -- the least Bell's vireo and the coastal California gnatcatcher.

Inland developers, who are partly saddled with costly fees to protect the species, welcomed the lawsuit's goal as a way to know the true status of the species, often the subject of tense battles between builders and environmentalists.

"It's a two-way street of keeping both sides honest," said Borre Winckel, executive director of the Building Industry Association's Riverside County chapter.

"We feel like the biennial review is a good back-stop that makes up for the lack of five-year reviews," he said. #

"That's right," said Scott Hamelberg, project coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery near Anderson. "We had tagged adult steelhead show up in our holding pen."

Each of the planted fish, some longer than 30 inches, carried a tiny plastic tag, which U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials asked anglers to return. It was hoped this first plant of surplus adult steelhead into Keswick would bolster fishing opportunities at the reservoir, where there's already an excellent rainbow and German brown trout fishery.

The last thing officials expected was for some of the steelhead to show up back at the hatchery.

"We had to discontinue that operation," Hamelberg said. "It was a great opportunity to get more chances for anglers out there, but based on what we've seen in the Sacramento River, it's not an alternative anymore."

Hamelberg said anglers on the lower Sacramento turned in a couple of tags, as well as one tagged fish that died, and its carcass counted during a spawning survey. Only one Keswick angler has turned in a tag, he added.

Steelhead are anadromous fish, meaning they spawn in freshwater, but mature in saltwater. Like salmon, the fish have an inherent drive to return to the exact waterway where they were spawned -- even if that place is Coleman National Hatchery.

Unlike chinook salmon, which die after spawning, many steelhead do not die (although a number of the fish, especially males, don't survive the harsh natural spawning process). Fish from Coleman -- the hatchery started raising steelhead in 1947 -- usually have been deposited downstream of the hatchery after spawning. Excess pre-spawn fish have been planted in cold-water fisheries, like the ponds at Anderson River Park, according to a Coleman employee. The fish planted into Keswick were in spawn condition, meaning the hatchery did not extract eggs or milt from the fish before their release.

According to the hatchery Web site, about 1 percent of all fish reared and released at the facility -- Coleman spawns 13 million fall-run and late fall-run king salmon and 600,000 steelhead yearly -- return to Battle Creek, with some natural spawning happening in the creek. This year, 1,443 steelhead returned to Coleman, including the 176 that were trucked up to Keswick.

Those planters had a second return rate of 8.5 percent.

That's tenacity.

"It's just a matter of luck that the fish make it through," said Larry Ball, an operations division chief with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at Keswick. "It certainly makes a case for the waters where they're imprinted."

Keswick Dam is part of the massive Central Valley Water Project-Shasta/Trinity Diversions and is nine miles downriver from Shasta Dam. Outflow from Keswick regulates the flow along the lower Sacramento River.

Keswick has three power generating units, which have a maximum flow per unit of 5,000 cubic feet of water per second, Ball said. Currently, Keswick has one unit operational, with releases at 3,792 cfs.

Even before the fish passed through the turbine, Ball said, they had to get through a trash rake, a grate that keeps logs and other large debris from reaching the turbines.

Keswick's slippery steelhead aren't the first fish to pass through a hydroelectric plant unscathed -- and certainly won't be the last.

In 1988, the Department of Fish and Game planted 400 1-pound, 14-inch sturgeon into Lake Shasta for anglers. All 400 fish were tagged, similar to Keswick's steelhead. In 1989, an 18-inch sturgeon passed downstream through the Red Bluff Diversion Dam viewing area. In 1993, anglers caught a 48-inch, 40-pound sturgeon on the lower Sacramento River near Red Bluff. Both fish -- and no one knows how many more from the class of 1988 --had managed to breach both Shasta and Keswick dams.

"Any place in California that you have hydroelectric, you'll have fish make it through," said DFG senior fisheries biologist Randy Benthin. "It's a fairly interesting occurrence." #

Red Bluff Daily News – 3/18/05
The Tehama County Resource Conservation District are conducting two studies of the westside tributaries of the Sacramento River in Tehama County, a watershed assessment and a comprehensive fire plan.

This Monday and on Monday, March 28, TCRCD will host meetings to describe the studies and to seek input from Tehama County residents.

The first presentation will be from 5:30 to 7 p.m. this Monday at the USDA Service Center, 2 Sutter St., Red Bluff, and will focus on the watersheds from Oat Creek north to Cottonwood Creek.

The second meeting will be from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Monday, March 28, at the Independent Grange Hall on Corning Road in Corning, with an emphasis on the county's south western watersheds.

Wendy L. Johnston from Vestra Resources, Inc. stated, "This is a local team approach to resource management. We want landowners and stakeholders to be involved with the entire watershed assessment process."

The Tehama West Watershed areas include over 921,823 acres (1,440 square miles) from Cottonwood Creek to Stony Creek. The Tehama West Watershed Assessment is a necessary step for development of clear guidance for future resource conservation and land management activities. The assessment process will identify current conditions and data needs.

The Tehama West Fire Plan will provide TCRCD and other agencies involved in fire management with information about wildfire potential, assets at risk, safety and fuel loading. It will include information needed to identify and seek funding for fuels reduction and safety projects.

Vicky Dawley, TCRCD District Manager says, "Input from the public is a vital part of each of these important studies. Landowners may have knowledge or information that is not readily available to staff and consultants conducting the studies. They may also wish to inform TCRCD and its consultants about important issues or areas of concern in these watersheds."

A special district of the state of California, TCRCD is committed to working with landowners and agencies to maintain, or improve, county watersheds as healthy and functional ecosystems for fish, wildlife and humans. Input from the residents of the county is vital to managing the land for future generations.

TCRCD is governed by a board of five volunteer landowners: Ernest White, Jack Bramhall, Anne Read, Shirley Davis and Ryan Sale. Funding for TCRCD activities is from grants, contracts and fund-raising activities.

Landowners are encouraged to join TCRCD on one of these evenings to learn more about the watershed and to help direct these critically important studies. Information and a flyer with a map to the event is available at TCRCD at 527-3013 extension 3. #

Modesto Bee – 3/15/05
By Eric Sterm, staff writer
SACRAMENTO — Conservation groups are bracing for an assault on a landmark state environmental law they say has helped ordinary citizens fend off encroaching development since 1970.

They're rallying behind the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, that calls for a public review of how construction projects will affect the air, roads, wildlife and water supply. The law also determines ways to offset the consequences of building — in some cases by setting aside an acre for conservation for every acre developed.

Legislative leaders and Gov. Schwarzenegger's administration have targeted the CEQA review process as they push to streamline regulations to make it easier to build more housing.

Ideally, they want to increase the supply of housing so much that prices drop.

Home builders long have complained that the CEQA has been abused by "not-in-my-back yard" opponents who try to drag out projects in costly court battles to scare away developers.

Environmentalists disagree. The CEQA is "the one really effective way to give people a voice in their community" when developers have better access to policy-makers in city halls and the Legislature, said Karen Douglas, acting executive director of the Planning and Conservation League.

"What we're really trying to do is issue a wake-up call and tell people what's at stake," she said.

The group is issuing a report today with the California League of Conservation Voters about "everyday heroes" who have fought plans like building a toxic waste incinerator in Los Angeles and a major housing development on Contra Costa County farmland.

Eliminating requirements

"We need (CEQA) now more than ever to fight back against powerful builders and developers who are eager to find a way around this popular law," said Susan Smartt, executive director of the California League of Conservation Voters.

A push at the Capitol would eliminate some CEQA requirements on a project-by-project basis in urban areas, replacing them with an upfront environmental review for a wider region and making it harder to thwart future projects in the region.

Environmentalists say they are open to changing the CEQA to better fill in urban areas with housing and avoid sprawling development. But they are concerned that proposals to weaken the CEQA, if not restricted to true urban cores, could encourage developments on the outskirts of cities.

Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, said Monday that the governor's plan to expedite housing is still taking shape. "Nothing's been finalized yet," he said.

Senate Democratic leaders, who unveiled their own housing plan recently, have vowed not to "gut" the CEQA, although their proposal does call for changes to the law.

Tim Coyle, a lobbyist for the California Building Industry Association, said environmental groups are jumping too fast.

"This is a classic position, that any modification or any change to CEQA is somehow defined as gutting the law," Coyle said Monday. "CEQA is not the problem; it's the people who abuse CEQA that are the problem."

Environmental advocates warn that moving too quickly on projects will short circuit the public's role in shaping land-use decisions.

"With the public participating, you can always get positive changes," said Lydia Miller, of San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, who has been involved in CEQA battles over farmland development in Merced and Stanislaus counties. #

Growers who haven't followed runoff rules being contacted
Chico Enterprise-Record – 3/13/05
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

A new water discharge monitoring program is being organized in the Central Valley and the state Water Board is contacting landowners who haven't signed up to be a part of it. All businesses that discharge into waterways are required to have a permit. However, for two decades agriculture was exempt.

That has changed for the Central Valley. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Board agreed that if waterways were monitored, growers and irrigators could avoid individual permits by joining a watershed coalition.

Property owners were supposed to sign up by Nov. 30, 2004. But not everyone did.

Friday the state Water Board sent letters to Agricultural Commissioners in Fresno, Madera and Yolo counties stating that 88 growers in those counties had been sent letters saying they had not joined a watershed group. Public information identified 13 growers in Yolo County, 16 in Fresno County and 59 in Madera County, the letter stated.

Recipients of the letters are required to fill out a form with the description of their irrigated land and whether they had done anything to comply with the California Water Code requirements.

It's unknown at this time how many property owners in the north Sacramento Valley are also not in compliance.

Liz Kanter, spokeswoman for the state Water Board, said water regulators are indeed also looking at who is in and who is out in of the Butte/Yuba/Sutter Water Quality Coalition.

Eventually, those who didn't sign up will get a letter similar to the one sent to farmers farther south.

Kanter didn't know exactly when that would be nor why those areas were looked into first.

"What we're hoping for is compliance," Kanter said. "We really want to make this program successful.

"We've been working with the coalition groups for months now. We're really encouraged by their willingness to participate," Kanter said.

"We're encouraging all the growers to join the coalitions. That's what the letter is meant to do, to work with us rather than against us."

She said it is still undecided how most of the groups will charge fees to pay for water monitoring. Some might charge a flat fee for participation. Others might allow waivers for low-threat properties. Others might charge a fee per acre.

Its also possible to come up with other options and ask for board approval, Kanter said.

The Legislature has said the fees need to raise $1.9 million annually to pay for the new water monitoring. #

San Joaquin Record – 3/2/05
Associated Press

A federal appeals court ruling in New York may force tighter regulation of water pollution from dairies and feedlots in the Central Valley and across the nation. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that new federal clean-water regulations aren't protecting the nation's waters from the manure coming off animal farms.

The court in Manhattan said Monday that it agreed with environmentalists who claimed in lawsuits that the rules failed to provide meaningful review of plans developed by the farms to limit the pollution. The appeals court said the rules imposed in February 2003 by the Environmental Protection Agency were arbitrary and did "nothing to ensure" that each large farm was complying with requirements to control the pollution.

The main issue is the way dairies and feedlots handle manure. The court said the EPA failed to require operators to have plans for keeping the waste out of waterways and to follow those plans.

Environmentalists hailed the ruling.

"This decision is a significant step toward insuring that large dairies will be required to stop their pollution from flowing into waterways," said Bill Jennings of DeltaKeeper, the Stockton-based chapter of Baykeeper and part of the alliance of Waterkeeper groups that were part of the lawsuit.

In California, regional water boards operated by the state government enforce EPA water pollution rules. Central Valley farmers and environmentalists have been tussling for years over how the local water board should regulate dairy water pollution.

For decades, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board had a policy of waiving pollution permits for small- and medium-sized livestock farms. Faced with legal challenges from environmentalists, the Valley water board in 2003 decided that it would regulate animal operations by requiring them to get permits.

The board this year is still developing its system for issuing pollution permits to dairies. The current draft of the local permit proposal was based on the EPA rule that was partially overturned Monday.

Polly Lowry, a senior engineering geologist at the regional board, said Tuesday that board staffers were still reviewing the court decision.

"We haven't really figured out how it is going to affect us yet," she said.

California farm representatives have defended the status quo, saying that farms are still required to comply with pollution rules even if they are not required to get formal pollution discharge permits.

Dairy waste that reaches waterways may contain bacteria, antibiotics, pesticides and other materials in addition to being high in nitrogen and other nutrients that can cause algae bloom.

Dairy industry groups were still studying the decision Tuesday.

"It's a 65-page decision," said J.P. Cativiela, spokesman for the Dairy Community Alliance for Responsible Environmental Stewardship. "I don't think anybody has the full analysis yet."

Dairy CARES is made up primarily of dairy industry groups. It works to educate dairy farmers on complying with environmental regulations.

Cativiela said he's wondering what the ruling will do to the years of work so far on developing a local dairy-
permitting system.

"We're wondering what sort of a bump in the road this all is going to be."

He said his group works closely with various regional water quality control boards to help them develop rules for dairies.

This week's ruling requires the EPA to make changes so it can ensure compliance by the farms with the Clean Water Act, which includes "the ambitious goal" that water pollution be eliminated. It also said the agency must provide a process that "adequately involves the public" as it creates a new system.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international grass-roots organization connecting 129 local water protection programs, said he was grateful that the court had rebuked "the government and the barons of corporate agriculture."

A telephone message for comment left with the EPA in Washington, D.C., was not immediately returned Monday.

The appeals court noted that large farms can generate each year millions of tons of manure, which carries potentially harmful pollutants including pesticides, bacteria, viruses, trace elements of arsenic and compounds such as methane and ammonia.

When properly applied, manure can be spread on fields and serve as fertilizer. But improperly applied, the court said, it can pollute.

The EPA rules require large confinements -- defined as having at least 1,000 beef cattle and 2,500 swine -- to obtain water pollution permits every five years. Some medium ones - with 300 beef cattle and 3,000 swine under 55 pounds -- may be required to get one. Different head count thresholds are set for livestock operations including sheep, chickens and turkeys.

Any farm required to have a permit also must have a plan spelling out how it will manage manure. Farmers are required to file annual reports summarizing their operations.

The Waterkeeper Alliance was among several groups that challenged the rules with lawsuits, which were consolidated in a single action in New York. Other groups included the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Farm Bureau Federation, the National Turkey Federation, the National Pork Producers Council and livestock groups. #

Monterey Herald – 3/1/05
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Fisheries managers say ocean salmon fishing seasons for Northern California and Oregon face sharp cutbacks this year to protect low projected returns of Klamath River wild chinook, a perennial weak spot in efforts to rebuild West Coast salmon runs.

Federal fishery managers for the West Coast -- who are meeting in Sacramento next week -- will also have to wrestle with forecasts of low returns of hatchery coho from the Columbia River and Oregon Coast, which are likely to prompt sharp cutbacks for recreational fishermen off Oregon and Washington.

Forecasts based on returns of sexually immature adults known as jacks call for a record 1.7 million chinook returning to California's Central Valley this year, double last year's returns.

But sport and commercial fishermen may not be able to take full advantage of them, to avoid catching too many of the fish headed back to the Klamath River. Fishing seasons last year resulted in Klamath returns falling 10,000 short of the goal of 35,000 natural spawners.

''Everybody has gotten spoiled the last few years,'' said Dave Bitts, a Eureka commercial salmon fisherman who is also vice president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. ''We think that it's normal to be able to go fishing.''

Overall, seasons are likely to be good between San Francisco and Monterey, a little tighter than last year off Washington, and a lot tighter between Fort Bragg and Newport, Ore., said Chuck Tracy, salmon staffer for the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets ocean salmon seasons.

The council will adopt options for commercial, recreational and tribal fisheries March 11, and set final seasons April 8 in Tacoma, Wash.

Good returns in 2003, even in the Klamath River, allowed the most bountiful ocean salmon fishing seasons in 15 years, and in 2004, commercial fishermen saw prices rise with an increased public demand for ocean-caught salmon after years of farmed salmon driving down the market.

However, ocean conditions began going sour last year, accounting for the drop in hatchery coho numbers, said Curt Melcher, ocean salmon fishery manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Fishermen will have their best chance for chinook off Oregon when sport and commercial seasons open March 15, because Klamath fish are generally out of the area. However, commercial closures are likely as summer progresses and Klamath fish move into the area, said Melcher.

Quotas for coho, which account for most of the fish caught by Oregon and Washington sport anglers, could be cut in half, said Melcher. The specifics depend on information being developed in the next few months.

Numbers for wild Oregon coho, which must be released, are slightly up, from 150,900 in 2004 to 152,000 in 2005, but hatchery coho numbers are projected to be down, from 777,900 in 2004 to 542,900 this year, according to the preseason report for the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Efforts have been under way since 1986 to rebuild Klamath River chinook returns, which have declined due to a combination of dams, overfishing, and habitat loss to logging, agriculture, and mining.

Forecasts call for 239,700 chinook to return to the Klamath this year, enough to meet the required 35,000 wild fish surviving to spawn in the river if fishing is cut back. The overall number is slightly higher than last year's return, but sharply lower for 4-year-old fish, considered the most important age class for natural spawning success.

California Department of Fish and Game biologist Neil Manji said the 2002 fish kill that left tens of thousands of adult fish rotting on the banks of the Klamath after succumbing to disease in low warm water is not a likely cause of the low projections. A more likely one is the increasing numbers of young fish succumbing to parasites as they migrate to the ocean. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates up to 40 percent die from an intestinal parasite, and 80 percent are weakened by a kidney parasite.

The Yurok Tribe, which fishes at the mount of the Klamath, is likely to see their 25,000-fish allocation from last year cut in half, said tribal fisheries director Dave Hillemeier.

''This is going to be a major hardship not just for tribes, but also all the communities that revolve around in-river fisheries and revolve around ocean fisheries, basically from the Columbia River down to the San Francisco area,'' he said. #

A plan to raise Shasta Dam could help ease California's water crisis, but a band of California Indians says the project will obliterate their culture and way of life. The dam proposal is a centerpiece strategy of CalFed, the joint federal and state agency empowered to distribute the state's water to its various stakeholders.

The idea is to raise the dam 16 feet or more, vastly increasing the holding capacity of Shasta Lake -- and the state's water supply -- for a relatively small investment. Raising the dam by even 16 feet could boost Shasta's storage capacity by 300,000 acre-feet -- enough to supply 900,000 families with water for a year.

Agriculture and municipalities are bullish on the proposal. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was instrumental in securing recent key authorizing legislation for CalFed, is supporting feasibility studies for the plan.

But fisheries advocates and environmentalists generally are opposed to the project, saying it would provide no benefit for downstream fisheries and wildlife.

And for the Winnemem Wintu -- a tribe of about 125 members that historically occupied the McCloud River drainage -- a higher dam would be an unmitigated catastrophe.

Raising the dam would submerge several sacred sites permanently, tribal members say. And because these sites are essential to the tribe's religious ceremonies, the project, they say, amounts to cultural genocide.

"We feel like Catholics would feel if it was decided that flooding the Sistine Chapel was a good public works project," said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the tribe's leader. "To us, the project would be the worst kind of sacrilege."

Sisk-Franco made her comments at Kaibai, an ancient Winnemem village site on the McCloud River arm of Shasta Lake. According to a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist in the area, the Winnemem may have lived here for more than 2, 000 years.

Typically, Kaibai is underwater for much of the year, appearing only after the reservoir has been drawn down in the summer. But due to unusually heavy releases from Shasta Dam, the tribe has had access to Kaibai for months. The McCloud is running free and clear past the ancient village site. If Shasta Lake is raised by 16 feet, Kaibai probably will disappear forever.

Sisk-Franco gently placed her hand on a large rock cratered with numerous mortar holes for grinding. "We hold the puberty rites for our kids here," Sisk-Franco said. "We use this rock every year for grinding medicinal plants -- just as our ancestors have done, for hundreds of years." She pointed to a huge boulder across the river and downstream from the grinding rocks. "That's Children's Rock," she said. "Our children are taught to climb there in our initiation ceremonies, to gain confidence for later observances, when they have to climb -- that." She turned, and nodded at a steep, rocky peak looming over Kaibai.

"That's Hamaleokus," she said. "Our boys are taken up there to fast when they come of age. When the white men came into the McCloud drainage, we flew a flag at the top of Hamaleokus, to say, 'We're still here.' "

Mark Franco, a tribal member and Sisk-Franco's husband, said the tribe has tried to contact CalFed, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Feinstein about its concerns, but have received little substantive feedback. "It's clear they don't really want to be bothered with us," Franco said.

But representatives of the agencies involved in the dam proposal say they have no intention of ignoring the Winnemem. Keith Coolidge, a spokesman for CalFed, said raising Shasta Dam is one of five new surface water storage projects contemplated for the state. "The participating agencies will look at the comparative merits (of the different projects) and should arrive at a decision by the end of 2006," Coolidge said. "I'm sure the concerns of the Winnemem will be addressed as the Shasta Dam proposal goes through the process."

Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that administers the Shasta Dam and reservoir, said all stakeholders will be heard before a decision is made. "Where the Winnemem are concerned, we will do cultural surveys and look at the impacts that could arise," McCracken said. "This isn't 50 years ago, when whole towns were moved for water projects without a second thought."

But Franco said the Winnemem generally have found government agencies unresponsive to their concerns over sacred sites -- not just the Bureau of Reclamation and CalFed, but also the U.S. Forest Service. He cited one recent point of conflict: Dekkas, a steep hillside site near the McCloud River used by the tribe for a variety of rites, including a spring ceremony honoring Winnemem elders who have survived the winter.

On a tour of Dekkas, Franco and Sisk-Franco pointed out a large number of brush piles that had been stacked recently, a fuel reduction effort carried out by the Forest Service. The brush was all old-growth manzanita, Franco noted, and had been part of a grove sacred to the tribe. "This is where we get our wood for our ceremonial fires," he said. "Now - - it's all gone." Franco shook his head, visibly upset. "This has completely desecrated Dekkas," he said. "We had explicit agreements with the Forest Service that they would stay away from this site."

Next to a gate blocking a rutted road that led to Dekkas, Sisk-Franco pointed out a rock that had been covered by manzanita, and was now ringed by stumps. "There was a rattlesnake that lived there," she said, "the guardian to Dekkas. I doubt he's there now -- it's too exposed. Dekkas is unprotected."

Jennings Sharon Heywood, the supervisor for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, said contract crews working for the agency cut the brush around Dekkas.

"Our original information told us those bushes were far enough away from the ceremonial site to have no impact," Heywood said. "That said, it seems to me this was an obvious error, and I don't know why the tribe wasn't contacted, but we intend to get out there and work this out with them."

Some government representatives suggest the tribe's problems could be solved if members were more responsive to federal procedure. Most significantly, they say, the tribe has refused to pursue official recognition from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal agency that deals with tribal issues.

Howard Gantman, a spokesman for Feinstein, said the senator's office has written to the bureau seeking a clarification of the Winnemem's status. "They informed us the tribe had provided insufficient documentation for recognition," said Gantman, who added that Feinstein understands the concerns of the Winnemem and wants to help.

Franco said the tribe is not actively seeking recognition from the bureau. The federal government, he said, recognized the tribe in 1851, when Winnemem representatives signed the Cottonwood Treaty, an agreement that granted the tribe a 35-square-mile reservation on their traditional lands. Federal Indian agent O.M. Wozencraft, representing the United States, also signed the treaty. But the treaty was left unratified by Congress at the behest of the California delegation, Franco said.

Tribal members ultimately received some land allotments in the McCloud River area, Franco said, but the holdings were condemned under later legislation that ultimately allowed for the construction of Shasta Lake.

"We can document a history of federal recognition followed by broken promises," Franco said, "so we're standing by the original 1851 treaty. It's a valid document, and it's unrealistic to think we would get through any new process before our sacred sites go underwater forever." #

DUNSMUIR -- Some fish turned belly up, floating away with the current. Others beached themselves on shore in a suicidal attempt to escape the suddenly toxic Sacramento River. People like Bill Berry, a retired attorney from Sacramento who owns a vacation home here, aren't likely to forget the Cantara Loop train derailment and chemical spill.

But even though 14 years have passed since that July evening, the rules haven't changed much for trains passing through this scenic area. And the derailments continue -- 43 accidents in the river canyon since the Cantara spill, according to the conservation group California Trout.

"The railroad operates without any real oversight," Berry said. "It's pretty much up to them." A flurry of other recent derailments across the country has focused new attention on the transportation of hazardous materials by train -- and whether new rules are needed to make the practice safer.

At any moment, thousands of chemical-loaded railroad cars are traveling the rails nationwide. At least a dozen trains chug through the upper Sacramento River canyon each day.

That area's most recent derailment took place last month, spilling 30 gallons of diesel, according to Union Pacific. California Trout put the total at 700 gallons.

Whatever the number, some say derailments like these may become more frequent as demand for chemical products increases.

"It's startling," said Mount Shasta resident Curtis Knight, who represents California Trout. "Union Pacific has described it (the track through the canyon) as their I-5, and it's going to get busier."

Union Pacific won't disclose what each of its cars contains, citing terrorism concerns. It is the nation's largest chemical hauler, carrying petroleum, fertilizer, plastics and sodium compounds, among other things.

The company says it's far safer to transport these materials by train than by truck. "Hazardous materials transportation is a necessity," said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis in Omaha, Neb. "It's things that we've become accustomed to, many of the products you find under your sink." The company says it spends $1.9 billion a year to improve its infrastructure, and nationwide the number of accidents is declining.

But after a deadly derailment and chlorine gas leak in South Carolina last month, some groups say cities and towns like Dunsmuir should have advance warning when dangerous materials pass through. Others feel hazardous loads should be detoured around sensitive areas.

The railroad says notifying authorities ahead of time would be an overwhelming task. And diverting trains on an alternate route around Dunsmuir or any other town would add hundreds of miles to the trip and endanger other communities.

What the railroad does do is train thousands of emergency responders like the north state's Shasta-Cascade Hazardous Materials Response Team.

Scott Holmquist of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said a warning system wouldn't be useful unless something very unusual was being shipped.

"We have a general idea what's on the railroad," said Holmquist, who works with the hazardous materials team. "It's no different than what's on the freeway."

Regulation of the railroad industry is handled by the Federal Railroad Administration, but some say the agency isn't doing enough to monitor Union Pacific.

There may be some new federal rules in the works. Legislation introduced earlier this month would increase maximum fines for gross negligence from $27,500 to $2.5 million. Union Pacific says it paid $4 million in federal fines last year.

The law would also require more frequent inspection of rail cars.

Berry hopes the state will one day gain some regulatory power over the railroad. The California Public Utilities Commission sought some control after the Cantara spill but was ultimately denied by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago.

The issue may get more attention as the federal government ships nuclear waste to a repository in southern Nevada starting in 2010. These tracks down the heart of Northern California have been identified as one possible shipment route.

Berry says whenever he sees a tank car rumbling along the river, he wonders what's inside. And he recalls the Cantara spill, when the train's uneven weight distribution caused it to topple, spilling herbicide and killing fish for 40 miles downstream.

"You almost have to assume that the stuff is going to get hauled," he said. "The real challenge is to improve railroad safety so that there's less risk of getting a tanker into the river."

Sacramento Bee – 2/25/05
By Peter H. Gleick, guest editorialist, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland

The federal government is on the verge of destroying for decades any chance of peacefully and economically solving California's water problems.

Unless the governor and our U.S. representatives intervene immediately, the Department of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation will push through new long-term contracts to provide heavily subsidized water to a small number of powerful irrigation districts at the expense of California's cities, family farmers, environment and economy.

The decisions are being made behind closed doors, with little or no public input or scrutiny. The consequences will be perpetuating waste and inefficiency, worsening conflict among water users and accelerating ecological destruction.

For the past 50 years, federal water policy has encouraged a few farmers to consume vast quantities of California's water. The water delivered by the federal Central Valley Project (CVP), built for and paid for by taxpayers, is sold for pennies on the dollar. The price doesn't even cover the project's operating and maintenance costs, much less the cost of building it. This might have made sense when the West was young, but in the 21st century, we know that such subsidies encourage the waste of water, lead to the production of surplus crops and hurt, rather than help, job growth and our economy.

Yet those original contracts are about to be renewed without the reforms or price increases needed to account for the new reality of water scarcity. According to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the cost to taxpayers of renewing these subsidies is at least $500 million over the next 10 years. In some cases, the new contracts offer water that may not be reliably available to irrigation districts that cannot prove they will actually use it.

We can, and should, support a healthy and strong agricultural sector in the state but without the waste and inefficiency encouraged by these federal subsidies. We know that heavily subsidized water is wasted. This is as true in California - where we grow crops that can be grown more efficiently elsewhere - as it is in India or China or the Middle East, where inappropriate subsidies are leading to groundwater depletion and contamination and the destruction of ecosystems.

The use of 1,000 acre-feet of water in California produces 9,000 jobs in the semiconductor industry, 2,500 jobs in commercial offices, 35 jobs in grape and wine production - but only three jobs growing cotton. The use of one acre-foot of water by the semiconductor industry produces gross state revenue of nearly $1 million; one acre-foot of water used to grow cotton and alfalfa produces just $60.

This is another example of the federal government burdening California employers and taxpayers and worsening our water challenges. It has shunted onto state taxpayers the costs of fixing California Bay-Delta water problems that were caused in no small part by inappropriate federal projects built over the past century. Now, these new contracts will take water owned by Californians and use it as political patronage.

The governor and our elected representatives in Washington must step in to protect California's interests, minimize taxpayers' costs and maximize economic growth.

If the federal government pushes these contracts to satisfy special interests, they must be limited to a single renewal, as required by law. The contracts must not give away water not reliably available or truly needed. The price of water must reflect the true costs of building and operating projects as well as the costs of providing that water in order to encourage those few subsidized farmers to use water efficiently and effectively.

These are the only ways to protect our critical supplies of freshwater for now and for the future.

Peter H. Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the Water Science and Technology Board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Reach him at info@pacinst.org. #

Creek work aids trout, crop; Fish, wine pair well together
San Luis Obispo Tribune - 2/18/05
By Michaela Baltasar, staff writer

Wolff Vineyards has partnered with several government agencies on a $38,000 project to restore habitat for the rare steelhead trout.

The goal is to reduce soil loss along the San Luis Obispo vineyard's three miles of creeks. These waterways empty into Pismo Creek, which is where young steelhead spend about two to three years before they grow large enough to swim to the ocean.

But the fish -- which are endangered on the Central Coast -- won't be the only ones to benefit.

"It's a significant improvement for fish habitat," said Jean-Pierre Wolff, owner of Wolff Vineyards. "But you're also reducing farming maintenance costs."

Additionally, less sediment makes it easier for water to percolate and replenish underground aquifers, which helps vineyards, said Wolff. He hopes other growers will realize the benefits of the project and implement similar programs.

Susan Litteral, field office engineer for Natural Resources Conservation Service in Templeton, designed the project using bioengineering methods, or procedures that coincide with what is happening naturally in the environment. Her design was then implemented by a team from the California Conservation Corps.

"The practices are really a softer approach to what people have been doing in the past," said Philip LaFollette, a CCC conservationist who specializes in fisheries.

Though the project involved creating a flood-plain terrace, as well as using some rock to counterbalance the energy of the creeks, vegetation was the main method of erosion prevention.

Young plants were introduced along waterways, and logs made of coconut fibers are being used to bolster the vegetation until root systems develop. The logs will decompose after about five years.

"It's so essential to get vegetation wherever water is flowing," Litteral said. "The plant roots hold the soil. It's our No. 1 priority."

The plants also create shade and provide food for fish when insects fall off the leaves. Additionally, they serve as a "buffer zone" along the vineyard's creeks.

"Every year when it rains, it becomes very slippery," Wolff said. "So we view this as a safety factor for workers who might be out at night."

Wolff started planning the project about two years ago. Implementation began in September, and the final phase of the project will be completed in March and April. That phase will involve installing temporary drip lines to water the young plants and encourage growth.

The vineyard will serve as a demonstration site for soil-loss reduction practices.

"I believe we're stewards of the land," Wolff said. "We have a responsibility, and I want my vineyard to be ecologically friendly."

About 75 percent of the project is funded by the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps family farmers pay for practices that protect soil and water. Wolff covers the remaining cost.

Other agencies involved include the state Department of Fish and Game, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. #

SAN FRANCISCO - Legal fights over water in the West are as common as summer rains are rare. But a flurry of cases in California is attracting intense attention from scholars and state officials who see them as an extraordinary assault by agricultural interests on protections for endangered fish and other wildlife.

In a series of lawsuits, including one to be argued before the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, farmers and water districts are pushing property-rights claims to the forefront of the debate over how to divvy up water among farms, cities and the environment.

In doing so, they are demanding compensation from the government for irrigation water diverted for environmental purposes, calling into question rules mandated by Congress under the Endangered Species Act that favor the protection of fish over the growing of food when water is in short supply.

It is an approach that has won sympathy from the Bush administration, which in December agreed to pay $16.7 million to farmers in Tulare and Kern Counties in one lawsuit over reduced water supplies. But the claims have alarmed California officials and many conservation groups, who fear that demands for payment for lost water could spread to other Western states and undermine protections for wildlife.

"This is hugely important, a growing storm cloud over the American West," said Richard M. Frank, California's chief deputy attorney general, who oversees water litigation and who opposes paying farmers for water diverted to endangered fish. "We will be seeing a lot more of these kinds of claims brought not only against the federal government but state governments."

William S. Smiland, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the farmers in the Supreme Court case, Francis A. Orff v. United States, said they and farmers in the other lawsuits had long gotten the short end of the stick and were only demanding their due.

"Nobody really cares about them," Mr. Smiland said. "I don't mean to be melodramatic, but they have no political clout. So this is law against politics."

In the early 1990's, many farmers in the Central Valley had their irrigation water halved by federal officials because of severe drought. Flows that normally would have gone to crops were left in rivers for salmon and other fish struggling to survive.

The water shortage took a financial toll on the farmers, whose fields extend across an arid ancient seabed that is the country's most productive farmland thanks to a system of dams and canals that brings snowmelt from distant mountains.

Some of the farmers, including Mr. Orff of Fresno County, sued the federal government for damages. The case has undergone changes over the years, and on Wednesday the Supreme Court will consider only a narrow contract issue that focuses on whether farmers, rather than their irrigation districts, have legal standing to sue the federal government.

But the reverberations of the case are considered much broader, because a victory for the farmers could open the door to many more lawsuits of the sort that led in December to the $16.7 million payment to farmers and irrigation districts in Tulare and Kern Counties, which also had their water supplies cut in the early 1990's. That settlement was the first by the federal government in a case in which farmers claimed their property rights had been violated by the taking of water to protect fish.

Though not binding on other cases, the victory has emboldened farmers and water districts across the state, prompted similar lawsuits and panicked environmentalists and some state officials, who worry that hard-won federal protections for endangered species could be weakened. They fear that the government will not make use of protections included in the Endangered Species Act, because courts could make the protections too expensive by forcing the government to pay costly damages.

At the center of the dispute is whether farmers who have contracts through their irrigation districts to receive water from public works projects, like the federally owned Central Valley Project in the Orff case, should be paid when the water they were expecting is not delivered.

The federal and state governments have long argued that water belongs to the public, not to the farmers, and can be used as the public dictates, in this case to save wildlife. But the farmers say their contracts for water deliveries are the legal equivalent of water rights, and as with any property right, the owner must be reimbursed under the Fifth Amendment if the government confiscates the property, something known as a "physical taking."

The water cases come at a time when the property rights movement has made strides and is looking to expand. In November, Oregon voters approved a referendum that allows property owners whose investments have been hurt by environmental or zoning rules to get government compensation for the losses, or an exemption from the rules. And on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether private economic development that will add to the tax base of New London, Conn., is an appropriate "public use" for which a city can exercise its power of eminent domain to condemn property.

Roger J. Marzulla, a Washington property rights lawyer who represented the farmers in the $16.7 million settlement, said that taking water from farms for fish was no different from taking someone's land to build a road. Since winning the case, Mr. Marzulla has filed similar claims totaling hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of farmers in the Klamath River basin and farmers and other customers of the Casitas Municipal Water District in Ventura County and the Stockton East Water District in San Joaquin County.

"If the government had to go around seizing people's homes and farms every time it wanted to build a road or hospital," he said, "and everybody knew they weren't going to be paid, you would have shootouts."

But until a judge in the United States Court of Federal Claims sided with the Tulare and Kern farmers in 2001, resulting in the settlement in December, the case law was on the side of the government. The judge, John P. Wiese, concluded that the water cutoff amounted to a physical taking, not a routine regulatory action as federal officials argued. He set the damages at $27 million, which was reduced in a settlement.

Judge Wiese's ruling was both unprecedented and hotly disputed, prompting a long list of government officials and agencies to recommend an appeal. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said the decision could lead to large payouts in other cases and a backdoor attack on the Endangered Species Act.

"With the federal government and the State of California facing continuing deficits, the government likely could not afford to provide the water the fish need," Ms. Feinstein said in a letter to administration officials.

When the Justice Department, in consultation with the Interior Department, decided not to appeal the decision, many critics saw the political influence of conservative property-rights advocates. Mr. Marzulla worked in the Justice Department in the Reagan administration and has close ties to the Bush administration.

"It's a signal from the Bush administration that it wants to encourage these guys who are filing these cases," said John D. Echeverria, executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, who has been involved in the Klamath lawsuit.

"It was a very extreme decision ripe for overruling," Mr. Echeverria said of Judge Wiese's ruling, "which made the decision of the United States to settle so troubling."

Bush administration officials say the settlement saved taxpayers money. The case had been in the courts for more than six years, the government had lost and by settling, the damages were significantly reduced.

Sue Ellen Woolridge, solicitor for the Interior Department, said it was unlikely that Judge Wiese's ruling would affect other water cases, because although many seem alike, the legal circumstances are different.

Nonetheless, Ms. Woolridge said she and other administration officials agreed philosophically with the farmers that all Americans, not just the few who lose water, should share the cost of protecting wildlife.

"If we have a public good which is reflected in the Endangered Species Act," she said, "it's fair that the act should be supported by all taxpayers as opposed to having only particular individuals have to pay for that public good."

Joseph L. Sax, a professor emeritus of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who was counselor to Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, when Mr. Babbitt was interior secretary, said the Bush administration had "raised a pretty prominent flag of warning" to backers of the environmental protections.

"I am not an alarmist," Professor Sax said, "and I don't think it is appropriate to say this is the beginning of the end for regulation of water rights. But it really is a significant change." #

SAN FRANCISCO – In a series of lawsuits, including one to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow, farmers and water districts are pushing property-rights claims to the forefront of the debate over how to divvy up water among farms, cities and the environment.

In doing so, they are demanding compensation from the government for irrigation water diverted for environmental purposes, calling into question rules in the Endangered Species Act that favor the protection of fish over the growing of food when water is in short supply.

It is an approach that has won sympathy from the Bush administration, which in December agreed to pay $16.7 million to farmers in Tulare and Kern counties in one lawsuit to compensate for reduced water supplies. But the claims have alarmed California officials and many conservation groups, who fear that demands for payment for lost water could spread to other Western states and undermine protections for wildlife.

"This is hugely important, a growing storm cloud over the American West," said Richard M. Frank, California's chief deputy attorney general, who oversees water litigation and who opposes paying farmers for water diverted to endangered fish.

William S. Smiland, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the farmers in the Supreme Court case, Francis A. Orff v. United States, said they and farmers in the other lawsuits had long gotten the short end of the stick and were only demanding their due.

"Nobody really cares about them," Smiland said. "I don't mean to be melodramatic, but they have no political clout. So this is law against politics."

The Supreme Court will consider only the narrow issue of whether farmers, rather than their irrigation districts, have legal standing to sue the federal government.

But the reverberations of the case are considered much broader, because a victory for the farmers could open the door to many more lawsuits. #

San Francisco Chronicle - 2/16/05
By Tom Stienstra, staff outdoors columnist
[excerpted]
The Trinity River will be transformed into one of the West's top rafting rivers this spring when water flows are projected to increase by five to 10 times of past years.

Instead of running at a typical 600 to 1,000 cubic feet per second (CFS), a Clinton-era plan will be implemented that jumps river flows to 4,000 to 6, 000 CFS, on the average, this spring and early summer. The high flows are expected to jump-start increased runs of salmon and steelhead later this year, help reconfigure the river bottom and increase spawning gravels.

"For rafters, the Trinity River will become to Northern California what the Stanislaus is to the Sierra Nevada and the Grand Canyon is to the Colorado River," said Bob Warren, the general manager of the Shasta Cascade Wonderland Association in Redding.

The Trinity River is created from the drops of melting snow in the Trinity Alps northwest of Redding. It flows into Trinity Lake and Lewiston Lake, and then runs along Highway 299 until it joins with the Klamath River at Weitchpec to form one of the West's most significant waterways.

But in the past 40 years, up to 90 percent of the Trinity's water has been diverted and sent to points south, mainly to the San Joaquin Valley.

In the process, fish runs on the Trinity were devastated. In the drought of 1976-77, only 13 steelhead returned to the state's fish hatchery on the river. Yet last year, with an increase in flows, 4,500 steelhead made the trip.

Water managers are expected to announce this year's flow regime for the Trinity in late April, when they can better assess the water content in the snowpack in the Trinity Alps. On Feb. 1, the water content of the snowpack in the Trinity River Basin was 130 percent of normal for the date, and more rain and snow is expected all week there.

One of the side effects of 40 years of low, steady flows has been the channelization of the river bed, Warren noted. In rivers where there are fluctuating and high flows, rock, boulders and gravels are constantly shifting and transforming the contour of the river bottom and creating fish habitat.

"That hasn't happened on the Trinity," Warren said. "We're going to see if it can be reversed."

A key to the new program moving forward is that the Westlands Water District southwest of Fresno, which has taken as much water as the Trinity River supplied, did not appeal a court decision last summer won by the Hoopa Valley Indian Tribe. The tribe won a judgment from the 9th Circuit of Appeals that the water diversions (and lost spawning habitat) on the Trinity River caused an 80 percent loss to salmon and steelhead runs.

Wilderness bill: The Northern California Costal Wild Heritage Act, that is, the proposal to create more wilderness lands, is back again. The latest version proposes to create a 42,000-acre wilderness in the King Range on the Lost Coast in Humboldt County, a new 5,740-acre wilderness in Six Rivers National Forest in the northwestern corner of the state, and enlarge existing wilderness in the Trinity Alps, Yolla Bollys in Mendocino National Forest, and the Siskiyou Wilderness near Oregon.

Numbers are in: The 2004 salmon run on the Sacramento River numbered 352, 500 fish -- not great, not bad. This is the run that supplies the Bay Area and Golden Gate Fleet with its salmon. Record high: 840,000 salmon in 2002. Record low: 86,700 salmon in 1990. #

Bakersfield Californian - 2/17/05
By Steve E. Swenson, staff writer
A more detailed study of snowpack and runoff in the Sacramento River watershed led to no increase in the expected amount of water available for the State Water Project, engineers said Wednesday. The estimate of delivery by the state Department of Water Resources is 60 percent of requested amounts, the same as predicted in January, said Donald Marquez, senior engineer with the Kern County Water Agency.

Meanwhile, the prediction for water delivery in the Friant Division of the Central Valley Project is 86 percent of the historic water supply, the federal Bureau of Reclamation reported.

"This is the biggest water supply we have had in the last six years," said Ron Jacobsma, the general manager for the Friant Water Authority, which generally serves agriculture on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County.

It could help recharge the groundwater basin in Kern County, he said.

Both estimates are conservative and subject to change depending upon precipitation and snow pack in coming months, Marquez and Jacobsma said.

"There is concern but not panic," Marquez said.

The State Water Project provides about 23 percent of the water used in Kern County. Other sources include the Kern River (22 percent), the Friant-Kern Canal (11 percent) and groundwater (43 percent). Those amounts are averages and can vary widely among individual users.

Marquez said a thorough study of snowpack and runoff is conducted in February. What it showed was that the dry ground in the northern Sierra absorbed much of the water from this season's precipitation, he said.

Earlier studies are not as thorough, he said.

By the end of last season, the State Water Project provided 65 percent of requested amounts.

Kern County has requested nearly 1 million acre feet.

The projected supply for the Friant Division is 1.29 million acre feet for Kern, Tulare, Fresno and Madera counties.

An acre foot is the amount of water to cover an acre or a football field to a depth of one foot, and to supply the needs of two families for a year. #

Eureka Times-Standard – 2/16/05
By John Driscoll, Staff Writer

Northern California interests are lining up to protest the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's plans to forge long-term water contracts with irrigators in the Central Valley -- pacts Trinity River advocates believe threaten the river's source of cold water.

Humboldt and Trinity counties, fishing and environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are among those who have lodged complaints about the environmental documents drafted for the 25-year contracts for the Central Valley Project. Specifically, the groups focused on contracts for the San Luis Unit, which include eight water contractors in the Western San Joaquin Valley.

Essentially, the groups say that the document doesn't explore just how Reclamation will supply promised water to the unit while cutting exports from the Trinity River, as cleared in a case won by the Hoopa Valley Tribe in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

One longtime expert, Trinity County Senior Planner Tom Stokely, believes the water in part will have to be pulled out of Trinity Reservoir. If the lake were drawn down further than typical in the fall, more water from winter rains and snow could be stored before spilling over Lewiston Dam, he said. That could allow more water to be exported to the Sacramento River, from where water is sent to Central Valley irrigators.

"It's the only way they can send more water to these districts," Stokely said.

It could also deplete the cold water available in the fall for salmon in the Trinity and the Klamath River, which it flows into.

Among the districts whose contract is up in 2007 is Westlands Water District, the nemesis of the Hoopa Valley Tribe during the five-year legal battle and 30-year war over the river's water. Westlands in January conceded its case to the tribe, clearing the way for higher flows and fish restoration efforts on the river.

In recent years, the state and federal water pact called CalFed has provided Westlands with between 55 percent and 70 percent of its contracted deliveries. The 2000 federal decision to restore the river -- cleared through the circuit court -- calls for a reduction in that amount, to 50 percent.

But a Dec. 23, 2004, letter to Congressman George Miller from Reclamation Commissioner John Keyes III suggests that the agency intends to deliver the full amount to its contractors by 2025. In Westlands' case, it's difficult to know where that water would come from. The district is the primary beneficiary of Trinity water as laid out in the 1955 legislation that authorized the Trinity project.

Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said a number of studies are underway that look at increasing the yield of the Central Valley Project, a vast array of reservoirs and canals. The assumption that 100 percent of the water could be delivered is from projections that new or improved storage will come on line, McCracken said, and that increased yields can be gained from the system's reservoirs.

"To meet all our environmental needs we use water from our reservoirs," McCracken said, "and in order to meet all our contractual needs we would use all of our reservoirs."

But in allocations for 2005 released Tuesday, Reclamation is allowing for 65 percent of water deliveries for agriculture south of the Sacramento River Delta, including the San Joaquin Valley.

Stokely can't see how that figure can be reached, since the Trinity restoration plan calls for a reduction in water exports to 50 percent. The water would have to come from storage -- including Trinity Lake, he said -- since none of the bureau's long-term projects have been realized.

Nearly half of Westlands requires drainage service that it doesn't have, and some districts in the area are waterlogged and contaminated with boron and salt. Providing for drainage could cost billions.

The draft document for the San Luis Unit doesn't look at a range of alternatives including not renewing the contracts; doesn't address reducing water deliveries to waterlogged lands; or consider how contaminated runoff will be drained from those areas, Humboldt County's letter to Reclamation reads.

The EPA called the document "inadequate" since it doesn't deal with the environmental impacts of full water deliveries or those deliveries' effects on drainage.

A slate of environmental groups like Friends of the Trinity River and California Trout ask that the draft document be tossed out. It never addresses the benefits of retiring land in the Central Valley, or deals with the toxic drainage issue, the groups wrote.

It also only casually references the bureau's trust responsibilities to the Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes.

In its comments, the Hoopa Tribe claims Reclamation is looking at the contract renewals in a vacuum, without considering the needs of the Trinity. Reclamation must consider reductions in water exports as a possibility, the tribe wrote. #

After 100 years, some steelhead return to Crocker Creek near Cloverdale to spawn
Santa Rosa Press Democrat - 2/13/05
By Mike McCoy, staff writer
It's been 100 years since steelhead trout have been able to spread their eggs in Crocker Creek, a tributary that feeds into the Russian River southeast of Cloverdale. Last week, the first steelhead to be seen in the creek since 1904 were spotted, much to the delight and surprise of government officials.

"We've been crossing our fingers and holding our breath," said Sean White, a fisheries biologist with the Sonoma County Water Agency.

White and Department of Fish and Game officials have waited three years to see if the threatened species would return to the creek, which stretches from the Russian River into steep canyons five miles to the east.

It is an area where steelhead have been blocked from their historic spawning grounds since 1904 when a concrete dam was erected by the Crocker banking family. The family owned most of the land surrounding the creek until they sold it in the 1970s.

The dam was originally built to a height of six feet and about 10 feet wide to provide a summertime swimming hole for the Crockers, White said. But over the next 50 years, the dam grew. The Crocker family raised the dam several times as sediment collected behind the barrier, turning the swimming hole into a wading pool. By the 1950s, the dam was 30 feet tall and spanned 100 to 150 feet between the top of the creek's banks. "It looked like a mini-Hoover Dam," White said. "Most people would have simply dredged out the sediment but the Crocker family was so rich, they just decided to make it taller instead."

By the late 1990s the aging dam, under intense hydrologic pressure generated by a deluge of El Niño rains, began to crack. By 2000, half of it had crumbled into the creekbed. In 2002, the Water Agency, with funding assistance from the state and federal government, spent $360,000 to remove the remaining remnants of the dam, recontour the creek's banks and revegetate the area.

Despite the work and the dam's removal, officials were left with one huge unanswered question: Would steelhead, a fish that returns to spawn in the same stream it was born, ever return and procreate? "After all, this is a place steelhead haven't been for a century and with Mother Nature you just never know," White said.

"We were wondering whether fish would ever find this area again," he said. The answer to that question came this past week when White, along with other agency officials, began walking upstream from the former dam, located on Crocker Creek about a mile east from the Russian River. "The first thing I found was a steelhead carcass and then I walked a little further and found a steelhead (egg) nest," he said. "It was obvious then that the dead guy I had just found had a girlfriend," White said.

Four more nests, along with some still living steelhead - including one that weighed around 12 pounds - were found as the upstream trek continued, White said. Evidence of the steelhead's return was pretty easy to find, since the creek's flow is down to a trickle. "When the water recedes this much, the fish stick out like a sore thumb," White said.

The only places for steelhead to survive currently, at least until the next rains come, are in deeper pools of water found along the drying creekbed, White said. While the number of steelhead counted was relatively small, the idea they have returned at all is much more important, he said. "We hear a lot of questions these days about whether restoration works. Projects like this are proof they do," White said.#

San Jose Mercury News - 2/11/05
By Paul Rogers, staff writer
In a move that could tip California's powerful state Fish and Game Commission more toward environmentalists' interests, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger withdrew his nomination Thursday of commission member Marilyn Hendrickson.

Schwarzenegger appointed Hendrickson, 66, a Vacaville Republican and co-owner of Sep's Pro Fishing, a tackle supply business, in March. But she had not been confirmed by the Senate.

She drew opposition from environmentalists during the past year for votes opposing endangered protections for coho salmon, the tri-colored blackbird and the tiger salamander. She voted no last week on a proposal to ban lead bullets.

Senate Democrats, led by Oakland's Don Perata, refused to hold confirmation hearings for her.

"This just shows you what environmentalists can do when they are running rampant,'' said her husband, Joe "Sep'' Hendrickson.

Environmentalists celebrated. "Her record was consistently against conservation,'' said Ann Notthoff, a lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.#

San Francisco Chronicle - 2/10/05
By Zachary Coile, staff writer
WASHINGTON - Scientists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they've been forced to alter or withhold findings that would have led to greater protections for endangered species, according to a survey released Wednesday by two environmental groups.

The scientists charge that top regional and national officials in the agency suppressed scientific information to avoid confrontations with industry groups or to follow the Bush administration's political policies.

The mail-in survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility -- which drew responses from 414 of 1,400 biologists, ecologists, botanists and other scientists -- was not a scientific poll. But the two groups said the large number of responses reflect concern by of many Fish and Wildlife Service employees that political appointees are inappropriately influencing the science that drives decisions to list species and protect their habitat.

A spokesman for the agency said he could not comment on the report until agency officials have had time to review it.

But an Interior Department official said the survey results reflect the natural tension between agency scientists and managers in making tough decisions about protecting species.

"There's nothing inappropriate about people higher up the chain of command supervising the work of people below them and reaching different scientific conclusions," said Hugh Vickery, an Interior Department spokesman.

"These (decisions) should get scrutiny. That's what they pay these folks for," he said. "The question at hand is, are they doing their job properly and in accordance with the law? The answer is yes. Does everyone like it? No. But they are doing it properly."

The results were released a day before Republican leaders in Congress, led by House Resources Chairman Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, were scheduled to announce their strategy to pass a major overhaul of the Endangered Species Act, which critics say is failing to save species from extinction.

Two senior House Democrats who oppose the proposed changes to the act sent a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton on Wednesday urging her to respond to the charges of political interference by agency officials.

"The Fish and Wildlife Service's credibility rests on its scientific integrity," wrote Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W. Va. "If political agendas are allowed to overrule science, that credibility will be compromised."

Forty-four percent of the scientists who responded to the survey said they have been asked by their superiors to avoid making findings that would require greater protection of endangered species.

One in five agency scientists reported being directed to alter or withhold technical information from scientific documents.

And more than half of the respondents -- 56 percent -- said agency officials have reversed or withdrawn scientific conclusions under pressure from industry groups.

The sponsors of the survey, who often have criticized President Bush's environmental policies, said the results are part of a broader effort by administration officials to mold scientific findings to support their policies.

Last week, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency reported that the agency has failed to fully assess the health impacts of mercury pollution because political appointees have intervened and compromised scientific practices. EPA officials denied the charge.

"The political manipulation of science is an ongoing problem with this administration," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nearly 30 percent of the Fish and Wildlife Service scientists queried responded to the survey -- a high rate, especially since several regional offices had urged employees not to reply. An official in the Great Lakes regional office asked the staff, in a memo, not to fill out the survey "in the office or from home."

Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Mitch Snow said officials in Washington had directed employees only to not answer any unauthorized surveys during working hours.

The written comments reflect a view shared by many agency scientists that politics have clouded decisions on whether to list species as endangered and designate areas of critical habitat.

One scientist from the Pacific region, which includes California and five other western states, reported being involved in two decisions to list species as endangered that were reversed, allegedly due to political pressure.

"Science was ignored -- and, worse, manipulated to build a bogus set of rationale for reversal of these listing decisions," the scientist wrote.

Another scientist from the Pacific region concluded: "I have never seen so many findings and recommendations by the field be turned around at the regional and Washington level. All we can do at the field level is ensure that our administrative record is complete and hope we get sued by an environmental or conservation organization."

The survey gave no specifics about which agency decisions were changed because of politics. The survey's sponsors said many scientists did not cite specific cases for fear they would be identified and would face retaliation for speaking out.

Sally Stefferud, a scientist who worked for 20 years at the agency before retiring three years ago, said that in the past political pressure affected only a few high-profile decisions but that now it is affecting almost all agency actions on endangered species.

Stefferud, who helped prepare the study, noted that field scientists in the Southwest region who study the impact of grazing on federal lands are now accompanied by the grazing permit holders, who she said are unlikely to show researchers any potential harm to endangered species.

"The data can become very easily distorted," Stefferud said. #

More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds.
Los Angeles Times - 2/10/05
By Julie Cart, staff writer
More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says. The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected.

More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson, an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its implementation has imposed hardships on developers and others while failing to restore healthy populations of wildlife. Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the administration is pushing to revamp the act. The president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered species programs.

"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so."

The two groups that circulated the survey also made available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys. Fish and Wildlife scientists in 90 national offices were asked 42 questions and given space to respond in essay form in the mail-in survey sent in November.

One scientist working in the Pacific region, which includes California, wrote: "I have been through the reversal of two listing decisions due to political pressure. Science was ignored - and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions." More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information."

However, 69% said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so.

Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.

"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency."

A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."

Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to be exempt from politics or pressure.

"I've not stood in the shoes of any of those scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to believe that there are pressures from those who are not happy with conservation objectives, and here I am referring to development interest and others.

"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics - that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it."

The Union of Concerned Scientists and the public employee group provided copies of the survey and excerpts from essay-style responses.

One biologist based in California, who responded to the survey, said in an interview with The Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding any species to the endangered species list.

"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. #

Redding Record Searchlight - 2/10/05
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
It doesn't seem like a fitting end for the "king fish." Hefty chinook salmon float in the Sacramento River, their carcasses bloated and anything but dignified. These are the same fish that beat the odds, swimming all the way to the ocean and escaping predators and fishermen's nets before fighting their way back upstream to spawn. Now they're dead and rotting in the river. Not a glorious way to go. But in death, these fish serve one more critical purpose. State biologists are able to estimate each year's salmon run populations in part by counting their bodies.

The results are used to discern trends, set fishing limits or quotas and evaluate hotly debated water-management policies. Preliminary figures estimate 352,535 fall-run chinook spawned in the Sacramento River system last year, down from a record high two years ago and the lowest total since 1998. Still, the salmon run was a healthy one compared with the 1980s and early 1990s.

Many of the fish that spawned this year in the Sacramento and its tributaries hatched three years ago in the same waters before heading to the ocean. So comparing the numbers on a year-to-year basis doesn't give a true picture, said Department of Fish and Game fisheries biologist Randy Benthin.

"This is an inexact science," he said. "But we want to be as accurate as we can." The numbers show that tributaries like Clear Creek are particularly important for salmon. About 193,000 fall-run fish spawned in tributaries last year, compared with just 43,600 in the river itself. Another 116,000 came from hatcheries.

More than 140,000 chinook salmon made it past the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, spawning somewhere between there and Keswick Dam, which blocks historic habitat upstream. Hundreds of thousands of fish may sound like a lot, but each female chinook can carry 3,000 to 5,000 eggs. Only a few will survive long enough to replenish the population in three years' time.

The dangers are many. Sometimes the salmon run takes a hit if there's not enough water released in the spring to flush juvenile fish downstream through the delta, Benthin said. Even with plenty of water, the juveniles must avoid getting gobbled up by critters. Once they reach the ocean, they need favorable currents to lift nutrients off the bottom. At the same time, they must evade the nets of commercial fishermen.

Finally, they tackle the long journey upstream, imperiled this time by recreational fishermen. "It's a challenge," Benthin said. But all it takes is two surviving fish to give life to thousands more.

While officials called last year's Sacramento run "decent," better news still is that winter-run salmon, which dwindled as low as 186 fish in 1994, have risen to between 7,400 and 8,800 the past four years. "They are definitely coming back from the brink of extinction," said associate fisheries biologist Doug Killam of Red Bluff.

The concern is with the Klamath system, where some fear the next fall run will be smaller because of a fish kill that took a chunk out of the previous generation in 2002. Just shy of 89,000 fall-run chinook salmon returned to the Klamath and Trinity rivers last year, said Wade Sinnen of Fish and Game's Arcata office. The average is about 126,000 fish. "This was a poor year," Sinnen said. "We're probably going to have pretty conservative limits."

Besides counting carcasses, officials also trap fish, study their nests and conduct snorkel surveys to estimate their populations. Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations attributed the fall-run's abundance in recent years -- and its decline in 2004 -- to changing ocean conditions. "There's hardly any concern," he said.

Fish numbers
The Sacramento River's fall-run chinook salmon run has fluctuated greatly over the years, according to state biologists' annual estimations:
2004: 352,535
2003: 578,989
2002: 839,956 (record high)
2001: 569,976
1998: 226,760 (previous low)
1990: 86,748 (record low)
1954: 412,000 #

Bloomberg News - 2/7/05
U.S. President George W. Bush asked Congress to cut the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for fiscal 2006 by 5.6 percent to $7.57 billion by paring water- related programs.

This is the second year in a row the Bush administration has sought to cut the EPA budget. Last year, it requested $7.76 billion, or a cut of 7 percent from fiscal 2004. Congress restored the fiscal 2005 budget to $8.02 billion.

"Unfortunately, it's kind of like Groundhog Day. It's more of the same of what we've seen in the past,'' said Wesley Warren, deputy director for advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group.

Bush cut $361 million from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a 33 percent decrease from fiscal 2005. The fund provides communities with low-interest loans to fix and update local water infrastructure. The federal government pays into the fund annually, and states match the contribution with the expectation that the fund, which now has $52 billion, will be self-sufficient, paying out $3.4 billion to states annually.

"The administration has arbitrarily selected a target for the fund to revolve at which doesn't necessarily mean that at this point they are self sufficient -- it means we have large and growing gap between our water infrastructure needs and our water investments,'' Warren said in a telephone interview.

Over the last three years, Bush has cut the federal government's contribution from $1.34 billion in 2004 to an estimated $730 million in 2006, a 46 percent decline.

Associated Press - 2/7/05 [Excerpt]
WASHINGTON - Some of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top federal funding priorities for California would go unmet under the lean $2.57 trillion federal budget President Bush proposed Monday.

Funding increases the governor requested for after-school programs, water quality improvement and reimbursing states for the cost of jailing illegal immigrants all were ignored.

Other programs were funded at levels less than Schwarzenegger sought - among them the CalFed water project to restore California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a high-tech research project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Schwarzenegger wanted $100 million in 2006 in direct spending for California Federal Bay-Delta water projects, but the budget includes only $81 million, according to Keith Coolidge, spokesman for the California Bay-Delta Authority.

Schwarzenegger asked for more money for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which provides money for water quality protection projects. Instead funding was decreased from $1 billion to $730 million.#

Marysville Appeal-Democrat - 2/6/05
By Harold Kruger, staff writer
A Sutter County irrigation district is pushing ahead with a conjunctive-use program to provide enough water to meet its share of Bay-Delta needs. The Sutter Extension Water District has a $1.5 million CalFed grant to pay for two deep wells, three monitoring wells, a recharge program, and a public involvement and education program. "We were under the gun, so to speak, for providing water for water quality in the Delta," said Paul Russell, Sutter Extension's manager.

The 25,000-acre district has rights to about 160,000 acre-feet of water from the Feather River. Typical annual use is 135,000 to 150,000 acre-feet, based on how much rice is planted, Russell said.

About 15,000 acres of rice are grown annually in the district. Other major crops include fruits and nuts, row crops, pasture and alfalfa. The district covers much of northern Sutter County to the edge of the Sutter Buttes, then along the Sutter Bypass to Highway 113.

Sutter Extension and about 40 other irrigation districts are participating in the Sacramento Valley Water Management Program to provide water to improve water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. "We felt like we didn't contribute to the problem, but we didn't want to fight this thing in litigation," Russell said.

Two years ago, the north state water districts agreed to a management program to avoid a lengthy and contentious hearing before the state Water Resources Control Board. The state board was about to open its Phase 8 hearing to determine how valley water-rights holders would contribute their supplies for Bay and Delta quality. In 1998 and 1999, the board went through the first seven phases of its hearings.

The deal called for valley water suppliers to develop projects as part of an integrated water management program to provide water to farms, cities, fish and wildlife, while meeting environmental needs and improving water supplies and quality.

The two new production wells, to be located in the center of the district, have a capacity to produce up to 8,000 gallons per minute. Three monitoring wells, measuring at three stages per well, also will be drilled. "We have to monitor the water for a year before we can pump the wells to see what the groundwater basin is doing," Russell said.

Groundwater will be used in place of water that would have been diverted from the Feather River. Just how much water will be diverted for use in the Bay and Delta hasn't been determined, Russell said.

To help recharge the groundwater, the district will encourage rice growers to expand their use of rice straw decomposition, currently at about 7,000 acres, to 8,000 acres. Farmers flood their fields from mid-October through January to break down the straw. About 4 acre-feet of water is applied per acre.The water then percolates to the groundwater basin. Flooding fields also creates excellent bird habitat.

Sutter Extension, formed in the early 1950s, adopted a groundwater management plan in 1995. It is a partner with Biggs-West Gridley Water District, Richvale Irrigation District and the Butte Water District in the maintenance and operation of the Sutter-Butte Main Canal System. The four districts divert 555,000 acre-feet annually under their pre-1914 water rights.

Sutter Extension's share is 111,000 acre-feet. It also has rights to another 50,000 acre-feet per year as a base amount from its Sunset Pump near Live Oak. That figure could reach 65,00 acre-feet in a "good year," Russell said.#

Marysville Appeal-Democrat - 2/4/05
By Harold Kruger, staff writer
A two-year planning effort is under way to improve wildlife habitat conservation along the Sacramento River between Princeton and Colusa. The Colusa Subreach Planning process is bringing landowners and local interests together with government agencies and conservation organizations.

A joint effort of the Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum and The Nature Conservancy, it will focus on how to best integrate conservation activities inside the levees with agriculture, recreation and flood control.

A public meeting is set for Feb. 17. The planning effort is reaching out to residents of Colusa and Glenn counties at the beginning of the process before plans are set and decisions are made. Some Sacramento Valley residents have questioned the possible effects of wildlife habitat restoration on farming, local government and flood control.

"This is partially a response to that, to try and get folks involved and get some of the questions and issues they had," said Gregg Werner, a conservation planner with The Nature Conservancy.

A wide range of public outreach efforts are planned to involve local landowners and other interests, including a telephone survey and information at local libraries and a Web site. CalFed, the state and federal partnership to address both water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration, is funding the Colusa Subreach Planning effort with about $1.5 million.

A 21-member advisory group has been formed that includes representatives from the city of Colusa, Colusa County, Glenn County, Princeton-Codora-Glenn Irrigation District and the Family Water Alliance, as well as local farming, business, recreation and conservation interests. State and federal agencies are also represented. The goal is to bring all the key interests to the table to help determine practical strategies for the Princeton-to-Colusa area that landowners can live with.

The loss of more than 90 percent of the native vegetation along the river and the resulting loss of fish and wildlife led to state and federal efforts to restore the wildlife habitat along the river.#

Redding Record Searchlight - 2/4/05
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
All this sunshine is deceiving. It’s still winter, and the mountains surrounding Redding have a generous snowpack to prove it. Surveys in seven regional watersheds over the past week show a snowpack up to 142 percent of normal for this time of year. Just one, the Pit River basin, was below average, at 84 percent. Overall, the figures are good news for the state’s sought-after water supply. But managers need look no further than last year for a reminder not to get too excited.

At this time in 2004, the numbers were even better than they are now. The Trinity River basin, for example, already boasted as much snow as it would normally have at the beginning of April. And the Sacramento River basin was 133 percent of average, compared with 129 percent this year. Then the rain and snow stopped. By April the snowpack had dwindled to near normal.

Crews recently completed early snow surveys of river basins throughout California, including:

Sacramento River basin (129 percent of normal)
Trinity River basin (130 percent of normal)
McCloud River basin (137 percent of normal)
Pit River basin (84 percent of normal)
Shasta River basin (142 percent of normal)
Scott River basin (113 percent of normal)
Feather River basin (128 percent of normal)

A repeat isn’t likely, said Dave Hart of the state’s Department of Water Resources in Sacramento. "To turn around and do it again for the second year in a row, with all the snow we have, would really be against the odds," Hart said Thursday. Officials are optimistic that there will be more water to go around this summer for farms, cities and wildlife.

In the north state, peaks over 6,000 feet are buried in anywhere from 70 to 110 inches of snow. The north state’s most prominent snow-capped feature, Mt. Shasta, has been loaded down with 264 inches of powder so far this season — about 22 feet.

In some areas, strong winds have scoured away that snow, leaving only rock and ice and creating huge drifts elsewhere. On the lower flanks of Lassen Peak, 116 inches of snow have been recorded, according to snow survey data. Surveys typically take place once a month from December or January through April. Crews from the U.S. Forest Service or other agencies trek into remote basins on snowshoes or catch a ride on a helicopter if weather allows. Farmers pay close attention to the results.

"The numbers we’re seeing right now are excellent," said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition. Normal or above normal precipitation for the rest of the season will yield a better than average water year — something California "sorely needs," he said. Still, he continued to call for increased water storage in California through projects such as the raising of Shasta Dam. "There are unmet needs every year," Wade said Thursday.

In an unusual twist, Southern California peaks are blanketed with more snow than the ranges of the north. The southern Sierra Nevada, for example, is at 200 percent of normal; the northern Sierra is 143 percent of normal; and the state as a whole sits at 163 percent. With nearly 23 inches of rain in the valley, Redding’s precipitation is about 128 percent of normal. And Lake Shasta is rising more each day after reaching its lowest levels in a decade last fall.

The only gloomy outlook is for the upper Klamath Basin in southern Oregon, where the snowpack is 42 percent of average and total precipitation just 71 percent. Officials there already have asked the governor for a drought declaration, fearing there won’t be enough water to nourish crops and protect endangered species.

Farmers in the Sacramento Valley likely won’t have that problem. The Bureau of Reclamation already has predicted full deliveries for those farms this summer. Depending on the weather, of course. "As far advanced as meteorology is, we still can’t predict the future," Hart said.#

Chico Enterprise Record - 2/3/05
By Heather Hacking, staff writer
A four-county Northern California water quality program got a jump-start with money to help understand and coordinate drinking water quality in Glenn, Butte, Tehama and Colusa counties.

The $250,000 grant comes from the California Bay Delta Authority (formerly CalFed) and will be used to help meet the water quality goals of the region.

"One of the resources we share is a huge groundwater pool," said Lester Messina, water resources coordinator in Glenn County.

"We need to figure out ways to protect our drinking water quality. We need to figure out ways to protect our sources first, and then later may be able to help the downstream diverters, ensuring our practices here will keep theirs at a level of high quality," Messina said.

General guidelines for the planning process were reported by Bob Vince and John Ayres of Camp Dresser and McKee at a recent meeting of a stakeholder group.

The plan is needed because surface and groundwater does not recognize political boundaries, demand for water is destined to increase and collaboration helps people understand the water resources available, Vince and Ayres explained during the presentation.

Some of the goals include keeping water quality high and helping the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Board develop drinking water policies.

Each county already has various agencies that oversee different aspects of water, such as public health departments, environmental health and water commissions. Other state and federal agencies also overlap with jurisdiction. Part of the goal of the program will be to coordinate how these various agencies manage the resource.

The plan will also link up with statewide drinking water quality programs and include environmental protection.

Messina said this part of the state doesn't currently have a lot of groundwater quality problems and "we want to make sure we don't."

"If we do anything to impede the quality of drinking water; once you do that it is very hard to recover," he said.

A public meeting will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Monday Afternoon Club, 120 N. Lassen St. in Willows.

At that meeting each county will give an overview of its water activity. Presenters include representatives from Colusa Basin Drain District, UC Davis Cooperative Extension, the Butte County Water Commission, Tehama County Flood Control District and water conservation, Colusa County Planning Department and Glenn County Water Advisory Committee.

Messina said he sees the water quality regional planning as a complement to efforts to create a statewide water management plan that takes into consideration the various water needs of Californians. #

News release, Pacific Gas and Electric Company - 2/2/05
SACRAMENTO - The Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council today announced that Jayne Battey will serve as the organization's first Executive Director. Battey, of Half Moon Bay, California, will begin on April 1, 2005.

"Jayne Battey's extensive professional experience in environmental planning and regulatory coordination combined with her proven innovative leadership skills make her an ideal executive director for the Stewardship Council," said Mike Chrisman, Secretary for the California Resources Agency and current president of the Stewardship Council board of directors.

"She joins the Stewardship Council at an exciting time as we develop the plans to administer grants as part of the Youth Investment Initiative and to permanently protect 140,000 acres of Pacific Gas and Electric Company-owned watershed lands."

Battey is currently president of Essex Environmental, Inc., a company she co-founded in 1988 that specializes in environmental planning, training, and regulatory compliance for major infrastructure projects across the United States. In 2002, Battey sold Essex to TRC Companies, Inc. and is now transitioning senior staff into executive positions for to the current owners.

As Essex president, Battey was responsible for all business operations and an organization with gross revenues of more than $10 million annually and a staff of more than 100 environmental and business management professionals.

"It's an honor to take the reins of the Stewardship Council," said Battey, Executive Director of the Stewardship Council. "Seldom does one get an opportunity to take part in such a monumental effort that comes with such a strong, results-oriented board of directors. With that support, I am confident we will make important and long-lasting contributions to California."

In eight short months of existence, under Secretary Chrisman's leadership, the Stewardship Council has completed all necessary tasks to become an operational California non-profit corporation, including selecting its executive director. It has launched into the land use planning and grant writing activities that are a core part of its mission.

The Stewardship Council was established to develop and implement a plan for the protection of 140,000 aces of PG&E's Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain Watershed lands and Carizzo Plains for the benefit of current and future generations of Californians. The Council will also administer a fund to acquire and maintain urban parks and recreation areas, and provide outdoor education and recreation opportunities for youth from urban areas.

Please visit www.pge.com/about_us/environmental_enhancement_corp/ for more information about the Stewardship Council. #

Group wants more review of planned water bottling plant
Redding Record Searchlight - 2/3/05
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
MCCLOUD -- Residents fighting a proposed water bottling plant in this old timber town are taking their case to court today, claiming that state environmental law has been violated.

Concerned McCloud Citizens -- a group composed of an unknown number of residents -- has filed a lawsuit asking a Siskiyou County judge to set aside an agreement allowing Nestle Waters North America to open a $60 million plant.

Nestle and the McCloud Community Services District announced the agreement in 2003. Under the plan, Nestle becomes one of the district's customers, paying about $45,000 a year for up to 1,600 acre-feet of water from springs that feed the McCloud River.

Claiming potentially serious impacts to the area's water supply and aesthetics, the citizens group argues that Nestle and the services district should have completed environmental studies before shaking hands on the deal.

The district "simply opted to skip" proper review under the California Environmental Quality Act, the lawsuit says. In doing so, the suit says, the district reached an agreement with Nestle that "irrevocably" commits it to the project while residents remain ill informed.

"There could be no clearer violation of CEQA," states the lawsuit, filed by Donald Mooney, a Davis-based attorney.

The hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at Siskiyou County Superior Court in Yreka. The judge will probably hear the case and give a written ruling within 90 days, Mooney said.

Pete Kampa, general manager of the services district, defended the deal.

"Our position has always been that we didn't know what the project was until we could come to agreement on price terms and conditions of a sale," he said this week.

The environmental reviews demanded by the citizens group are now under way by the county, Kampa said. A draft environmental impact report should be released this spring.

The McCloud plant would bottle Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water and eventually employ up to 240 workers. Nestle is purchasing the old California Cedar Products mill for its factory.

It is expected to open in 2006 and will draw water from a spring three miles north of the mill. Kampa has said that the water would amount to one-tenth of 1 percent of the annual average flows on the McCloud River and would be less than the old lumber mill used.

But residents are concerned about the length of the 50-year contract, which is renewable another 50 years after that. The bottler's maximum annual take would nearly equal the demand of the entire town, the lawsuit states.

That's enough water to cover McCloud in a 1-foot deep pool.

The plant would be Siskiyou County's third major water bottler. Crystal Geyser in Weed and Coca-Cola/Dannon in Mount Shasta also market water that starts as snow on Shasta's slopes and filters through the porous volcanic rock over many years, re-emerging in springs far below.

On top of its annual water purchase, Nestle will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for hookup costs and community improvement projects. #

Editorial: State's New Federal Clout
Los Angeles Times - 2/1/05
California has sought more federal dollars for years, mostly in vain. As governor, Republican Pete Wilson unsuccessfully sought an increase in federal compensation for imprisoning illegal immigrant criminals and other costs associated with failed border control. Nowadays, state water programs are being shorted, and California gets less per capita in homeland security funds than most red states.

At the moment, the stars seem aligned to change that. Well, some of that.

With Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) as the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Republican David Dreier of San Dimas heading Rules, and Republican Bill Thomas of Bakersfield at Ways and Means, Californians hold chairmanships of the Big Three committees. Beyond that, count a president who must be grateful to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for helping him carry Ohio. And Democratic leaders in the Legislature have pledged to work with Schwarzenegger to get the state's "fair share" of aid from the federal government.

So what does the tab come to? The most commonly used figure is that the state gets less than 80 cents back for every dollar paid out in federal taxes — a gap of more than $50 billion out of about $250 billion sent to Washington. It's admittedly a fuzzy figure. The federal return includes matching funds for state and local government programs and education, the cost of running military bases, managing federal lands, the federal court system, the Border Patrol and salaries for more than 265,000 civilian federal workers in the state.

For years, the state got more than its dollar's worth. That ended with the mass closure of military bases and the decline in aerospace and other defense spending in the 1980s and early 1990s.

But what's a fair share? And just how much can Lewis do? There long has been an "anybody but California" attitude in Congress. The 53-member California House delegation has never been good at uniting behind California issues.

Dreier, not only chairman of the Rules Committee but a member of the House leadership, said there should be no expectation "that we're going to take the Treasury and lift it up and just dump it into California." The federal budget isn't balanced either, and wealthy states like California usually send some percentage more than they get back. But Dreier acknowledges that Lewis is in a position to help prevent California from being so badly shorted.

It's realistic to look for more transportation dollars and homeland security funds, as well as more help in cleaning up the air, one of Lewis' pet subjects. This wouldn't clear away the state deficit. But it would validate the newfound California clout and, a real bonus for the GOP, make California's governor look even better in the eyes of voters. #

City throws support to arundo eradication
Chico Enterprise Record - 2/1/05
By Laura Urseny, staff writer

On the city's list of bad greens, nonnative plants are not welcome, but the tall bushy arundo plant is the bad of the bad.That's why a state Department of Water Resources grant for $300,000 is being sought to clean arundo from three of the city's creeks.

The plant is considered bad in the world of weeds because of its ability to spread quickly and thickly and reproduces prolifically. It crowds out nonnatives and steals water from surrounding plants. Perhaps of most concern to neighbors of an infested creek is its flammability.

Acting as a city partner, but without financial obligation, the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission agreed Monday night to let a host of organizations use its name to co-sponsor a grant application. That money would help pay for removal of the plant from Big Chico Creek, Little Chico Creek and Lindo Channel, as they run through the urban area. Other nonnative plants will be removed as well.

The grant application is a cooperative effort between Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance, Little Chico Creek Watershed Group, Kids and Creeks, Streaminders and the Chico State University Research Foundation.

According to creek expert Roger Cole of Streaminders, federal studies have been done to show Little Chico Creek's 100-year flood capacity is down by about half because of arundo and other nonnatives. If the grant comes through, Cole also would be working on flood plain expansion on city-owned property.

Park Commissioner Russ Mills noted that removing arundo would help with Little Chico Creek's flood capacity, but wouldn't necessarily restore it to the full level. Organizers will have to get the consent of landowners adjacent to Little Chico Creek in order to remove the plant from private property, but commissioners noted it would be advantageous to property owners to cooperate. "There is fire danger with arundo, and the foliage is toxic so nothing eats it."

Cole said the work is expensive because of having to pay prevailing wage, the cost of permits and of the extent of arundo in Chico creeks. It's estimated that it would take about three years of attention to remove arundo from a specific waterway.

Park Director Dennis Beardsley said the effort includes raising landowners' awareness about the fire and other dangers of arundo. He estimated there are from 350 to 375 neighbors along Little Chico Creek that would have to be notified.The commission also agreed to later consider creating a management plan for Little Chico Creek.#

Eureka Times-Standard - 2/1/05
By Jill Geist - 5th District supervisor for Humboldt County
Prior to last November's elections, Gale Norton of the U.S. Department of Interior announced a new agreement for "cooperation and collaboration," for ways to improve water delivery in the Klamath River watershed. This agreement among California, Oregon and federal government representatives is to "recover threatened and endangered fish, enhance anadromous fish runs, improve wildlife habitat and water quality, and provide water for irrigation and other beneficial uses."

Given the importance of water diversions between fish and agriculture, this is a noble aspiration. The agreement created a Conservation Implementation Program (CIP) to gather stakeholder ideas from throughout the Klamath River Basin. Watershed issues are a political priority for President Bush because fish and farmers are competing for the waters of the Klamath River. This issue is difficult because water is imperative to both agriculture in the upper basin, and fish in the lower basin.

As a Humboldt County official, I will participate in any effort to protect Klamath and Trinity waters and fish. I want the CIP process to come up with solutions that maintain water for the Klamath and Trinity river basins and their fisheries, and I believe the CIP must deliberate cautiously and fairly towards developing solutions that will allow fish and farmers to survive. This latest federal/state agreement has promise but it could be doomed to discord if local stakeholders allow outside political interests to participate and dictate our water future.

That said, I am greatly concerned about the sudden emergence of Westlands Water District as a primary player in the upper Klamath basin. Since 1964, Westlands has agriculturally and financially benefited from Trinity River water diversions into the Central Valley Project. When Congress finally voted to help the river, Westlands litigated to stop the restoration of the Trinity River. This summer the U.S. 9th Circuit Court ruled in favor of the Hoopas' restoration plan. Now that Westlands has failed in court, Westlands may use the CIP process as the back door to raid the Klamath and Trinity river basins.

Westlands is the largest and most aggressive irrigation district in the world. The 600,000 acres it irrigates is heavily dependent on federal subsidies and import of water. Any water formulas offered by Westlands for the Klamath River Basin will be suspect because of the seemingly unquenchable thirst of Westlands for Northern California's water. Westlands also carries environmental baggage. In 1983 the selenium contamination from the Westlands' agricultural runoff resulted in the Department of Interior ordering the drainage flows stopped. That action ultimately ended with the retirement of 33,000 acres of Westlands farmland and a $140 million bill to the U.S. taxpayer.

I am not sure these are the kinds of problems and solutions we want when deliberating about how to fix problems in the Klamath and Trinity river basins.

I look forward to working with agricultural, tribal and fishing interests to develop viable solutions that will find that balance between fish and farmers. However, I do not think this can be done with Westlands at the table. If Westlands guides the direction of these water policy recommendations, it is doubtful Northern California interests can retain an open mind. Westlands should go home and clean up its own problems while we find ways for fish and farmers to survive in Northern California. #

After seeing a meager initial response to a request for applications, Bureau officials became concerned they might not be able to set aside enough water. But business picked up last week, officials said.

In all, 234 applications were turned in to the Bureau's Klamath Falls office by the deadline Thursday.

In the program, irrigators submit bids on what they'd be willing to accept, and the Bureau picks from among them.

Last year, the Bureau received bids ranging up to $702 per acre-foot, and accepted bids ranging from $63.75 to $200. The average bid accepted per acre-foot was $146 for 75,000 acre-feet, and 4,364 acres in the Project were idled. Most of the water for the water bank came from wells, rather than the Project's irrigation system.

The Bureau plans to get 50,000 acre-feet of its federally required 100,000 acre-foot water bank by paying to have about 25,000 acres lie fallow this year.

"I would say that we are cautiously optimistic that the response from the irrigator community will help us make our 100,000 acre-foot requirement," Olsen said.

In late December, Bureau officials announced the deadline for the land idling applications was Jan. 27. Officials expected a response of 400 to 500 applications, but about a week before the deadline they'd gotten only 20.

Bureau staffers went to the Tulelake and Klamath irrigation district offices to help farmers and ranchers with their applications, which boosted numbers, officials said. There also was a rush of applications in the days just before the deadline.

Now the Bureau will evaluate the applications, weighing crops, soil types and costs to determine if it will make its goals for the land-idling program, Olsen said.

The water bank program is required by the National Marine Fisheries Service to boost flows down the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon. The rest of the water bank would come from 25,000 acre-feet of well water, 10,000 acre-feet from land idling above Upper Klamath Lake and 15,000 acre-feet from storage on national wildlife refuges.

Water set aside in the water bank needs to be available for use by April 1. #

They ate wild salmon at every meal -- about 1.2 pounds of fish per person per day. Isolated here in the Klamath River valley in the rugged mountains of northwest California, the Karuk stuck with their low-carb, low-cholesterol, salmon-centered diet longer than perhaps any Indians in the Pacific Northwest. It was not until the late 1960s and the 1970s, when dams and irrigation ruined one of the world's great salmon fisheries, that fish mostly disappeared from their diet.

Salmon are now too scarce to catch and too pricey to buy. The tribe caught about 100 chinook salmon last fall, a record low. Eating mostly processed food, some of it federal food aid, many Karuks are obese, with unusually high rates of heart disease and diabetes.

"You name them, I got them all," said Harold Tripp, 54, a traditional fisherman for the tribe. "I got heart problems. I got the diabetes. I got high cholesterol. I need to lose weight."

On his first day as a fisherman for the tribe in 1966, Tripp remembers catching 86 salmon. Last fall, he caught one. "I mostly eat hamburger now," he said.

To reclaim their salmon -- and their health -- the Karuks are using the tribe's epidemic of obesity-related illness as a lever in a dam re-licensing pending before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In what legal experts say is an unprecedented use of the regulatory process, the tribe is trying to shame a major utility company and the federal government into agreeing that at least three dams on the Klamath River should be knocked down.

The dams are quite literally killing Indians, according to a tribe-commissioned report that was written by Kari Marie Norgaard, a sociologist from the University of California at Davis. The report links the disappearance of salmon to increases in poverty, unemployment, suicide and social dissolution.

"We can't exist without our fish," said Leaf Hillman, vice chairman of the Karuk, whose 3,300 members make up the second-largest Indian tribe in California. "We can only hope that this will be one of those rare instances where a true look at the cost and benefits of those dams will be a compelling argument."

The tribe's demand for nutritional justice presents a prickly new problem to federal regulators at a time of major upheaval in the hydropower industry.

Federal licenses for private dams, valid for 30 to 50 years, are expiring in droves, especially in the Northwest, where hydropower accounts for about 80 percent of the electricity supply. In the next decade or so, licenses are due to expire at more than half of the country's non-federal dams -- 296 projects that provide electricity to 30 million homes in 37 states.

The Karuks "have raised something that is novel, and FERC commissioners will have to grapple with it," said Mary Morton, a legal adviser to Nora Mead Brownell, one of President Bush's four appointees to the commission that rules on license renewals for private dams.

Politically, it is hardly a propitious moment for Native Americans to demand that dams come tumbling down. Power rates have soared in California and across the Northwest in recent years. Bush has repeatedly spoken out against the breaching of federal dams on the nearby Snake River, saying it would be bad for the economy. His appointees as FERC commissioners are considered unlikely to force any utility to remove a dam, and his administration recently granted dam owners a special right -- denied Indian tribes, environmental groups and local governments -- to appeal Interior Department rulings about how dams should be operated.

Still, the aging dams on the Klamath River are, at best, marginal producers of power. They were built without fish ladders (unlike most major dams in the Northwest), and there is widespread scientific agreement that their removal would revive several salmon runs.

California, which could block a renewed federal license for the dams under provisions of the Clean Water Act, seems decidedly unenthusiastic about keeping the dams in the river. The state Energy Commission has said removing them "would not have significant impact" on the regional supply of electricity and that replacement power is readily available.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates water quality and could veto a renewed license, blames warm, sluggish reservoirs behind the dams for "horrible" algae blooms in the river, said Russ Kanz, a staff scientist for the board.

In addition, the National Academy of Science and local officials in Humboldt County agree that dam removal is an option that should be examined to bring salmon back to the Klamath.

But PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, did not list dam removal as an option in its application last year for a new long-term license.

In the Clinton era, when tribes and environmental groups used the relicensing process to force utilities to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to retool or remove dams, PacifiCorp agreed to remove a hydro dam from the White Salmon River in Washington state -- at a cost of $20 million. The company, which is owned by Scottish Power, has 1.6 million electricity customers in six western states.

As part of its relicensing application for dams on the Klamath, PacifiCorp is trying to negotiate a separate settlement with the Karuks and other stakeholders along the river. Dam removal is now "on the table" in those talks, said Jon Coney, a company spokesman, adding that the tribe's health argument is part of the negotiations.

Coney, though, said that the tribe's health claims are difficult to substantiate in a scientific or legal way.

"How do you separate the health problems out from all the other societal things that have happened to the tribe?" Coney asked.

To make their case, the Karuk Tribe offers tribal health statistics and stories of its people who have grown ill in the years without salmon.

Diabetes and heart disease were rare among tribal members before World War II. Part of the reason was the super-abundance in their salmon-rich diet of omega-3 fatty acids, which research has linked with reduced risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

"We do know that the nutritional values of subsistence fish are superior to processed foods and convenience foods," said William Lambert, an environmental epidemiologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

With subsistence fish all but gone from the Karuk diet, the percentage of tribal members with diabetes has jumped from near zero to about 12 percent, nearly twice the national average, according to the tribe. The estimated rate of heart disease among tribal members is 40 percent, about triple the national average.

A number of studies of Native Americans across the United States have shown that the loss of traditional foods is directly responsible for increasing rates of obesity-related illnesses.

Steve Burns, a physician for three years in the tribal clinic in Happy Camp, said that diabetes and other obesity-related illness are "a huge and growing problem."

"What is happening to the Karuk people is like something you would read about in a book on the destruction of a minority group in the old Soviet Union," he said.

The change in the tribe's diet in the past generation has been so great that many Karuk concede that it will be difficult -- even if the dams are knocked down and salmon runs are revived -- for them to return to their traditional healthful diet.

"Of course, we won't be able to eat salmon all the time like we did," said Ron Reed, a traditional fisherman and tribal representative to FERC hearings on the dams. But he said everyone in the tribe would eat vastly more than they do now and that children would once again be able to grow up with the staple food that has traditionally kept the bodies and spirits of the Karuk healthy.

Last year, because of the record-low catch, tribal elders did not have enough salmon for religious ceremonies. So they bought some.#

Rejecting pleas by State of California attorneys to either dismiss the case on procedural grounds or at least dismiss the petitioners who did not pay the "fees," Judge Raymond M. Cadei ruled the suit may proceed to trial based on the complaint as filed with the court.

The judge's decision paves the way for an April 15 trial on the ultimate issue of whether the "fees" are valid fees or invalid taxes.

While noting that he is pleased by the ruling, Farm Bureau attorney Carl Borden cautioned it did not address the crucial "fee or tax" issue. "That question will be answered by the April 15 trial," Borden said.

The controversy arose after former Gov. Gray Davis in October 2003 signed into law Senate Bill 1049. Among its provisions was one requiring the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt for each fiscal year a schedule of fees whose collection would equal the amount necessary to fully fund the board's Division of Water Rights.

Among the fees the board adopted for fiscal year 2003-04 was one on holders of permits or licenses to divert water. That "fee" was the greater of $100 or 3 cents per acre-foot of water. In January 2004, the state Board of Equalization, on the board's behalf, mailed about 13,000 bills for those "fees."

In response, California Farm Bureau Federation, all 53 county Farm Bureaus, and eight county Farm Bureau members who are permittees or licensees last April sued both the water board and the Board of Equalization. The lawsuit asserts the "fees" are really taxes because they do not reasonably correlate to the value of the benefit received by the permittee or licensee. The complaint observes that the state constitution requires all new taxes be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, a condition not met for SB 1049. A similar suit filed by Northern California Water Association and Central Valley Project Water Association has been coordinated with Farm Bureau's suit.

Tuesday the Butte County Board of Supervisors received the "Butte Creek Watershed, Floodplain Management Plan."

The 2-inch-thick report, prepared by Wood Rodgers, a Sacramento-based consulting firm, reviews flood potential along Butte Creek, Comanche Creek and Little Chico Creek, projects the cost of damage from such flooding and makes recommendations about how to mitigate the risk.

Sometimes people get an inaccurate picture of flood risks because of terms like "100-year event," explained Francis Borcalli, Wood Rodgers water resources department manager.

A 100-year event is defined as the level of flood that can be expected to happen about once a century. "A lot of us have been lulled by the notion if we are protected from a 100-year flood, we are safe, and that is certainly not the case," Borcalli told the supervisors.

The report identifies six different "flood hazard areas" along Butte, Comanche and Little Chico creeks.
- Area 1 - Butte Creek, both banks between the Midway and the end of the levees.
- Area 2 - Butte Creek, both banks, between the Midway and Highway 99.
- Area 3 - Butte Creek in the floodplain along Honey Run Road to the Skyway.
- Area 4 - Comanche Creek, in the floodplain downstream from the Skyway.
- Area 5 - Northwest of the Little Chico Creek-Butte Creek diversion channel crossing at Warfield Lane.
- Area 6 - Little Chico Creek through the city of Chico.

SACRAMENTO – The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) have issued draft Proposal Solicitation Packages (PSPs) for the Proposition 50, Chapter 8 Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) Program. The draft PSPs for both the Planning Grants, and Implementation Grants, Step 1 programs can be found on the following web sites:

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/funding/irwmgp/
http://www.grantsloans.water.ca.gov/grants/integregio.cfm
The intent of Chapter 8 is for projects to protect communities from drought, protect and improve water quality, and reduce dependence on imported water. The draft PSPs provide the instructions for potential applicants to apply for grants under the Chapter 8 Program.

A public meeting to answer questions on the Draft Planning Grants and Implementation Grants, Step 1 PSPs and to accept comments will be held on the following date and location:

Tuesday – February 1, 2005 - 10 a.m.
California Environmental Protection Agency Building
Byron Sher Auditorium
1001 I Street, 2nd Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
This public meeting will be web broadcast for Internet access at http://www.calepa.ca.gov/broadcast/. During the broadcast listeners may e-mail comments or questions to: dfa_grants@waterboards.ca.gov.

For more information on the draft PSPs and public meeting, contact Tracie Billington, DWR, at (916) 651-9226 or Sudhakar Talanki, SWRCB, at (916) 341-5434.

All written public comments must be received by 5 p.m. on February 9, 2005. Please e-mail comments to Tracie Billington at tracieb@water.ca.gov

Contacts:

Tracie Billington, DWR Conjunctive Water Use, (916) 651-9226
Sudhakar Talanki, SWRCB, (916) 341-5434
Don Strickland, Information Officer, (916) 653-9515 #
http://www.publicaffairs.water.ca.gov/newsreleases/2005/01-24-05prop50.cfm

City Administrator Sharon Atteberry and City Councilor Bob Sharkey attended a conference last week at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"After talking to the FERC commissioners and senior staff," Atteberry said, "I know we're on the right track."

However, she said local agencies should get together to address fish passage, an issue the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is pushing during Department of Water Resources' negotiations to renew its license to generate electricity at Lake Oroville.

Atteberry said the talks convinced her the city had negotiated something very beneficial for the community.

While FERC is interested in Oroville and Butte County, it is looking at how the relicensing settlement will affect the entire water project and all the rate payers in the state, Atteberry said.

And she said fish passage has become an important issue.

NOAA Fisheries is considering transporting spring-run salmon and steelhead around Oroville Dam and the dams in the north fork of the Feather River to spawn.

Then, the juvenile salmon would be taken back into the river below the dam when they're big enough to complete a migration back to the ocean.

The NOAA Fisheries program looks at restoring fish to natural spawning habitats around the nation particularly for salmonoids on the endangered species list. This includes reconnecting fish to spawning areas cut off by dams.

Local agencies and the community should address this issue jointly, she said, as it could take millions of dollars from the recreation facilities in the final settlement agreement.

Sharkey said there needs to be more discussion of fish passage and more common sense input on solutions, and local stakeholders should get involved.

"The local agencies need to work together on the issues that can have an impact on the settlement," Sharkey said.

Mayor Gordon Andoe agreed. "It would behoove us to be on the offensive rather than the defensive." #

Farmers, fisheries, environmentalists all feel shorted
San Francisco Chronicle - 1/22/05
By Glen Martin, staff environment writer
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released preliminary 2005 federal water allocation projections for California, and the figures have made many of the stakeholders unhappy.

Environmentalists and fisheries advocates claim the agency is ignoring key provisions mandated by federal legislation directing greater flows down the Sacramento River to restore depleted salmon runs.

Farmers say the federal Central Valley Project -- which supplies 7 million acre-feet of water to farmers, wildlife refuges, fisheries and cities from the upper Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles -- was built specifically for agriculture, but ongoing diversions to cities and environmental restoration are coming unfairly at the farmers' expense.

The disagreements highlight two decades of political and legal conflict directed at the Central Valley Project as agribusiness and environmental groups skirmish over disposition of water.

The latest conflict arose Friday when the bureau released two projections on water supplies for the coming year. Although the projections were based on two criteria, "above normal" and "dry year," it said the probability of an above average year was higher because of the amount of precipitation and snowpack to date.

If that turns out to be the case, water users north of the Sacramento River/San Joaquin River Delta -- agriculture, municipalities, wildlife refuges and farmers and other users who held water rights before the construction of the Central Valley Project in the 1930s and 1940s -- would receive 100 percent of their quotas.

South of the delta, agriculture would receive 60 percent of their quotas; municipalities, 85 percent; and refuges and historic water rights holders, 100 percent.

If the year ends up being a dry one, the allocations would remain the same except that agriculture north of the delta would receive 60 percent of contractual quotas and cities north of the delta would receive 85 percent.

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisheries, said the bureau is ignoring basic tenets of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992.

That legislation directed the agency to release 800 thousand acre-feet of water down the Sacramento River for salmon, to operate the Central Valley Project with fisheries and wildlife restoration as a goal, and to devise a plan that will double salmon and steelhead runs on the Sacramento River system.

"They've basically ignored it all, with the exception of some extra water releases down the river," Grader said. "And even then, they're not letting the water run all the way down the system and out the Golden Gate, where it's needed to restore the health of the delta and San Francisco Bay."

Instead, said Grader, the agency is capturing most of the flows at huge pumps in the delta near Tracy, and shipping the water south to farms and cities.

Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the bureau, acknowledged that some of the fisheries flows mandated by the 1992 project improvement act are recaptured at the delta and pumped southward.

But McCracken noted that fisheries flows for both the Sacramento and Trinity rivers are given top priority by the agency, and all other allocations are secondary.

"If we pumped everything we could, we wouldn't be giving farmers 60 percent of their (contractual) water," McCracken said. "We are following all the mandates of the CVPIA, we are meeting our requirements under the (U.S.) Endangered Species Act, and we are upholding water quality in the delta."

Farmers aren't satisfied with the projected allocations, either. Michael Wade, the executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, said cities and environmentalists consider farmers the default water supplier for the entire state.

"When these (CVP) deliveries were first negotiated 60 years ago, people expected to get the amount of water that was agreed on," said Wade.

"Now farmers are getting only 60 to 65 percent of their water," Wade said. "It's like encouraging a guy to go into the shoe business, and then giving him only half the leather he needs for the shoes." #

Representatives of the Hoopa Indian tribe on Friday hailed a decision by Westlands Water District officials not to challenge a federal appeals court ruling that approved a congressional plan to increase flows into Northern California's Trinity River.

In July, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed a Fresno federal judge's ruling that called for more environmental study on the restoration, intended to revive fish habitat.

The appeals court decision, which calls for keeping 47% of the river's flow in Northern California's Trinity Alps, also would reduce water to California farmers and hydroelectric plants.

Westlands representatives announced Thursday in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger that they would not appeal the circuit court decision.

The tribe's chief adversary in the legal fight has been Westlands, a 600,000-acre farm water district based in Fresno County.

For decades, most of the water in the 112-mile Trinity has been diverted into the Sacramento River as part of the vast federal Central Valley Project, the state's largest water project.

Chinook and coho salmon as well as steelhead fisheries dwindled, and the Hoopa began to push for a river revival in the 1980s.

Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall hailed the decision not to seek additional legal review.

"This now clears one of the last remaining legal hurdles and opens the way for full restoration of the Trinity River to begin," Marshall said in a written statement. He cautioned there are still challenges to be resolved.

Marshall said the federal government now needs to renew its commitment to the program to restore the Trinity, which he said is severely underfunded.#

People with water in Northern California sell in two ways. One is to state water contractors, such as irrigation districts and municipalities south of the Delta. The other is to sell to the Environmental Water Account, a program run by water agencies to ensure water is available at times when fish need it.

Locally, the water contractors are seeking about 127,000 acre-feet. Another 100,000 acre-feet or so is being negotiated in Colusa and Sutter counties.

The Environmental Water Account, administered through the Department of Water Resources, is shopping for about 230,000-250,000 acre-feet of water a year.

One acre-foot of water equals 326,000 gallons, or enough water to supply one to two households with water for a year.

Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District got the go-ahead more than a week ago when Southern California's Metropolitan Water District board of directors voted to proceed with an option contract for about 80,000 acre-feet of water.

That means growers will receive $10 for the option and a total of $125 an acre-foot if the option is exercised.

The deal requires a decision from the buyer by April 1. If the buyer waits until May 1 to decide, another $20 in option payments must be made.

Of the money that will come in, the district will keep 25 percent and growers will receive 75 percent of that funding.

But under a committee shakeup, the conservation-minded Senate Natural Resources Committee now will divvy up the state's water. The move has raised eyebrows from some farm groups. Legislative leaders say that placing water policy decisions under the resource committee is aimed at balancing water use across the state.

The agriculture industry "has always been sort of the primary player when you look at water, but we did not want people to have an erroneous perception that agriculture had a higher entitlement to water," said Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, who is chairing the hybrid resources-water committee.

In an interview Thursday, Kuehl laid out her goals for the committee's work on water issues. She's not calling for more reservoirs, a new canal to Southern California or any desalination plants. Instead, she's more interested in finding out "who's using what."

"I want a much more transparent … set of information that gives us the whole picture on water in the state and gives everyone the tools that they need to do early planning," Kuehl said.

She said "spotty" record-keeping has made it difficult to understand how much water is being used by some holders of century-old water rights. She wants to get tough on water agencies, farmers and other users who are required to send annual reports to the state.

"If you don't file the report, we'll assume non-use," she said. "And five years of non-use means you lose the rights."

The Five Counties Salmon Restoration Program has launched over 40 barrier removal projects, and worked to reduce smothering sediment through projects and education.

At the Bayside Grange, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Department Regional Administrator Rod McInnis lauded the effort before about 100 people, and credited it for wise and efficient use of public money.

"It's a risk we're all taking," McInnis said, "but not a major risk for the payoff we're getting."

Many of the culverts that have been replaced in Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Trinity and Siskiyou counties have seen near instantaneous results. In tributaries that haven't seen salmon in decades, surges of coho and chinook salmon and steelhead and cutthroat trout have been witnessed.

In Humboldt County alone, some 16 projects have been completed since 2001. Program Director Mark Lancaster credited Chris Whitworth with the county public works department for putting his shoulder behind the massive effort.

Showing video of a big chinook salmon spawning in a stream narrower than the fish was long, geologist and videographer Thomas Dunklin said there is more spawning habitat available than perhaps was first envisioned. Biologist Ross Taylor said a project to replace a culvert on Lindsay Creek also encouraged landowners upstream to band together and replace shoddy culverts with bridges, a boon to fish.

The projects wouldn't have been possible without prioritizing the projects and overcoming entrenched political differences between the counties and between agencies, Lancaster said.

"If you can get people around their political boundaries, you can do a lot of great things," he said.

Cooperation between NOAA, the California Department of Fish and Game -- and coupled with the workhorse California Conservation Corps -- and politicians came through, he said. People shared skills, knowledge, equipment and materials vital for completing the projects, he said.

Fish and Game Director Ryan Broddrick -- here for the second time in two weeks -- said the backbone of the ongoing effort is community support. He said it appears that people here are making personal investments in restoring salmon.

"I'm always really impressed when I get up here to the North Coast ... it's so community driven."

Another 10 projects are scheduled for 2005. Four are in Humboldt County. #

The tribe says it's disappointed but unbowed after U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong threw out the case last week, saying the court couldn't enforce the federal government's trust responsibility to the tribe.

Armstrong agreed with Reclamation and Klamath farmers that the 2002 fish kill was unprecedented and that there was no way to prove it would happen again, since 2003 and 2004 did not see additional fish kills.

"We'll be asking the judge to reconsider," said Yurok Executive Director Troy Fletcher, "and if she doesn't, we're going to seriously weigh the option of appeal."

In 2001, Reclamation crimped water to most farms in its project in the Upper Klamath Basin, leading to extensive protests. The next year, a drought year, Reclamation cut water to the lower Klamath River, and 34,000 to 68,000 salmon died.

The gruesome scene drew a wave of anger from down river communities, and the tribe, California's Department of Fish and Game and later the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found low flows were a main factor in the die-off.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, which intervened in the government's behalf, lauded Armstrong's decision.

"The tribe wanted the bureau to dedicate its store water to them first, and only if there was water left over could any be used by the Klamath Project's farmers," said foundation attorney Andrew Lloyd.

He said the 2001 shut-off devastated farms in the upper basin.

Millions of dollars in aid flowed to the area that year, and today, in its effort to save more water for fish in the river, Reclamation pays farmers millions a year to let farmland go fallow. The country for years has also produced a glut of potatoes -- a key crop in the basin -- for years, according to a government report released last month.

Lloyd added that the tribe was able to catch slightly more than its historical catch of salmon in 2002.

Fletcher said that viewpoint completely ignores the cultural and traditional reliance the tribe has on fish.

"The fish represent more than just a food source to the Yurok people," he said.

Fletcher said he's disappointed that the tribe was unable to produce its evidence that alleges Reclamation's policy in 2002 caused the fish kill and could, if repeated, cause one again.

But he said the tribe has an "unwavering resolve" to protect the fish in the Klamath.#

The Web site recently won an excellence in communications award from the national association.

In all, the Bureau needs to idle 28,000 acres of land in and near the Klamath Reclamation Project as part of the federally required water bank. The idled land would make up 50,000 acre-feet of the 100,000 acre-foot bank, which is used to maintain higher flows for threatened coho salmon on the Klamath River.

The rest of the water bank would include 25,000 acre-feet from groundwater pumping, 10,000 acre-feet from the Klamath Rangeland Trust above Upper Klamath Lake, and 15,000 acre-feet from storage on national wildlife refuges.

Land idling applications are due by 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27. The Klamath Reclamation Project's irrigation season typically runs from mid-April to mid-October.

A subcommittee of two Reclamation Board members met three times this month, including Tuesday's meeting in Sacramento,with officials from the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority. On Friday, the full Reclamation Board will review their work in the capital city.

Last month, the board approved a permit for the levee improvements, but Yuba County officials said certain conditions could not be met. Without the permit, Three Rivers can't issue bonds to pay for the work.

A major unresolved issue is the Reclamation Board's concern about continued development in the Plumas Lake area south of Olivehurst before levees along the Bear River and Western Pacific Interceptor Canal are upgraded.So far, about 1,400 homes have been built. Plumas Lake and the adjoining North Arboga Study Area are zoned for about 14,000 units.

The county contends the Reclamation Board can't impose a building moratorium, which would halt the flow of funds from developers. "The state has not changed its position as far as what the legal authority of the Reclamation Board is," said its attorney, Scott Morgan. "We haven't seen anything to change our minds." Morgan declined to provide details about the state's legal reasoning, other than its general powers related to public safety.

"That's the linchpin. The board has jurisdiction over public safety," Morgan said. But Scott Shapiro, the Three Rivers' lawyer, suggested Morgan could "only help to resolve the issue" by providing the advice he received from the Attorney General's Office. "The worse that happens is you share something that winds up being litigated anyway," Shapiro said.Morgan said there was "no benefit to the board to present you with something that will come back at this stage in litigation."

Richard Webb, a Three Rivers director and a Reclamation District 784 trustee, said it was "very frustrating that we have put forth what we feel is good, sound legal research to support our position, yet we have nothing other than your general statement to support your contention."

Reclamation Board President Betsy Marchand responded, "We are trying to work though this in good faith. I have said it many times. Everyone has to preserve their position."

Three Rivers officials offered a lengthy explanation of how the levee work is being funded. Developers pay a fee per acre when their final maps are approved. They then may try to recoup that cost by adding it to the house price. The local share of the levee work is about $25 million.

"In my view, this is a very unusual financing mechanism that Three Rivers has chose to do, that is the payment upfront," said board member Bill Edgar. Infrastructure improvements are usually funded through Mello-Roos districts, in which improvement costs are covered through an annual fee, often as a portion of property tax, on houses.

Shapiro suggested that the financial information was "outside the purview of what the Reclamation Board should be interested in."

Marchand replied, "I think it's important for people to understand how these things are being funded. The whole thing depends on the local share ... You may think we're overly nosy, but it is a somewhat unique funding mechanism. The state has the right to know if this thing is going to work and who pays." #

The $16.7 million settlement cements, for the first time, a court finding that government efforts to protect endangered species violate the constitutional protection of property rights.

Rather than appeal, as California state officials and some federal government lawyers urged, the Bush administration decided to accept defeat and pay farmers for water diverted to help endangered salmon.

In doing so, the administration signaled its approval of the idea that farmers served by government water projects own the water delivered through those projects.

"I think it was a terrible thing that the government didn't appeal it, partly because it's wrong and partly because the government is usually quite zealous about trying to protect the Treasury against claims that are disputable," said Joseph Sax, a law professor emeritus at the University of California.

"It's obvious that the case is seen as a green light by property rights advocates," added Sax, who was a counselor to the Clinton administration on water and other environmental issues.

The case, known as Tulare Lake, marks the first time a court has found the government's enforcement of the Endangered Species Act a violation of the Fifth Amendment prohibition against taking private property without compensation, according to the farmers' lawyer in the case, Roger Marzulla.

The governor's office said it was conducting its own review of the findings in a Dec. 12 newspaper story about Hilmar Cheese Co. and would respond to the environmentalists' charges once that examination is complete.

"We're just really digging into it, taking it very seriously," said Terry Tamminen, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cabinet secretary.

In a letter to Schwarzenegger, the Sierra Club California and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment said the agriculture official, Chuck Ahlem, should leave his post because, as part-owner of Hilmar Cheese, he is at odds with the values of the governor and most Californians.

The petition is based on the Merced County cheese company's long history of violating state water-quality rules with impunity, as reported by The Bee.

"Having people like Ahlem in the administration runs counter to the governor's commitment toward environmental protection," said Brent Newell, an attorney with the center. "The environment is not a company's toilet bowl."

In a repeat of his 2001 finding that struck down protection for Oregon coastal coho because of the lack of genetic distinction between hatchery and wild salmon, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan ruled from the bench in Eugene in favor of a lawsuit brought by property-rights advocates challenging threatened-species status for coho salmon in a region of Northern California and Southern Oregon that includes the Klamath and Rogue rivers.

However, he granted a motion from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries to let stand the threatened-species listing until the agency completes a comprehensive review of 26 West Coast salmon listings prompted by the Oregon coastal coho ruling. That review is expected to be finished in June, said NOAA Fisheries spokesman Brian Gorman.

The ruling affects coho in the Klamath River, where agricultural and fishing groups and American Indian tribes have been fighting about scarce water since the Bush administration was forced by the Endangered Species Act in 2001 to shut off water to farmers on the Klamath Reclamation Project to assure water for threatened fish.

NOAA Fisheries said it expects Klamath coho to retain their threatened- species listing.

Hogan allowed the plaintiffs, the California State Grange and Oregon State Grange, to return to court if they are harmed by any actions based on the listing.#

But a veteran local educator believes that same resource can also serve as the centerpiece of a valuable teaching program.

Mary Anne Garamendi, a longtime Calaveras Unified School District teacher, is working with a handful of other Lode educators to create an environmental education curriculum that focuses on area watersheds.

The goal is to promote youth stewardship of those watersheds through a series of classroom lessons and field trips.

"I'm focusing on watersheds because I think the water in the area is like the gold that once was here," said Garamendi, who took a year's leave of absence from the classroom to work on her environmental education concept.

"There's a lot of history, civics, science -- everything can be integrated into it for the kids so they can become good stewards of our area watersheds and take ownership."

With the Mokelumne and Stanislaus Rivers flowing from the high country through the Lode and into the Valley, the area is rich in watershed education opportunities, Garamendi said. The trick is to develop a curriculum that teachers can easily dovetail into their lessons -- and to partner with local utilities to enhance those learning opportunities with field trips and other on-the-ground activities.

Garamendi has first-hand experience in that area: Last year, she was involved with a project in which salmon eggs were hatched in the classroom and then reintroduced into the Mokelumne River.

She's also taken students on camping outings, during which they saw how some of the Lode water resources flow from the Sierra to New Hogan Reservoir.

Garamendi will pitch her environmental education idea to the Calaveras County Water District's public outreach committee when it meets at 3:30 p.m. Monday in San Andreas.

CCWD board President Charles Hebrard said he hasn't heard Garamendi's proposal yet but supports the idea of introducing children to watershed issues.

"We're always trying to get kids interested in water conservation and water in general," he said.

Older students, he said, could be involved in stream monitoring and other opportunities that could open their eyes to watershed-related career options.

Although Garamendi is still working on her program, she envisions it including about five field trips that would roughly correspond to such areas as sense of place, plant adaptations, water and soil, animal adaptations and interdependency.

She said she would pattern her program after a similar program that the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department uses.

John Buckley of the Lode-based Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center said he's not sure that a single theme or single set of environmental education lesson plans is the best way to reach children. He said each teacher might be better equipped to decide the best approach.

But Garamendi said teachers are so swamped with meeting other mandates that many of them would appreciate having watershed education lessons prepared for them.

"Bringing this to teachers in a form that makes it easy to use and is all planned out for them saves a lot of time," she said. "They're more apt to use it if it's in a guidebook."

Garamendi also said that the field trip component would enhance the learning for students "because children would be more apt to retain and hold onto that information."

Terry Strange, a longtime community college teacher who now works with the grass-roots Upper Mokelumne Watershed Council, said Garamendi is on the right track.

"Mary Anne has tremendous energy, vision and connections," he said. "If all goes right, this group of teachers will be able to develop a really successful program and make some significant inroads in watershed education in the classroom." #

That's what wastewater and water-quality officials are saying about a federal plan that would allow cities to release some partially treated sewage during rainstorms.

The plan, still under review by the Environmental Protection Agency, involves mixing partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater before releasing the "blended sewage" into the environment.

Allowing some wastewater to bypass part of the treatment process would help prevent treatment plants from being overburdened, a less pleasant scenario that might result in dumping raw sewage, the EPA says.

It would also be cheaper than upgrading facilities to accommodate more waste.

Redding and other north state cities can identify with the occasional problem of having too much sewage. But water-quality standards in the Sacramento River are so high that even blending partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater might violate those restrictions, city officials and state regulators say.

"That's not going to be happening," said Jim Pedri of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. "We have tougher standards up here."

Conservation groups have warned that if the EPA's policy becomes official, more people will be exposed to waterborne disease.

And since Redding's at the head of the lower Sacramento River, officials say it's particularly important that the city's wastewater be clean. Once released back into the river, that water will ultimately be used not only for spawning fish and other wildlife but also for farms and cities downstream.

"There could still be some hidden contaminants" in blended sewage, said Steve Craig, Redding's wastewater division manager.

Craig said it's a challenge dealing with Redding's growing tide of sewage. Officials are studying whether to spend $50 million to $60 million upgrading and expanding the city's biggest treatment plant at Clear Creek.

That plant, built in the 1960s, processes about 7.5 million gallons of sewage per day during the dry season. The city's Stillwater plant handles about 2.5 million gallons per day.

"We're working toward a solution," Craig said.

But blending is not the answer, he said -- nor is it an alternative in smaller Red Bluff to the south.

John Szychulda, Red Bluff's wastewater division manager, said there are too many beneficial uses for Sacramento River water downstream to consider spilling partially treated sewage.

"I guess there's probably other areas where that would work," he said.

The EPA policy is meant to guide local governments and improve water quality by avoiding raw sewage spills. More than 98,000 public comments have been received, and officials have not reached a final decision, an EPA spokeswoman said Friday.

By bypassing some of the wastewater, blending would prevent heavy flows that might wash away microorganisms used to clean the waste, the EPA says. The practice would not be allowed during dry weather.

More information on the EPA plan can be found online at http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/cso/blending.cfm. #

In March, it will be five years since dead steelhead found below New Hogan Dam triggered a federal investigation and vows by local and federal authorities to protect threatened steelhead and chinook salmon that find their way to the Calaveras.

Thanks to recent storms, water flowed again last week in the normally dry lower Calaveras River through Stockton. And chinook trying to come upstream have again been stranded by fluctuating river water levels, according to several members of the multiagency Calaveras River Fish Group that advises on Calaveras River habitat.

Pumps, pits and the fact that the lower Calaveras simply does not have water in it most of the year continue to block fish trying to come upstream to spawn and may also prevent hatched fingerlings from getting downstream, biologists say.

"Truthfully, we haven't made a whole lot of progress from the fish's perspective," said J.D. Wikert, a fisheries biologist and habitat restoration coordinator for the Stockton office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"From the people perspective, we have made progress," Wikert said.

The "people perspective" includes these milestones:

* The June 2000 announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service that water districts and other agencies could no longer divert, dam or manage Central Valley rivers in a way that harms steelhead.

* Formation of the Calaveras River Fish Group to provide technical information to water agencies and others involved in caring for the river.

* The formation in 2004 of the Calaveras River Watershed Stewardship Group to give a way for community groups to help improve the river, its banks, and nearby habitat and recreation trails.

* A grant from the California Bay Delta Authority initially awarded in 2001 and expanded in May 2004 to a total of $800,000 to pay for screens to keep fish out of pumps, an improved fish ladder to give access to the upper river and studies.

* Three years of negotiations to date between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Stockton East Water District toward an as-yet-unfinished habitat conservation plan.

Yet Stockton East recently put off for another year spending the $800,000 in federal money for fish screens and a fish ladder because it didn't have necessary paperwork done and hadn't yet asked any of several federal agencies that could help it with required environmental review.

And the habitat conservation plan remains hung up over the question of water -- whether Stockton East will release any down the river to help fish get up and down the normally dry stretch between Bellota and Stockton.

Kevin Kauffman, general manager of Stockton East, said his agency is willing to do whatever is necessary to improve the riverbed for fish except to release water that is already committed to other users.

He and Stockton East board member Melvin Panizza both noted the Calaveras watershed is fed only by rainfall. It doesn't have the higher flows of other Valley rivers that are fed by snowmelt.

"It just can't support flows for the benefit of fish migration," Kauffman said.

Erin Strange, a fisheries biologist for the Sacramento office of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said water flow is likely to be a sticking point, although she is optimistic that the habitat plan will be finished this spring.

But a representative of one environmental group had harsher words for Stockton East's position and vowed legal action if the plan ultimately does not release water when rare fish need it most.

"Stockton East has been unwilling to agree to any meaningful measures that would protect and restore the anadromous fisheries on the Calaveras River," said Bill Jennings with Deltakeeper. "Anadromous" is the term for fish such as salmon and steelhead that return from the sea to spawn.

"I'm very concerned," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced. "We need to re-rally the troops who had fought this in the first place."

Other deals are also being negotiated with other water rights holders north of Sacramento.

Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District appears to be the closest to a deal for 70,000-80,000 acre-feet. Manager Van Tenney said his board of directors will decide Thursday on the deal.

A new study has documented the rich variety of fish species supported by the lower Yuba River and the effect of Daguerre Point Dam.

Jeffrey Kozlowski did the study for his master's thesis at the University of California, Davis. He received funding from the Yuba County Water Agency.

Now a fisheries biologist in Sacramento, Kozlowski recently briefed agency directors on his findings.

His main focus was the river's rainbow trout population, although the study found 13 species from nine families, clear evidence that "the lower Yuba River supports a diverse fish fauna dominated by native species."

Kozlowski and his team studied the river during the summers of 1999 and 2000, counting fish by snorkeling and electrofishing, or passing a current through water to attract fish toward a net. He also received data from the state Department of Fish and Game.

The study noted that, while there was little hard data about rainbow trout in the lower Yuba, the federal and state governments are pushing ahead with recovery and restoration efforts.

Those efforts include studies to evaluate restoring access to habitats upstream off Englebright Dam, a feasibility study to evaluate fish ladder modification and diversion improvements for Daguerre, and the state Water Resources Control Board order affecting flow and temperatures in the lower Yuba River.

"Rainbow trout densities were consistently higher in upstream habitats than in downstream habitats, and abundance generally declined with increasing distance from The Narrows for all age classes," the study said.