San Francisco Chronicle – 3/28/08
Steven R. Beissinger, U.C. Berkeley

"It is a matter of serious regret that our choicest and most valued fish, the ... salmon, is annually decreasing and the supply for exportation and home consumption is diminishing. Unless salmon that now home in our waters are protected and fostered as a nucleus for increase, our rivers will become barren of this most desired fish."

These words appear in an 1886 report of the Commissioners of Fisheries of the State of California, but they could have been written yesterday. While some suggest the current collapse of the Sacramento chinook salmon run is unprecedented, we are poised to repeat unlearned lessons from a century ago unless conservation measures are enacted that reverse the underlying causes of the salmon decline.

Salmon harvesting in California began in the mid-1850s as an inland fishery, was stimulated by the canning industry, and soon met a fate similar to the infamous Cannery Row sardines. The first salmon cannery opened on the Sacramento River in 1864 near Broderick. By 1881, there were 20, but by 1885, only six canneries remained in operation, and in 1919, the last one closed. Having captured the easy pickings of fish moving on their way upstream to breed, commercial salmon fishing was forced to move to the ocean, where it has remained to this day.

Hapless sea lions got blamed for the decline in 1886, just like today. Of seals, the commissioners stated that they "sit at the entrance of the Golden Gate as royal toll gatherers and take the lion's share of the schools of the finny tribe as they pass from the broad Pacific into the Bay of San Francisco..." The commissioners urged, without success, the repeal of legislation that protected sea lions.

Recently, however, the National Marine Fisheries Service authorized a special capture of seals at the mouth of the Columbia River, an action that is unlikely to lead to salmon recovery and one that should not be repeated in California.

Multiple causes, perhaps as many as 40, have been identified as possible agents of the contemporary decline. Many on our list of culprits were identified in 1886 - over-harvesting, dams that stop the spawning movements of salmon, diversion of freshwater to the Central Valley for agriculture and the siltation from erosion (due now to deforestation but in those days caused by the legacy of Gold Rush mining in the foothills). Now, we can add climate change, which warms the oceans and robs young salmon of their foods.

Better science is needed to diagnose the causes of decline and to determine their relative influences - a difficult, yet required, task for recovering any threatened species.

The commissioners in 1886 expressed confidence that salmon fry produced in California hatcheries would restore the stock. Hatcheries have forestalled the ultimate decimation of the salmon, but at the same time they create genetic and behavioral changes in salmon and may introduce diseases.

Hatcheries disguise the long-term problems facing salmon, and create a put-and-take fishery that can never lead to self-sustaining populations.

The salmon fishery must be closed temporarily to both commercial and recreational fishing as the first step for recovery, and smaller limits will probably be needed in the future. Serious consideration must next be given to removing dams and reducing water diversions in the Central Valley, restoring many watersheds and reducing agricultural run-off, while we work to abate climate change. The pain must be shared by all. We can't let the sea lions be the "fall guys" forever.

Steven R. Beissinger is a professor of conservation biology at UC Berkeley, where he holds the A. Starker Leopold Chair in Wildlife Biology. His research addresses the causes of decline, risks of extinction and recovery options for endangered species.

Associated Press – 3/25/08

SACRAMENTO — The California Assembly on Monday approved $5.3 million to restore salmon habitat as federal fisheries managers considered whether to shut down salmon fishing off the California and Oregon coasts.

Lawmakers voted 59-11 for a bill by Sen. Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, that would allocate part of a $5.4 billion water bond passed by voters in 2006. The money is intended to rebuild dwindling salmon populations by removing stream barriers and restoring spawning areas, among other programs.

Part of the money also could be used to monitor salmon populations.

The 2006 bond measure, Proposition 84, provides money for clean water, parks, flood control and conservation programs. Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, said the money authorized by the bill could be used to qualify for up to $20 million in matching federal funds.

She said the Pacific Fishery Management Council probably will decide during its meeting next month to shut down salmon fishing off California and Oregon. There has been a precipitous drop in the number of fish returning to spawn in the rivers of California's Central Valley.

"The Legislature must act to begin restoring the salmon industry," she said.

Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, agreed there was a "critical issue with salmon" but questioned whether the state could afford spending the $5.3 million because of its budget problems.

"It's not an appropriate time to move forward with this measure," he said.

Berg said the money would come from the sale of Proposition 84 bonds, not from the state's deficit-plagued general fund.

The Assembly vote sent the bill back to the Senate, which approved an earlier version of the measure in January. Final approval by the Senate would send the bill to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. #

Despite salmon numbers dwindling from the northern Oregon border throughout California and proposed fishing bans in the states, Butte Creek may have abundant salmon, maybe even too many.

Allen Harthorn, executive director of Friends of Butte Creek said fishing was closed in 1994 by the California Department of Fish and Game, but re-opening salmon fishing would help reduce numbers to a manageable level.

"The whole idea behind this is that the Department of Fish and Game and PG&E that operate the Centerville Powerhouse, say there's too many fish," Harthorn said.

"I've been telling them that if there is too many, then anglers should help thin the population," he said.

Putting a hard number on how many fish the habitat can support is tough for DFG to do, but 9,000 salmon have been counted in the habitat, and biologists claim there's only habitat for 6,000, Harthorn said. Chinook, the variety of salmon in Butte Creek, are a threatened species and because of that, "there won't be any fishing for quite some time," he said. The lack of fishing will certainly hurt the economy, Harthorn said. Harthorn said each fish caught could bring in $500 for the local economy.

Rocque Merlo owner of Merlo's Fishing Adventures in Chico said the cost varies, but that the cost of a fish for guide service alone is anywhere from $80 to $180. That is not including any other expenses.

"Everybody stays at a hotel and eats at the Fifth Street Steakhouse and buys equipment."

This year's season may be short or non existent and the legal limit of fish able to be caught has yet to be set.

Three options were proposed by DFG last Thursday, March 20 and are posted at www.dfg.ca.gov. In Merlo's words, the season would be delayed, shut down completely or require a punch card with a set limit on each species. Guide fishing is big and attracts customers from as far as the East Coast to fish on the Sacramento and Feather Rivers. Large corporations also charter fishing trips, he said.

The business has changed rapidly, Merlo said.

Recently salmon numbers for fall run fish are low and may hurt business. More than anything, Merlo said improper and unethical fishing has destroyed the salmon population.

"You definitely shouldn't be jigging," he said.

Jigging is a technique using long, slender, two ounce pieces of lead with treble hooks to attract fish. It can hurt fish by snagging.

"That's when the striper come out and wipe out the Salmon," he said. "Stripers are at an all time high in April and May"

Though numbers are low for fall run salmon fish populations, Butte Creek may be nearing 17,000 now, Merlo said. High summer temperature makes it hard for the fish to get adequate oxygen, which then puts PG&E in a hard spot to increase flow rates from the Centerville Powerhouse to lower the water temperature.

"Now it puts PG&E on the line," Merlo said. " there's a lot of politics with it."

The bigger story, for Harthorn is that hatchery fish can't handle the harshness of the wild as well as natural fish, he said. Merlo disagreed saying he didn't think the fisheries, and hatcheries are breeding lower quality fish.

"I don't have enough knowledge to say, but I don't think so," he said. "They're not genetically modified. I can't see why that'd be different. I just go by what I see, but something is off, three or four years ago it was phenomenal out there."

Harthorn said the dramatic decrease in salmon population is found in the fall run of the fish, not in the spring run. Salmon are migratory fish that live in the ocean part of their lives. Their run is when they return to rivers and creeks to spawn. Fall run fish populations decreased 80 percent from 2006 to 2007, Harthorn said.

During that same time, Butte Creek Chinook salmon numbers increased from 6,400 more than 6,800. Butte Creek salmon are all wild, naturally spawning salmon, spring run fish, he said.

"From the minute they come out of the gravel they're surviving in the wild."

He compared that to hatchery fish.

"They're herded like cattle into the spawning room that's another unnatural process that leads to less genetic strength."

Spring run was the largest population of salmon prior to the construction of dams because rivers and creeks have the highest flows in the spring and fish could get farther into the waters into cooler water to survive the summers, Harthorn said. The way to solve the problem is to truck the migrating fish around the dams or to build fish ladders for the fish to migrate with, Harthorn said. The problem with those solutions is that they cost a lot of money.

Bill Zemke, senior licensing coordinator with PG&E said PG&E filed its re-licensing application last October and is now waiting on a response from FERC. A FERC license for the powerhouse is good for 30 years and also covers the West Branch of the Feather River. Re-licensing studies the salmon population of Butte Creek, both above and below the powerhouse.

Curtis Steitz, a PG&E biologist said Butte Creek has several runs of fish, but the most emphasis is on the spring run of the Chinook salmon that starts now and peaks in April.

It is hard to estimate populations right now, because the flows are so high and the water is murky. Numbers won't come in until April, Steitz said. The Department of Fish and Game uses two ways to count the fish. One is to snorkel the creek with three or four people using only direct observation. The other is to count fish carcasses in the fall, he said.

The low numbers of salmon talked about in the media now are the fall run of the salmon which accounts for most of the commercial and sport fishing. He agreed with Harthorn's theory that historically, the spring run was the dominant run before dams and said Harthorn's numbers are close. Looking at the carcass count numbers alone, they show 6,303 in 2006 and 6,214 in 2007, but the numbers are too close, statistically to differentiate an increase or decrease.

Steitz said most hatcheries produce fall run fish, and there is a wild component of fall run but they outnumbered by hatchery fish. Are the natural fish a stronger breed?

"That is certainly discussed a lot in the scientific community. Some studies suggest it, others are not that definitive," Steitz said. "Most people would want to and tend to believe they are."

As part of re-licensing, PG&E studies the potential for fish ladders and screens, but no one has made any proposals for ladders, or trucking. The numbers of fish won't affect PG&E's operation.

"It doesn't affect us one way or another, because it is a protected species, it does affect the way we handle that," Steitz said. "Whether there's a small run or not we'll operate the same way and try to maximize the cool water benefits no matter what the return is." #

Sacramento Bee – 3/22/08
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

State wildlife officials arrested nine Sacramento men Friday on charges of poaching salmon and sturgeon in the Sacramento River and Delta, providing another possible clue about why these species are threatened.

One of the suspects was on probation for similar crimes committed last year.

Wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game said the suspects illegally netted recently spawned chinook salmon as the fish attempted to migrate downstream to the sea. These fish were allegedly used as bait to catch oversize sturgeon, which were then processed illegally for the black-market caviar trade.

State fishing rules allow anglers to keep sturgeon that measure only between 46 and 66 inches long.

In an investigation, officials observed suspects taking two sturgeon 79 and 86 inches long. At that size, the fish are considered among the Delta's oldest and most prolific breeders. A third sturgeon was discovered during the arrests Friday but was cut into too many pieces to measure accurately.

"What poachers are doing is damaging our broodstock," said Warden Steven Stiehr, who patrols the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. "So next year we may see even tougher fishing restrictions."

It was the department's sixth major investigation into sturgeon poaching since 2003. Wardens said the arrests illustrate a problem that is outpacing their enforcement ability. California has only 200 game wardens statewide and the governor's budget for the coming year proposes to eliminate 38 vacant warden positions.

"We are at our wits' end with groups like this who continue to just poach and poach and poach for personal profit," said Warden Patrick Foy. "It's sturgeon in Sacramento, lobster in San Diego. We have too few wardens to slow them down."

Last year's fall chinook salmon run was the second-lowest on record. To protect the species, a total ban on commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and Oregon is likely later this year, jeopardizing thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in economic value.

In this case, Stiehr said, the impact is especially troubling because poachers may have handicapped future populations.

The surveillance operation produced enough evidence against the suspects to justify search warrants. In raids that began at 6 a.m. Friday, wardens collected fishing gear, firearms, illegal fireworks and marijuana plants at seven south Sacramento homes.

The nine suspects were booked into the Sacramento County jail. Four face felony charges, because of prior convictions for illegal commercialization of sturgeon, and were being held on $12,000 bail each.

One suspect, Su Fou Saechou, 20, served jail time last year and was on probation for poaching sturgeon, Foy said. His probation terms required him to stay away from the Sacramento River and not possess any fishing gear or sturgeon.

The other three felony arrests included his brothers, Kao Fou Saechao, 27, and A Fou Saechao, 26. The fourth is Pahin Saephan, 25.

The other five were arrested on misdemeanors and are being held on $7,500 bail each: Pao Sio Chiew, 30; Ricky Saechao, 21; Torn Seng Saechao, 22; Cheng Chiew Saechao, 27; and Louchio Saeturn, 26. #

YubaNet.com – 3/21/08
By Pacific Fishery Management Council

Portland, OR. - Today the Pacific Fishery Management Council formally announced its April 7-12 meeting in Seattle, Washington, where an option for managing West Coast salmon fisheries will be chosen and recommended to National Marine Fisheries Service. The Council invites public comment on the options; details for commenting are provided below.

On March 14, the Council adopted three public review options for the 2008 salmon season, two of which would totally close fisheries for Chinook salmon off California and most of Oregon. Seasons for northern Oregon and Washington were also drastically reduced. The Council is scheduled to take final action to choose a single option on Thursday, April 10.

"The 2008 salmon season considerations have been dominated by the unprecedented collapse of the large Sacramento River fall Chinok stock," said Council Executive Director Donald McIsaac. "Council members will now take a final vote on whether any fishing on Sacramento fish should be allowed in the ocean this year."

Options

A detailed table of options is available online.1

The options for the area south of Cape Falcon (from northern Oregon to the Mexico border) are summarized below.

Option I allows a small amount of recreational and commercial ocean Chinook fishing, and a small quota for Sacramento Basin freshwater sport fisheries.

Under Option I, sport Chinook fishing would be open on the following

dates: April 15 - June 15 from Cape Falcon to Humbug Mountain (Oregon); Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day weekends for areas between Humbug Mountain (southern Oregon) and Pigeon Point (central California); and May 18-26 south of Pigeon Point. In addition, mark ' selective coho' only fishing (for coho that were marked at the hatchery) would be allowed between Cape Falcon and the Oregon/California border from June 22-August 31, or until a quota of up to 10,000 coho are caught.

Ocean commercial Chinook fishing would be allowed April 15-May 31 between Cape Falcon and the Oregon/California border, and August 1-31, or a 3,000 fish quota, for each of these areas in California: the Oregon/California border to Humboldt South Jetty, Fort Bragg, and San Francisco.

Option II allows a catch-and-release genetic research experiment for Chinook salmon south of Cape Falcon. This fishery is not open to the public. However, Option II also allows a sport fishery for 6,000 hatchery coho off Oregon between Cape Falcon and Humbug Mountain2. This option assumes salmon could not be kept in Sacramento Basin freshwater fisheries.

Option III would allow no ocean salmon fishing, and also assumes salmon could not be kept in Sacramento Basin freshwater fisheries.

North of Cape Falcon to the U.S./Canada border, the three options range from a quota of 15,000 to 25,000 coho (last year's limit was 140,000), and 45,000 to 25,000 Chinook (last year's limit was 32,500), split between commercial and recreational fishermen.

BACKGROUND: SACRAMENTO RIVER FALL CHINOOK DECLINE

The Sacramento River is the driver of commercial and recreational fisheries off California and southern Oregon. The minimum conservation goal for Sacramento fall Chinook is 122,000 - 180,000 spawning adult salmon (this is the number of salmon needed to return to the river to maintain the health of the run). As recently as 2002, 775,000 adults returned to spawn. This year, even with all ocean salmon fishing closed, the return of fall run Chinook to the Sacramento is projected to be 58,200. Under the option that allows small fisheries in specific areas, returns would be approximately 51,900.

Economic impacts

The economic implications of the low abundance of Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon could be substantial for commercial, recreational, marine and freshwater fisheries. In California and Oregon south of Cape Falcon (in northern Oregon), where Sacramento fish stocks have the biggest impact, the commercial and recreational salmon fishery had an average economic value of $103 million per year between 1979 and 2004. From 2001 to 2005, average economic impact to communities was $61 million ($40 million in the commercial fishery and $21 million in the recreational fishery).

The potential closure is devastating news to beleaguered salmon fleets on the west coast. California and Oregon ocean salmon fisheries are still recovering from a poor fishing season in 2005 and a disastrous one in 206, when Klamath River fall Chinook returns were below their spawning escapement goal. The catch of salmon in 2007 in these areas was also well below average, as the first effects of the Sacramento River fall Chinook stock collapse was felt.

Causes

The reason for the sudden collapse of the Sacramento fall Chinook stock is not readily apparent. The National Marine Fisheries Service has suggested ocean temperature changes, and a resulting lack of upwelling, as a possible cause of the sudden decline.3 Many biologists believe a combination of human-caused and natural factors are to blame, including freshwater in-stream water withdrawals, habitat alterations, dam operations, construction, pollution, and changes in hatchery operations.

The Council has requested a multi-agency task force led by the National Marine Fisheries Service's West Coast Science Centers to research about 50 potential caustive areas and report back to the Council at the September meeting in Boise, Idaho.

"After everyone asks how this could have happened, the question then becomes 'is there anything we can do to fix it?'," said Council Chairman Don Hansen. "The Council will take an immediate step to fix what it has authority to fix, which is appropriately managing the ocean fisheries that affect this valuable resource."

Process

The Council will accept public comment on the salmon options until April 1, and at its April 7 12 meeting in Seattle, Washington. Comments may be sent to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, 7700 NE Ambassador Place, Suite 101, Portland, OR 97220, emailed to pfmc.comments@noaa.gov, or faxed to (503) 820-2299. Meanwhile, scientists will also review the options to determine the effects on salmon and on the coastal economy.

Public hearings to receive input on the options are scheduled for March 31 in Westport, Washington and Coos Bay, Oregon, and for April 1 in Eureka, California. In addition, the California Fish and Game Commission will make a decision on California's state-managed salmon fisheries on April 17.

At its meeting in Seattle, the Council will consult with its scientific and fishery stakeholder advisory bodies, hear public comment, and choose a final option for ocean commercial and recreational salmon fishing.

Final Council action is scheduled for Thursday, April 10. The National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to make a decision to implement the Council recommendation into federal regulations before May 1. The California Fish and Game Commission will set freshwater seasons affecting Sacramento fall Chinook salmon later in 2008.

All Council meetings are open to the public. #

San Francisco Chronicle – 3/23/08
By Tom Stienstra, outdoors columnist

(03-22) 19:27 PDT -- A Chronicle story in 2006 warned of a deteriorating marine food chain off the California coast that has since led to the collapse of salmon stocks.

Environmental Jane Kay wrote, "By now, the offshore waters should be roiling with plankton and the shrimp-like krill, the foundation of the ocean's food chain. Instead, the researchers say, the organisms appear to be in short supply." ("Sea life counts dive for 2nd year - Decrease in essential plankton and krill disrupt food chain," June 23, 2006.)

To explain the lack of marine food production, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer Frank Schwing said, "The upwelling that we normally expect in the springtime hasn't kicked in.

We think there might be real consequences for the seabirds, fish and mammals."

This year's salmon season for the Bay Area coast was supposed to open on April 5, but the opener has been postponed and the season is in jeopardy because of a collapse of stocks. Salmon that spawn or are released from hatcheries in the Central Valley are down from 804,401 fish in 2002 to 90,414 in 2007.

"It is pretty clear that poor ocean conditions in 2006 and 2007 are the major factor in the decline in salmon abundance this year (and projected for next year)," said John Carlos Garza of the federal Southwest Fisheries Science Center out of Pacific Grove.

Since coho salmon on coastal streams have also declined, that also indicates that the problem is largely focused with ocean conditions. "The only thing that they all share in common is their residence in the coastal ocean," he said.

He said that high water exports out of the Delta and direct fish losses at water pumps could explain why salmon from the Central Valley have had "an inordinately large decline relative to other stocks."

With low rain and snow last year, and yet high water exports to points south, fall-run salmon were down 80 percent in the San Joaquin River Basin, with only 1,158 fish, according to the San Joaquin Basin Newsletter.

"Concurrent declines," Garza said, in other Delta species, such as the endangered Delta smelt, makes it "seem likely" that Delta conditions are a contributing factor.

"As with most things, it appears that there are multiple causes to the salmon decline," Garza said. Based on his group's studies, he predicted dramatic fluctuations in the future.

Chronicle readers have suggested additional reasons why the salmon have disappeared:

Wiped out by netters: Foreign trawlers, the giant mother ships that drag huge scoop nets, have the capabilities to wipe out thousands of salmon with one swipe of the net, and they do so without United States oversight.

Humboldt squid: Voracious swarms of 50-pound Humboldt squid, which seem to devour everything in their path, are now wintering off the Bay Area coast and have located and annihilated schools of salmon (and rockfish).

Predators galore: High numbers of predators, including sea lions, elephant seals and killer whales, are eating the fish into a decline, similar to how mountain lions killing both deer and Sierra bighorns have put those species on the brink in the Sierra Nevada.

Using smolts as striper feed: By releasing salmon smolts from the hatcheries on a routine schedule in the Lower Delta, they have trained striped bass into a feeding program, where the smolts get wiped out every time they're plunked in the water.

Delta fish grinders: The suction force of the Delta pumps, which reverses tide flows near Clifton Court at the intake, is simply grinding up all the juvenile fish that try to swim past the area.

Carrying capacity: The basic "carrying capacity" of the rivers/delta/bay system, that is, the amount of food and freshwater available as habitat, has declined because of water diversion and industrial pollution, and in turn, the habitat can support far fewer fish than in the past. #

San Francisco Chronicle – 3/24/08
By Jane Kay, staff writer

Amid growing concern over an imminent shutdown of the commercial and sport chinook salmon season, scientists are struggling to figure out why the largest run on the West Coast hit rock bottom and what Californians can do to bring it back.

The chinook salmon - born in the rivers, growing in the bay and ocean, and returning to home rivers to spawn - need two essential conditions early in life to prosper: safe passage through the rivers to the bay and lots of seafood to eat once they reach the ocean.

Yet, the Sacramento River run of salmon that was expected to fill fish markets in May didn't find those life-sustaining conditions. And some scientists say that's the likeliest explanation for why the number of returning spawners plummeted last fall to roughly 90,000, about 10 percent of the peak reached just a few years ago.

The devastating one-two punch happened as the water projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta pumped record amounts of snowmelt and rainwater to farms and cities in Southern California, degrading the salmon's habitat. And once the chinook reached the ocean, they couldn't find the food they needed to survive where and when they needed it.

"You need good conditions in the rivers and ocean to get survival and good returns for spawning," said Stephen Ralston, supervisory research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and a science adviser to the Pacific Coast Fishery Management Council.

Without those favorable conditions, the salmon run crashed. Five years ago, the peak was 872,700 returning spawners. Roughly 90,000 were counted in 2007, and only 63,900 are expected to return to spawn in fall 2008.

Helped by cool-water winter

The fishery council, a regulatory body charged with setting fishing limits, has recommended a full closure or a strict curtailment of the commercial and sport season. A final decision will come in April.

NOAA researchers say a cool-water winter will help the beleaguered run in the future. An influx of cold Alaska waters, along with a shot of nutrients from vigorous upwelling of deep waters, have been fueling the food chain that feeds salmon, birds and marine mammals.

But the scientists warn that chinook, which have swum through the San Francisco Bay for thousands of years, have suffered human harm over the past half-century and now also need human help.

They've proposed a number of solutions, including sending more water over the dams and reservoirs and down the tributaries where salmon spawn; removing barriers to migration such as old dams; screening the fish away from the pumps and diversion pipes that suck them up, misdirect or kill them; controlling pesticide and sewage pollution - and catching fewer fish while the populations try to rebuild.

Over the millennia, salmon have been born in the Central Valley rivers. At about six months, they head through the delta. At 10 months and only 4-inches long, they reach the ocean and start feeding voraciously in the Gulf of the Farallones on small shrimp, krill and young rockfish.

From there they move to the open waters from Monterey to Vancouver Island in British Columbia until 3 or 4 years of age or older. Then they return home to their birth river to reproduce and die. The young come down the rivers, and the cycle begins again.

The problems for the troubled fall run began in 2004 and 2005, the years the chinook were born and traveled to the ocean. In those two years, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project exported record amounts of delta water to urban and agricultural customers in Southern California.

2005 a bad year for Chinook

In 2005, a crucial year for the young salmon, 55 percent of natural river flows never made it out to the bay, according to records of the state Department of Water Resources. The water was either exported by the water agencies, diverted upstream of the delta or held back by dams.

"The flows were less than what the salmon needed, and the populations are collapsing," said Tina Swanson, senior scientist with the Bay Institute. Even if water agencies are meeting minimum standards, they are inadequate to protect the fish, she said.

A network of nonprofits, including the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, filed a notice Tuesday with the State Water Resources Control Board, saying it would sue if it doesn't curb pumping.

But when looking for an answer to the fall run collapse, Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, said there are many causes for the salmon's decline.

"You can't just simply blame it on the pumps," he said. Ocean conditions, a reduction of phytoplankton in the bay, the amount of salmon fishing, natural die-off and other factors are part of the broader picture, he said.

There may have been increases in exports to water customers in recent years, but the crucial point is whether there was also an increase in rainfall and snowmelt, he said. That would mean there was more water to divert.

State and federal water project representatives say they follow requirements put forth in their permits, which, among other things, ensure a big enough water supply to protect endangered species and provide certain minimum temperatures. They've aided the salmon by removing dams, screening off diversion pipes and improving habitat.

Biologists caution that salmon need generous flows of cold water at almost every life stage. The fish also need the fresh river water from the reservoirs at the right times, particularly in the fall and summer.

"The adults come upstream in the fall to spawn partly because they're responding to cooler water temperatures," said Peter Moyle, professor of fish biology at UC Davis. "If the females have to swim through water that's too warm, their eggs don't mature as well. Some don't hatch at all."

Some females, Moyle said, just stop migrating and wait for cool water. "They know from evolutionary perspective that if they don't wait until the water gets cold, the young won't survive," he said. In the end, they spawn or die before spawning.

'Squirrelly' ocean conditions

According to Moyle, good ocean conditions can somewhat make up for drought in the river systems and vice versa. But ocean conditions have been "squirrelly" in the last several years with a number of anomalies that produced abnormally warm conditions not good for salmon, he said.

"Usually, salmon populations are at their worst when conditions are bad in both fresh water and salt water," Moyle said. Some scientists think that is what happened to the 2007 fall run.

Once in the ocean, salmon must gorge on small sea creatures to survive.

In 2005 and 2006, the years that the 2007 fall run needed food near the shore in the Gulf of the Farallones, the upwelling of nutrients apparently came too late to produce the small fish that feed the salmon.

Most of the scientists studying the ocean link the unexpected bouts of rising temperatures to global warming.

As the atmosphere and oceans have warmed, researchers have had to discard the theory of decades of warmer, then cooler, ocean temperatures. Now they expect an unpredictability, which is projected in climate models.

"What's happening is that the rockfish, the squid, the krill, the anchovies and the community of critters that salmon feed on changed dramatically in 2004 to the prey that is not as favorable to salmon," NOAA's Ralston said.

The distribution of the sea life also changed. Young rockfish moved well to the north or to the south of Central California, he said.

Ralston's hypothesis is that animals are adapted to finding food at certain times and in certain locations.

"When salmon arrive in the ocean, they'll go to certain areas to find their food as they have for millennia," he said. "If we have a major change, their fitness, their ocean survival is compromised."

Bill Peterson, a NOAA researcher in Newport, Ore., offered some hope for a cooler offshore current, although he cautioned that there would be a few years of hard times for chinook.

"It's looking kind of good this year" with five months of cold ocean currents, he said. But the scientists are "very guarded" because in the past two years the ocean was cold in the winter, and then the winds that brought upwelling quit in May and June, reducing the zooplankton that feed the prey of the salmon.

Peterson would like to see measures that would aid the salmon.

"These fish are so resilient and tough," Peterson said. "We should be a little nicer to them." #

International Herald Tribune – 3/19/08
By Eric Giles

SAN FRANCISCO: McCloud, a former lumber company town in the far north of California, has the charm of a small village and a breathtaking setting among pine and fir trees on the southern flank of Mount Shasta.

In 2003, the town government signed a contract to sell its spring water to Nestlé Waters North America, a subsidiary of the largest food and beverage company in the world. Nearly one-third of bottled water sold in the United States in 2006 came from the 23 Nestlé plants in the United States, earning the company $3.57 billion.

The Nestlé deal has divided this close-knit town of about 1,350 people. While some support it because they welcome economic development, others object to the lack of public input on the contract, the contract's terms, and the possible environmental effects. Five years after the contract was signed, construction of the plant, mired in conflict, has yet to begin.

"It's the issue in town," said Curtis Knight, the Mount Shasta area manager of California Trout, a wild fishery conservation group. "You know, who are you and are you pro-Nestlé or are you anti-Nestlé? It's really been a wedge through town, and I think it's unfortunate."

Controversy has followed such Nestlé operations. Its worldwide water bottling earned  6.3 billion, or $9.9 billion, in 2007. Lawsuits against the company have been filed - and some won - in Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Maine, and in Brazil.

The debate in McCloud over the bottling contract is about method and content.

Dennis Kucinich, a U.S. congressman from Ohio, was the chairman for the first of several federal subcommittee hearings on water in December. He said bottling companies usually put plants "in rural areas, where people don't necessarily have access to big law firms or the attention of the federal government to protect their economic interests. There are always questions raised in terms of how these contracts are gained and whether people have informed consent."

McCloud is unincorporated, so the McCloud Community Services District board serves as the town government, with five elected board members. Many residents said the board signed the deal with little public input.

Nestlé's Northern California natural resource manager, Dave Palais, and a district board member, Al Schoenstein, said standard meeting procedures were followed for the contract, with notices inviting public input posted in the newspaper. They said residents largely stayed away from the discussions until a meeting Sept. 29, 2003. That session was well attended, and residents asked Palais and the board many questions. But many questions were not answered, some residents said, and at the end of the night the board approve the deal.

"I was really upset," said Tim Dickinson, the board president. "It was announced as being an 'info' session, and after it was done, the board signed the contract."

Kucinich said this story was common. At his hearings, people "testified that local and state authorities often short-circuited their complaints and curtailed their input in the face of these perceived economic benefits that a water bottling plant promised to bring to a region," he said.

The McCloud contract's terms trouble many people. Debra Anderson is a third-generation McCloud resident who helped create McCloud Watershed Council in 2004 to educate her neighbors about the issues. The group took a survey two years ago and found that 77 percent of the citizens were opposed to the contract.

Knight of the fishery group said opponents' top concerns were the price that Nestlé would pay for the water, once the plant started operating, and the length of the contract, which runs for 100 years.

McCloud would receive about $305,000 the first year, based on residential water tariffs, which equals $191 per acre foot, or 15.5 cents per cubic meter. By comparison, Nestlé is paying $2,183 per acre foot to Pure Mountain Spring in Maine for its water, according to an economic study conducted by ECONorthwest, a consulting firm.

People also objected to an exclusivity clause, the quantity of water to be sold and the lack of information on how it would effect the environment.

An local group, Concerned McCloud Citizens, filed a lawsuit against Nestlé, saying that an environmental review, allowing discussion of alternatives or mitigation measures, should have been done before the town agreed to a contract. A district court sided with Concerned McCloud Citizens, but Nestlé appealed the decision and won because it said McCloud still had the right to negotiate contingency issues.

A water rights lawyer, Don Mooney, who handled the case for Concerned McCloud Citizens, said that even though the case had been lost, "we have an appellate decision saying that the district has further discretion with regards to the project, the size of the project, or whether or not the project should even go forward."

Palais of Nestlé disagreed, saying McCloud had no right to end the contract.

While the case was going through the courts, Nestlé began an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act. The first draft, published in 2006, received 4,000 public comments.

Protect Our Waters, a group of residents and trout fishery and habitat conservationists, hired experts to study the report. Betsy Phair of Concerned McCloud Citizens said the report did not address downstream communities, aquifer effects, global warming, fish, diesel fumes from increased trucking, or hazardous waste on the former mill site where Nestlé plans to build its plant.

In February, under pressure from conservationists, Nestlé agreed to cap its water extraction at 1,600 acre feet a year, or just under 2 million cubic meters. It also agreed that it would not drill groundwater wells and would conduct more environmental studies in a second environmental impact report.

But Nestlé is not altering the contract with the town to reflect these changes. Palais said the issues were already covered by contingency terms.

Groundwater and surface water are interconnected in a single hydrological system, said Kucinich, the congressman. "The existing regulatory structure barely recognizes this fact. For every gallon that's extracted for the bottled spring water, that's one gallon lost for surrounding streams and watershed."

Knight of the fishery group worries that water removal could effect the fish and ecosystem. He said a local fish hatchery had been distributing McCloud River redband trout eggs internationally since the 1870s. "The McCloud River is sacred water," Knight said. "It's one of the most treasured and popular trout fishing streams in the country and has a reputation throughout the world."

Under the contract, Nestlé can build a bottling plant covering an area of up to 1 million square feet, or 93,000 square meters.

"This would totally destroy the integrity of our small, historic mill town," said Anderson of the McCloud Watershed Council.

The contract also allows for 600 daily truck trips, and the trucks could run 24 hours a day all year. Some people are concerned about traffic and pollution. Residents who favor the plant say that plenty of trucks drove through town during logging's heyday. But other residents say logging trucks peaked at 150 per day, and they did not run at night, on weekends, during the winter or on holidays.

Project supporters hope that jobs at Nestlé will strengthen the town's economy. But the ECONorthwest report said that, of the 60 to 240 jobs predicted by Nestlé to be generated at various stages of operation, most "would likely be filled by people who do not currently live in McCloud." It said some jobs probably would be seasonal, and only low-paying production jobs would be open to local residents.

Still, even low-paying jobs would be welcomed, said Dickinson, the board president. "I know people in town who would dearly love to have a $10-an-hour job with benefits," he said. "I don't think their expectations are all that high."

"Most of the businesses in town are dying," Dickinson added. "Forty percent are not occupied."

Conservationists point to tourism as an alternative to the bottling plant, but "tourism doesn't contribute a lot of money," he said.

Knight of the fishery group said Nestlé would not take care of local residents the way the town's lumber company once did. "Any comparison of what Nestlé is trying to do to that is a complete fallacy," he said.

Jane Lazgin, a spokeswoman for Nestlé Waters North America, said: "I think it's appropriate that communities would have questions and concerns. In most cases, we're welcomed because we're able to offer a rural community an economic benefit, while harvesting responsibly a natural resource and providing jobs that otherwise have been lost." #

Contra Costa Times – 3/22/08
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

A powerful state agency is coming under increasing pressure to apply an ancient, obscure and potent legal concept to sort out the state's untenable water mess and save the Delta's dying ecosystem for future generations.

The public trust doctrine, which has roots in the Roman Empire, could lead to sweeping revisions in the amount of water that may be taken from the Delta.

The doctrine, which has been buttressed in California's courts, says that certain values belong to present and future generations and that the state has an obligation to protect those values. In the Delta, for example, that could mean regulators might strike a new balance between the needs for Delta water and recreational fishing and water quality.

The idea is prompting fierce opposition from some of the state's largest water agencies, who fear water will be taken away from them for environmental benefits.

Several months ago, an independent panel appointed to make recommendations on water policy and the Delta concluded public trust and a related constitutional doctrine should become the foundation of decision-making about California water.

The chairman of that panel, former legislative leader Phil Isenberg, told the State Water Resources Control Board this week that the status quo must change, but he added that proposed changes will face stiff opposition.

"Most people want to be assured that what they're doing now, they can continue to do it, and it will be cheap," Isenberg said.

Then this week, environmental and sport fishing groups threatened to sue unless the state board agrees to restrict two mammoth water pumping projects owned by the state and federal governments that they blame for the bulk of the Delta's environmental problems.

After a workshop this week on Delta issues, some observers said it appeared the board was unlikely to apply public trust protections any time soon.

"The state board has raised delay to an art form," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, one of the groups that filed the petition.

Three members of the board declined requests for interviews, saying through a spokesman that it would be inappropriate to comment on an issue that they will later consider in a quasi-judicial proceeding.

But the pressure to ignore public trust issues may outweigh the pressure from the Isenberg's Delta Vision blue ribbon task force and the petition from environmentalists.

"An open-ended water rights proceeding for the protection of public trust values would be unwieldy, would greatly impede the progress on current planning efforts and is inappropriate and unnecessary at this time," the California Farm Bureau wrote to the state board.

And Jerry Johns, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources, which owns and operates a huge water pumping system that supplies water to the Tri-Valley, the South Bay and Southern California, urged the regulatory board to hold off at least until late 2009.

His rationale: The state's major water users are trying to craft an agreement with the regulatory agencies that enforce endangered species laws. A proceeding to weigh public trust issues could greatly complicate things, he said.

"The board has a long history of allowing the parties together to work on these issues," Johns told the board.

The public trust doctrine derived from Roman law that said, "By the law of nature these things are common to mankind -- the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea."

English common law took that a step further and determined that the state owns navigable waterways and the land beneath them in trust for all people.

The public trust was referenced by high courts more than 100 years ago to halt hydraulic mining in California because the siltation that resulted in the Sacramento River impeded the public right to navigate the river.

It was also used to justify the Illinois Legislature taking waterfront land in Chicago back from a railroad to which the state had previously given the real estate. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such land could be given away for wharves and docks because those structures were consistent with the public's interest in navigation, but the wholesale grant to the railroad was not.

"The state can no more abdicate its trust over property in which the whole people are interested, like navigable water and soils under them, ... than it can abdicate its police powers in the administration of government and the preservation of the peace," the Supreme Court ruled.

The idea that the public trust doctrine could be applied to modern environmental disputes is credited to a 1970 law journal article by UC Berkeley law professor Joseph Sax.

But it was a 1983 decision by the state Supreme Court on Mono Lake that made clear that the state water board has the authority, and the duty, to apply public trust principles to water rights.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had acquired water rights in Mono Lake near Yosemite National Park. Its use of that water was drawing the lake down, making it smaller, saltier and exposing land bridges that allowed coyotes to reach birds' nest on what had previously been inaccessible islands.

The court ruled that the beauty and recreation afforded at Mono Lake were public trust values, forcing Los Angeles to reduce its reliance on Mono Lake and restore the lake.

But the court also ruled that the environmental protection afforded by the public trust doctrine was not absolute -- that the state also had the authority to allow water diversions that harmed public trust values.

"Just as the history of this state shows that appropriation may be necessary for efficient use of water despite unavoidable harm to public trust values, it demonstrates that an appropriative water rights system administered without consideration of the public trust may cause unnecessary and unjustified harm to trust interests," the court ruled.

In 1986, a state appeals court ruled in a sprawling decision on Delta water quality that the state board has the authority to modify permits to operate the state water department's State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project to protect fish and wildlife.

"It seems that 22 years after the (appeals court) decision, the Delta is in worse shape," said Richard Frank, the executive director of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy and UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall and a member of the Delta Vision task force.

"The application of public trust values makes a lot of sense," he said, adding that such a proceeding is "the unfulfilled legacy of the Mono Lake decision."

The state board is considering whether to wield its authority over public trust as part of a larger package of measures meant to address the Delta's problems. A decision could be made in late spring. #

Stockton Record – 3/21/08
By Hank Shaw, Bureau Chief

SACRAMENTO - A stretch of the Delta due west of Thornton could become California's newest haven for hunters, anglers, boaters and hikers if legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk becomes law.

Wolk's idea is for the state to buy Prospect Island and Little Holland Tract from the federal government, and Liberty Island from the Trust for Public Land, and turn them into a state recreation area. This would allow a variety of uses, including hunting, bird-watching and fishing.

"It's good habitat. It's essential for flood control," said Wolk, a Democrat from Davis. "This could be a template for what the Delta could become.

Creating such a park would give the public access to some of the land the state is acquiring to help save the Delta's ecosystem, something the state failed to do when it spent more then $35 million on nearby Staten Island, which is owned by The Nature Conservancy and does not provide public access.

Wolk is taking the first tentative steps toward making her project a reality. In all likelihood, passing the bill will require some time, and Wolk is in her final months as an assemblywoman. She is running for state Senate against Stockton Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian.

Chris Unkel of Ducks Unlimited, which is a sponsor of the bill, says the legislation could change radically as negotiations progress.

"What we've got is a sort of first draft of the legislation, a starting point," Unkel said.

Still, Wolk hopes to make headway this year.

"It's complicated," she said. "But the intent of the bill is to at least begin the discussion."

Financing the project will be the key: It is unclear how much it would cost to buy the three parcels, although the federal Bureau of Reclamation is eager to unload Prospect Island, which was the site of a disastrous fish kill late last year caused when the bureau pumped water from the flooded island.

"We think this is a great idea," said Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken. "If we can make this work, it would be a great resolution."

McCracken said federal rules prevent the bureau from just giving away the island. It must go through the General Services Administration process. It is possible, however, that the state could acquire Prospect Island on the cheap, depending on its purpose.

Wolk says the real issue will be finding cash to maintain and operate the new recreation area. She says one idea would be for water users south of the Delta to put money in a kitty that would be used for operation and maintenance costs.

Why would they do this? Because water users would need to do something to make up for the fact that the water they receive goes through pumps that kill thousands of fish, including the endangered Delta smelt.

Helping to finance the north Delta refuge could create more spawning habitat for the fish so the losses at the pumps can be borne.

State Water Contractors Director Laura King Moon, who met with Wolk's office Thursday, said it was too soon to say whether her organization could support the idea.

This is not the first time officials tried to create a wildlife refuge in the area.

Federal authorities wanted to create the North Delta National Wildlife Refuge in 1998, but that attempt foundered on the rocks of landowner opposition. Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento, was instrumental in killing the attempt when he represented the area. Ose is now running for a different seat in Congress.

Unkel said he's hopeful that at the end of the day, the recreation area will move from dream to reality.

"We want to create something a little bit different. It's going to be a new animal," Unkel said. "This has a lot of win-win opportunities embedded in it." #

Central valley Business Times – 3/18/08

Two environmental groups say they are preparing to haul officials of the State Water Resources Control Board into court for failing to protect the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta.

As a prelude to the probable lawsuit, the California Water Impact Network and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance on Tuesday filed a public trust, waste and unreasonable use of water and method of diversion petition with the State Water Resources Control Board.

It says the board has failed to halt the continuing ecological collapse of the estuary by permitting excessive amounts of water to be pumped to western San Joaquin Valley farms and to Southern California.

There was no immediate comment from the Water Board.

The California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) contend the Water Board has allowed the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) to pump so much water each year from the beleaguered Delta that

The draining of the Delta has pushed many fish species to the brink of extinction and forced citizen groups to turn to the courts instead of the Water Board, which has primary authority for protecting the state's surface water supplies, the two groups contend.

"The Water Board has served as a handmaiden for decades to special interest groups instead of doing its job as a regulatory agency," says Carolee Krieger, chairwoman of the California Water Impact Network board of directors. "Dying fish populations and degraded drinking water are the result of this shocking dereliction of duty.”

Bill Jennings, executive director of CSPA, says that because of the ongoing failure of the Water Board to do its job, a federal judge in Fresno recently was forced to order reduced pumping in the Delta to protect endangered fish species.

"The stall-and-delay tactics of the Water Board as the Central Valley's salmonid fisheries and the Delta's pelagic fishers collapse borders on the criminal," says Mr. Jennings, a longtime critic of the Water Board.

"Watching fisheries that God nurtured over tens of thousands of years being virtually destroyed in less than two decades while DWR, the Bureau and the State Board continue their embrace of denial is surely one of the most wretched and despicable spectacles we have ever witnessed," he says.

The two groups say that if the Water Board does not take decisive action to begin reversing the decline of the Delta within the next 60 days they will take the matter into state court.

Water Board action demanded by the two groups includes:

• Modification of existing water rights to improve the fishery;

• Mandatory daily flow requirements;

• Mandatory pulse flows during salmon migration;

• Functional fish passage facilities on all dams;

• State-of-the-art fish screens on all diversion points to prevent young fish from being ground up in the Delta pumps or sucked down irrigation ditches;

• Requiring the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to begin actually complying with all water and fishery protection laws; and.

• Establishing minimum pool and temperature requirements on all water storage reservoirs to protect fish.

The petition requests the board to begin holding evidentiary hearings including testimony under oath, cross-examination and rebuttal on the issues raised as soon as possible. #

Stockton Record – 3/18/08
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

SACRAMENTO - A proposed peripheral canal and its impact on the Delta will be a key part of a two-year study launched Monday by state water officials.

The environmental review will examine building a canal to carry Sacramento River water around the Delta rather than through it. Officials said they'll look at a canal's potential to affect flooding, land use, groundwater, recreation and many other factors.

"It's a very long, deliberative process, and we want to get started on it now," said Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources.

The study would be a step toward completing the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a document that will set forth fish habitat conservation strategies for water users. By changing how water is sent through or around the Delta, "we can much better protect fish than what we're doing today," said Jerry Johns, deputy director for Water Resources.

Some fish populations in the Delta have crashed at least in part due to the large export pumps near Tracy that send water south to cities and farms. The fish are sucked into the pumps.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called in late February for the conservation plan to be completed quickly. On the canal question, he presented four options: building a canal, not building a canal, "armoring" Delta islands to make them suitable for transporting water or some combination.

Opponents of a canal say it would divert most of the fresh water that normally would flow into the Delta, turning the estuary into a stagnant swamp. It also would reduce incentives to strengthen levees, they say, making floods of low-lying Delta islands more likely.

The canal is the most controversial issue but not the only one surrounding California's future water supply and distribution system. Also Monday, the state said it would begin working toward the governor's goal of increasing water conservation 20 percent by 2020.

State officials also announced a series of meetings on flood protection and emergency response in the Delta. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 3/15/08
By Thom Gabrukiewicz, staff writer

SACRAMENTO -- While federal fishery managers grapple with closing this year's commercial and recreational ocean chinook salmon season from northern Oregon to the Mexican border, Sacramento River anglers said they still hold out hope for a truncated 2008 sportfishing season.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) ended its latest round of talks Friday by weighing three options for ocean anglers, including completely shuttering the season or severely limiting fishing. The council is expected to choose its final ocean recommendation when members meet April 6-12 in Seattle.

"I think the likeliest outcome this year is no one will put a hook in the (ocean)," said Humboldt County fisherman Dave Bitts, who was attending the weeklong meeting in Sacramento.

River anglers, meanwhile, said they still anticipate fishing for fall-run chinook salmon, considered one of the healthiest runs on the West Coast until the collapse this year.

"It's not over yet," Redding guide Mark Mlcoch said. "There's still a lot to discuss and we have to sit tight and see what they decide."

While the PFMC sets the ocean season, the state's inland salmon season is decided by the California Fish and Game Commission, with input from the National Marine Fisheries Council and the PFMC. The commission sets its regulations every three years and is midway through its cycle.

Each year, supplements to the sportfishing regulations are released in May and June to specifically address changes to the ocean and inland salmon regulations, according to the Fish and Game Commission Web site.

The season is set in a way that shelters protected spring-run and winter-run fish that also enter the Sacramento River watershed to spawn.

Fall-run salmon season on the Sacramento River traditionally begins July 16.

"Once the PFMC sets its option, we will report to the commission and it will adopt what to do in the Central Valley," said Randy Benthin, a Department of Fish and Game senior fisheries biologist in Redding. "They've got time to set notices, have public meetings; that's my guess in how it's going to work."

North state guides who attended the PFMC meetings said river anglers could see one of three options that were discussed Tuesday being adopted by the Commission. Those options include a zero-limit, catch-and-release season; an allotment season of the fish coming back to spawn, which would be about one-third of last year's take; or a shortened season -- say September and October -- where there would be the traditional two-fish-a-day limit and two in possession.

"My guess, we'll probably see a two-month season," said Robert Weese, a guide from Red Bluff who attended the PFMC meetings. "They'd take two-thirds of the season away from us, but we'd still be fishing during the peak times."

Only about 90,000 adult salmon returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries to spawn last year, the second-lowest number on record and well below the government's conservation goals. That's down from 277,000 in 2006 and a record high of 804,000 in 2002.

Biologists are predicting that this year's salmon returns could be even lower because the number of returning young males, known as "jacks," hit an all-time low last year. About 2,000 of them were recorded, which is far below the 40,000 counted in a typical year.

Experts are unclear about what caused the collapse. Some marine scientists have said the salmon declines can be attributed in part to unusual weather patterns that have disrupted the marine food chain in the ocean along the Pacific coast.

But anglers, environmental groups and American Indians put the blame on poor water quality and water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

"It's way beyond the fish," Mlcoch said. "It's politics."

Specifically, they say, the massive pumping of water to the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California has altered the flows and temperature of the delta's rivers and streams where salmon reside until they move to the ocean and mature.

"Times will be hard, and if it goes like this and we see a shortened season, fine," Weese said. "But then the government needs to look into it -- all of it -- and fix the problem." #

New York Times – 3/17/08
By Felicity Barringer, staff writer

SACRAMENTO — Where did they go?Skip to next paragraph

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.

Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border. A final decision on salmon fishing in the area is expected next month.

As a result, Chinook, or king salmon, the most prized species of Pacific wild salmon, will be hard to come by until the Alaskan season opens in July. Even then, wild Chinook are likely to be very expensive in markets and restaurants nationwide.

“It’s unprecedented that this fishery is in this kind of shape,” said Donald McIsaac, executive director of the council, which is organized under the auspices of the Commerce Department.

Fishermen think the Sacramento River was mismanaged in 2005, when this year’s fish first migrated downriver. Perhaps, they say, federal and state water managers drained too much water or drained at the wrong time to serve the state’s powerful agricultural interests and cities in arid Southern California. The fishermen think the fish were left susceptible to disease, or to predators, or to being sucked into diversion pumps and left to die in irrigation canals.

But federal and state fishery managers and biologists point to the highly unusual ocean conditions in 2005, which may have left the fingerling salmon with little or none of the rich nourishment provided by the normal upwelling currents near the shore.

The life cycle of these fall run Chinook salmon takes them from their birth and early weeks in cold river waters through a downstream migration that deposits them in the San Francisco Bay when they are a few inches long, and then as their bodies adapt to saltwater through a migration out into the ocean, where they live until they return to spawn, usually three years later.

One species of Sacramento salmon, the winter run Chinook, is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

But their meager numbers have held steady and appear to be unaffected by whatever ails the fall Chinook.

So what happened? As Dave Bitts, a fisherman based in Eureka in Northern California, sees it, the variables are simple. “To survive, there are two things a salmon needs,” he said. “To eat. And not to be eaten.”

Fragmentary evidence about salmon mortality in the Sacramento River in recent years, as well as more robust but still inconclusive data about ocean conditions in 2005, indicates that the fall Chinook smolts, or baby fish, of 2005 may have lost out on both counts. But biologists, fishermen and fishery managers all emphasize that no one yet knows anything for sure.

Bill Petersen, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research center in Newport, Ore., said other stocks of anadromous Pacific fish — those that migrate from freshwater to saltwater and back — had been anemic this year, leading him to suspect ocean changes.

After studying changes in the once-predictable pattern of the Northern Pacific climate, Mr. Petersen found that in 2005 the currents that rise from the deeper ocean, bringing with them nutrients like phytoplankton and krill, were out of sync. “Upwelling usually starts in April and goes until September,” he said. “In 2005, it didn’t start until July.”

Mr. Petersen’s hypothesis about the salmon is that “the fish that went to sea in 2005 died a few weeks after getting to the ocean” because there was nothing to eat. A couple of years earlier, when the oceans were in a cold-weather cycle, the opposite happened — the upwelling was very rich. The smolts of that year were later part of the largest run of fall Chinook ever recorded.

But, Mr. Petersen added, many factors may have contributed to the loss of this season’s fish.

Bruce MacFarlane, another NOAA researcher who is based in Santa Cruz, has started a three-year experiment tagging young salmon — though not from the fall Chinook run — to determine how many of those released from the large Coleman hatchery, 335 miles from the Sacramento River’s mouth, make it to the Golden Gate Bridge. According to the first year’s data, only 4 of 200 reached the bridge.

Mr. MacFarlane said it was possible that a diversion dam on the upper part of the river, around Redding and Red Bluff, created calm and deep waters that are “a haven for predators,” particularly the pike minnow.

Farther downstream, he said, young salmon may fall prey to striped bass. There are also tens of thousands of pipes, large and small, attached to pumping stations that divert water.

Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which is among the major managers of water in the Sacramento River delta, said that in the last 18 years, significant precautions have been taken to keep fish from being taken out of the river through the pipes.

“We’ve got 90 percent of those diversions now screened,” Mr. McCracken said. He added that two upstream dams had been removed and that the removal of others was planned. At the diversion dam in Red Bluff, he said, “we’ve opened the gates eight months a year to allow unimpeded fish passage.”

Bureau of Reclamation records show that annual diversions of water in 2005 were about 8 percent above the 12-year average, while diversions in June, the month the young Chinook smolts would have headed downriver, were roughly on par with what they had been in the mid-1990s.

Peter Dygert, a NOAA representative on the fisheries council, said, “My opinion is that we won’t have a definitive answer that clearly indicates this or that is the cause of the decline.” #

Chico Enterprise Record – 3/14/08
By Steve Carson, outdoors columnist

Already reeling from unfavorable news about salmon populations and returning fish, California salmon anglers took another huge hit Wednesday when all currently open salmon fishing areas in the ocean were closed effective April 1, and all upcoming openers were suspended.

At meetings held this week, representatives of the National Marine Fisheries Service, California Department of Fish and Game, Pacific Fisheries Management Council and others made the decision based on a forecast of only about 59,000 chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River for spawning this year.

That number is substantially below the minimum "escapement floor" of 122,000 to 188,000 fish. In 2007, only 87,966 chinooks were estimated on the Sacramento, also well below the preseason prediction of 265,000.

Exactly how all of this will affect our local salmon fishing seasons remains to be seen. The only currently open fishing season for river salmon in the state is for "spring run" salmon on our own Feather River.

On Thursday afternoon, Department of Fish and Game spokesman Harry Morse said, "What is going on right now relates to jurisdictions in federal waters. There are seven ocean area closures from Oregon down to San Luis Obispo.

All of the emphasis is on the 'fall run'. When the Central Valley fall run fish get ready to enter the rivers, they will look at it separately."

Morse added, "Although much is still to be determined, it is likely that there will be limited if any salmon fishing this season in the main stem of the Sacramento River. We may be able to do special regulations on the Feather River based on last year's numbers."

Another public discussion meeting is going on today in Sacramento, conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The meeting will start at 9 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, 2001 Point West Way, near Arden Way. Concerned members of the public are encouraged to attend. #

Sacramento Bee – 3/13/08
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

Wildlife officials moved Wednesday for early closure of seven coastal salmon fishing zones in California and Oregon, a sign of dire conditions facing the Central Valley chinook.

The action came in a conference between fisheries managers gathered in Sacramento for a series of meetings by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

Officials representing California, Oregon and the federal government opted to close the seven zones to protect salmon that remain alive in the ocean.

They decided early closures are needed because the council won't make a final ruling on the 2008 salmon season until mid-April, and seasons that normally open before then could jeopardize the species.

Commercial and sport fishing are affected, from Oregon's Cape Falcon to the Mexican border.

The California Central Valley fall chinook salmon, a normally robust run that underpins the fishery in both states, is in steep decline.

Last year's run was the second-lowest in 35 years of record-keeping; this year is likely to be worse.

Peter Dygert, National Marine Fisheries Service biologist, said closing both commercial and recreational seasons early is rare.

"It's always been done to preserve some options for future fisheries," said Dygert. "Now, the context is different. Now it's just to save fish for spawning."

The seven zones include two Oregon commercial areas that were set to open Saturday and a California zone near Fort Bragg that would have opened April 7.

The rest of the commercial season usually begins May 1.

Opening the two Oregon zones will be delayed until April 15 at the request of Oregon officials.

But future actions probably will keep them closed, Dygert said.

Four recreational zones also were closed early. They cover the entirety of the Oregon and California coasts, except for a zone near the Klamath River, and would have opened either March 15 or April 5.

One near Fort Bragg has been open since Feb. 16 and will now be closed April 1.

Joe Janisch of Fort Bragg, president of the nonprofit Salmon Restoration Association, said the closures will hurt his community.

"There's probably 200 boats in this harbor that go out on the weekend to chase salmon that won't be going," he said.

The council Friday is set to adopt three options for the bulk of the 2008 season.

One is likely to include total closure of all commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and Oregon.

It will choose a final option in April. State and federal agencies adopt that as formal regulations. California is likely to also close fishing on Central Valley rivers. #

Chico Enterprise Record – 3/12/08
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

As water planners continue to map out the forces pulling on both groundwater and surface water, questions keep coming up.

Dan McManus' job is focusing on groundwater for the Red Bluff office the Department of Water Resources. He was invited to talk about water for the Monday meeting of the Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance.

Watershed Alliance board member Susan Strachan explained to other alliance members that McManus was asked to speak to the group because of groundwater depressions under the city of Chico and in the Capay area.

There are no easy answers, McManus said.

As someone who focuses on groundwater, McManus said he would hope developers would pay for monitoring wells.

"I've been pushing this with the General Plan," he said.

There is also a need for more dedicated monitoring wells in the Durham area. Scientists have ways of detecting age of water in deep wells, McManus explained.

This helps to better understand how long it takes for groundwater to recharge. Through greater monitoring, researchers will be better able track down where the water came from and when, he said.

Strachan is a board member of the Big Chico Creek Water Alliance and also a Water Commissioner.

She and others have been asking a lot of questions about wells proposed in Glenn County. She is concerned about the impact pumping water in that area of the Sacramento Valley could have on groundwater supplies that lie beneath both Glenn and Butte counties.

Of particular concern is that landowners will sell water to other parts of the state.

During his presentation, McManus also laid out the basics of water use in Butte County and the Sacramento Valley.

Butte, for example, uses about 1 million acre-feet of surface water, and about 438,000 acre-feet of groundwater.

Of that, about 70 percent is used for summer agriculture, 20 percent for fall agriculture, 5 percent for urban use and 5 percent dedicated to the environment, he said.

Among water users, the county varies. Some areas, such as the Vina area north of Chico, relies almost totally on groundwater. Places such as West Butte are half surface water and half groundwater, while Eastern Butte is almost entirely surface water, he said.

In some areas, such as the foothills, water supply is more hit-and-miss.

The hard rock foundation means wells are dug into the cracks in the rock. Sometimes these wells will tap into a steady supply of water within those fissures. Other times, the wells will reach only small supplies of water. #

San Francisco Chronicle – 3/12/08
By Peter Fimrite, staff writer

So few salmon are living in the ocean and rivers along the Pacific Coast that salmon fishing in California and Oregon will have to be shut down completely this year unless an emergency exception is granted, Pacific Fishery Management Council representatives said Tuesday.

It would mark the first time ever that the federal agency created 22 years ago to manage the Pacific Coast fishery canceled the coast's traditional salmon fishing season from April to mid-November.

Such a move would jeopardize the livelihoods of close to 1,000 commercial fishermen from Santa Barbara to Washington State and would significantly drive up the price of West Coast wild salmon.

A decision to shut down the fishery also would kill recreational salmon fishing for some 2.4 million anglers in California, an activity that the American Sportfishing Association has estimated is worth $4 billion.

The council is expected to make a recommendation in April to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which will make the final decision about what to do about the collapsing salmon fishery.

"This is unprecedented," said Dave Bitts, a commercial salmon and crab fisherman based in Eureka. "The Sacramento fish are our bread and butter, and there are not even any crumbs. It's horrible. It means half or more of my income is not going to be there at all this year."

Why season can be closed

The prospect of banning fishing came up during the first full day of presentations about the salmon crisis during the council's weeklong meeting at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento.

The council's salmon management plan, first adopted as part of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and amended several times since then, requires the council to close ocean fishing if the number of spawning salmon do not reach the conservation objectives set for the fishery.

There are many ways to count fish, depending on what rivers and tributaries are included, but only 63,900 fall run salmon were documented spawning in the Sacramento River in 2007, far below the 122,000 to 189,000 objective the council had set.

The doom and gloom brought on by the poor run was made worse by news that the number of jacks - 2-year-old fish that return to the river a year early to spawn - is the lowest ever recorded in the Central Valley fall run. Scientists use the number of jacks that return as an indicator of what next year's spawning season will look like.

Fisheries experts expected 157,000 jacks, but counted only 6,000.

What it means is that all fishing where the fall run chinook are caught must be closed unless there is an emergency rule allowing an exemption, said Chuck Tracy, a staff officer for the council. Chinook from the Sacramento and its tributaries are caught in California, Oregon and Washington, but the catch in Washington is historically small enough that it might not fall under the rule.

"Washington could be exempted, but California and Oregon will definitely be affected," Tracy said.

Cape Falcon, in northern Oregon, would likely be the boundary for a fishery closure, said Peter Dygert, the fisheries management chief of the sustainable fisheries division of the National Marine Fisheries Service. "Any fishing south of Cape Falcon will have to be implemented under emergency rule. There are going to be relatively few fish in the ocean overall."

Federal disaster possible

The situation is so bad that there have been discussions during the meetings about declaring the salmon fishery a federal disaster, Tracy said.

The Klamath and Trinity river run, another major salmon run along the Pacific Coast, was declared a disaster in 2006 after a similar collapse, freeing up money to help those who are financially dependent on the salmon industry. The Klamath and Trinity crisis led to a dismal commercial and recreational salmon catch last year.

"This is the same situation we were in two years ago in the Klamath," Tracy said. At that time, "they did allow some fisheries in the ocean through an emergency rule."

But, in many ways, the situation is even worse now. Peter Lawson, of the National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Marine Fisheries Science Center, told the council that five different salmon stocks in the three states have failed two years in a row, including chinook and coho salmon.

The emergency exemption allowed some fishing along the Pacific Coast after the salmon crisis on the Klamath, but Fisheries experts were hard pressed to come up with any excuse the council could use this time to justify an exception, given the dire circumstances.

"The California, Oregon and Washington coastal stocks are all depressed," Tracy said. "The Sacramento fall chinook are in the worst shape. Is it a crisis? If you are a commercial fisherman or someone who relies on the fishing industry, yes."

The Sacramento River fall run, the San Francisco Bay's biggest wild salmon run, was the second worst on record for spawning chinook. The worst year was in 1992, but the fishery recovered and as recently as 2002 there were hundreds of thousands of spawning salmon in the Sacramento watershed.

At its peak, the fall run, which essentially means fish that are at their spawning peak in September and October, exceeded 800,000 fish. Over the past decade, the numbers had never fallen below 250,000 - until this past fall.

Nothing to catch

Fisheries experts say even if the salmon fishery remained wide open there would not be any salmon left to catch.

The collapse is especially troublesome because the recreational and commercial fishing industries all along the Pacific coast depend on fish born in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. The Central Valley chinook, or king, salmon pass through the San Francisco Bay after hatching in the river and roam the Pacific Ocean as far away as Alaska before returning three years later to the place where they were born.

The fall run - named for the time the fish pass through the Golden Gate returning to their native streams - is, in fact, the last survivor of dozens of teeming salmon runs up and down the Pacific coast. The Central Valley's spring run may once have been the largest, but most of the habitat is now behind dams.

The scientists, fishermen and tribal representatives at the meetings this week are trotting out various theories for the decline, including global warming, diversions of freshwater in the delta, pumping operations, a lack of nutrient rich deep ocean upwellings and exposure to pollutants. One document lists 46 possible reasons.

Dygert said the death of so many salmon "is suggesting a broad-scale ocean survival problem."

"One thing we know is that these fish had plenty of parents," said Bitts. "Something has happened since then."

The council, which will propose three options for managing the fishery by the end of the week, asked staff scientists Tuesday to investigate a variety of possible causes, including hatchery operations and ecological changes in the ocean and fresh water environments.

Fisheries in crisis

What's next: The Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Sacramento, will consider recommendations by conservationists, biologists, tribal interests and fishing industry representatives. The council will propose three options Friday for what to do about this year's fishing season.

Input: The public can comment over the next month in writing or at hearings in Oregon and Washington on March 31 and in Eureka on April 1. #

Ventura County Star – 3/12/08
By Robert Digitale, staff writer

California salmon fishermen might benefit from a $2 million study using genetics and global positioning systems to link the ocean location where fish are caught with the rivers from which they were spawned.

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Gathering such information might one day better protect the state's weaker salmon stocks from rivers where regulators predict relatively few fish in a particular season.

Through the use of genetic testing and GPS tracking, the theory is fishermen could be directed to better avoid those restricted salmon. In return, at times they might receive more access to fish from rivers with larger spawning runs.

"That's exactly what the Canadians are doing with their chinook salmon fishery off the coast of British Columbia," said John Carlos Garza, a research geneticist based in Santa Cruz with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The result, Garza said, is Canadian fisherman have "pretty dramatically" reduced their catch from struggling salmon runs while pursuing larger catches from more abundant rivers.

A smaller-scale study last year in California produced noteworthy results, which Garza shared last week at a salmon meeting in Santa Rosa.

In the region off Mendocino County between Point Arena and Shelter Cove, 42 percent of the study's catch in April came from Central Valley rivers. Of the rest, 21 percent came from the Klamath, 20 percent from Oregon's Rogue and 7 percent from other North Coast rivers, predominantly the Eel and the Russian.

In contrast, 60 percent of the fish caught between San Francisco Bay and Point Arena in July came from Central Valley rivers.

Garza said the data suggest an abnormally small run of Sacramento River salmon last year.

In April 2006, a study using recreational catches off Monterey showed that 92 percent of the fish came from the Central Valley system. A year later, that figure had dropped to 71 percent.

Friday in Sacramento, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will select three options for the coming season.

Many fishermen predict one option will be a statewide ban on fishing because of poor returns predicted for the Sacramento River, normally the state's most productive river. Such a ban would rule out the research this season, those involved said.

In April, the council will recommend season rules to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the salmon fishery. The commercial season normally begins May 1.

Currently, salmon regulators try to manage the fishery by relying on historic catch data, which is limited because only a fraction of the caught fish are tagged by a hatchery and, thus, can be linked to a particular river. Catch location also is much less precise than what can be recorded with the study's approach using GPS tracking.

Oregon and California are working together on the genetic study, funded by both federal fisheries and disaster aid.

Fishermen could receive about $1 million to take part in the study, said David Goldenberg, chief executive officer of the California Salmon Council, a state-created marketing group based in Sacramento.

The fishermen would be paid to land the fish, use a GPS unit to pinpoint the catch location and take a small clip from a fin to be analyzed later by scientists. The fish then might be harvested or returned to the ocean.

Chuck Wise, a Bodega Bay fisherman and the outgoing president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said the study would prove valuable if such a program someday allowed regulators to open or close fishing grounds in the midst of a salmon season.

"Then we could work on the stronger stocks," Wise said. #

Antelope Valley Press – 3/11/08
By Alisha Semchuck, staff writer

SACRAMENTO - Recommendations from a task force aimed at solving water woes in California got the nod of approval from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and applause from water suppliers.

But not everyone in state government agreed with proposals from the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, created by the governor in 2006 to seek a fix for problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

State Sens. Don Perata, D-Oakland; Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento; and Mike Machado, D-Linden, wrote Schwarzenegger a letter on Feb. 27 condemning plans for an alternate water transfer system to bypass the Delta, rather than run through it.

The governor responded by writing back to the senators on Feb. 28, reinforcing his support of the task force suggestions - a move that earned him approval from State Water Contractors Inc., an association of 27 member agencies, including three from the Antelope Valley.

In their letter, Perata, Steinberg and Machado said, "We are shocked to learn that your administration has acted unilaterally to begin work on an 'alternative delta conveyance system,' i.e. The Peripheral Canal."

The peripheral canal became one of the most heated issues in planning the Delta infrastructure back in the 1960s, when people in Contra Costa County opposed the project, and again when voters rejected it on the ballot in 1982, as previously reported in the Antelope Valley Press.

The senators cited correspondence from the State Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, which said the Department of Water Resources had "broad authority and discretion to construct facilities like the Peripheral Canal" without taking further legislative action.

Perata, Steinberg and Machado also mentioned a funding request in the governor's proposed 2008 budget to cover the labor costs for engineering and production of environmental documents for construction of the alternative conveyance system, which they again refer to as the peripheral canal. Furthermore, they pointed out that the administration is moving forward with plans for a canal facility although the budget request has not been approved.

"We are vexed that only last week, you invited Sen. Dianne Feinstein to meet with us to help forge a comprehensive agreement on a water bond for the November 2008 ballot," the senators' letter said.

"At that time, you repeatedly stressed the singular importance of reaching a balanced, statewide consensus on water policy that meets the needs of the entire state, and not acting in a manner that addresses some concerns while ignoring others."

In his response, Schwarzenegger wrote that his administration has been working to solve problems in the Delta for more than two years.

"As you all have acknowledged during our negotiations on a comprehensive water infrastructure package over the last year, the heart of California's vital water supply system is in jeopardy of collapse without both immediate action and long-term solutions to restore the ecosystem and protect water supplies," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Problems that have plagued the Delta in recent years include old levees that must be repaired to avoid a flood potentially as destructive as the one that hit the Louisiana area during Hurricane Katrina as well as the population decline of an indigenous species of two-inch-long fish called the Delta smelt that have been sucked into the pumps, where they die.

U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger in late December ordered a slowdown of the Delta pumps to save the smelt, which serve an important role in the health of the ecosystem. However, those pumps send water into the 444-mile California Aqueduct, which supplies potable water to Southern California, as previously reported in the Valley Press.

"The task force has issued its vision and will develop a strategic plan to implement the vision by the end of this year," Schwarzenegger said.

He outlined the "near-term actions" necessary to protect the estuary, which includes alternatives for transferring water from the Delta to Southern California. The governor stressed that his administration "has been transparent in working with stakeholders and legislators" on identifying administrative and legislative actions needed to accomplish the task force recommendations.

Key elements of the task force solutions include a plan to achieve a 20% reduction in per capita water use statewide by 2020; protection of the flood plain in the Delta; multi-agency delta disaster planning; improving drinking water quality; and improving the water conveyance system.

"We applaud the governor for his leadership in taking this initial step forward toward a comprehensive plan for the Delta," said Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of State Water Contractors, which has its headquarters in Sacramento. "There is no question that the Delta is in crisis, and that both our water supply and ecosystem face severe threats."

"This is the time for action, and the governor is leading us in the right direction," King Moon said. She pointed out that public water agencies throughout the state agree that an enhanced conveyance system will provide cleaner, more reliable water. "We won't be out of the woods until we find another way to deliver water to 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. This is a lengthy process, though, and we must get started right away."

"We concur totally with her comments," said Russ Fuller, general manager of the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, one of three Valley State Water Contractors, along with the Palmdale Water District and Littlerock Creek Irrigation District.

"We think the governor is doing an excellent job in addressing this issue and hope he will continue to move forward.

We're sad to see that some of the leaders in the Legislature appear to be trying to slow this process down," Fuller said, adding that state Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster, are great proponents of the plans. "The Republicans south of Stockton are keenly aware of the need for significant improvements in the way we operate the plumbing facilities of the Delta."

Palmdale Water District "supports the governor in his efforts to develop a comprehensive fix for the water problems in the state of California, and especially the Delta," said Curtis Paxton, the district's assistant general manager.

"Overall, the Valley is spending more than $100 million to improve water treatment plants because of water quality issues that are a direct result of not having a peripheral canal," Paxton said. "We're having to make improvements because of the organics." He was referring to material in the Delta waters that, when treated with chlorine during the disinfection process, creates byproducts called trihalomethanes, which have been associated with certain health problems like heart, lung and kidney damage.

The estimated cost for the conveyance system is around $4 billion, "so it's not inexpensive," Fuller said. "But it's definitely needed and well worth it."

With the ever-growing California population and the myriad of perils that can pull the plug on the Delta at any moment, these water experts agree a peripheral canal is the only way to go. #

Stockton Record – 3/12/08
By Hank Shaw, Capitol Bureau Chief

SACRAMENTO - Can additional dams help save the Delta?

Two local state senators working to strike a deal on building new reservoirs in the Central Valley might explore that concept further. Sens. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, and Michael Machado, D-Linden, want to see how much the public would benefit from building a dam on the San Joaquin River near Fresno and another along the Sacramento River in Colusa.

The proposals themselves are not new: A reservoir at Temperance Flat near Fresno and the proposed Sites Reservoir near Maxwell have been kicked around by lawmakers for the better part of five years.

What is relatively new is the idea that the water these new reservoirs would hold could improve the water quality and the ecosystem in the West's largest estuary.

Feasibility studies need to be completed on both proposals, and completing them with the environment in mind - as opposed to strictly water storage for farms and urban users - could show that the state does indeed have a stake in their construction. Or not.

"The concept has been a chunk of money that buys an asset for the environment," state Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow said during a hearing of the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday.

Added Cogdill: "That's been a key criteria in terms of what this proposal has to be."

Machado and Cogdill hope to break a two-year impasse over a new bond that would ask voters to spend billions on water supply projects. Broad agreement already exists for projects to clean up polluted groundwater, store water underground and promote conservation. Whether public money would be well spent with a new dam is the issue.

Most of the good places for dams already are taken, so any water stored behind new sites would be expensive.

Supporters argue that global climate change is expected to cause more of California's precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow - and rain needs to be captured in a reservoir, they say.

Thus far, that argument has not held water, so to speak. But late last year, Cogdill and a few of his Republican colleagues said building dams at Colusa and Temperance Flat could be run specifically to keep existing Delta flows clean and secure.

Machado has generally supported this notion for years, as has his Assembly counterpart, Lois Wolk of Davis. The problem always has been how much the public benefits from all this, if at all. And how much the public benefits would determine how much of the bill the state would pay. Each dam would cost more than $1 billion. Historically, however, the state has spent only a tiny percentage on dams. Local money provided the bulk of the funding.

"It has not been the way we've gone about it" in the past, Snow said.

The state has spent more than $62 million studying the various dam proposals in recent years. The Water Resources Department estimates it will cost another $16 million to finish them. #

Stockton Record – 3/7/08
By Hank Shaw, Capitol Bureau Chief

SACRAMENTO - Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, is trying to restart talks over a water-supply bond by introducing a new version of the bond, which he hopes will serve as a vehicle for discussion.

"Our new proposal is built on recognized water resource priorities but adds important new provisions outlined by the administration and our Senate Republican colleagues on water storage and Delta protection," Machado said. "We're going to use this as a reference point for discussion."

Machado's GOP counterpart, Modesto's Dave Cogdill, also said the move was a positive step: "We're ready to roll up our sleeves and work across the aisle with the goal of passing a comprehensive bond."

The two plan to hold weekly meetings to hash out a deal, Machado said.

All involved in the yearlong talks over how to increase California's water supply agree that a legislative bond - not an outside ballot initiative - is the only serious way to achieve something in 2008.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, pulled his version of a water bond late last year, and a coalition of business groups announced last week they planned to back off their own proposals.

Machado's new bill incorporates elements of Perata's proposal and the latest plans of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which the governor outlined in a letter to Machado and Perata last week. Details of the governor's plans are expected to emerge at a hearing Tuesday.

All told, Machado's bill would ask voters for permission to borrow $6.85 billion to increase water supply by:

» Promoting more efficient water use, by farmers and urban water users.

» Cleaning up polluted groundwater basins.

» Expanding underground water storage projects, such as the one in Madera County.

» Restoring the Delta's water supply so the water shipped through the estuary remains stable and clean.

» Building some kind of new reservoirs.

This last point remains foggy for the moment.

"We aren't explicit on surface storage. We are not explicit on conveyance or on Delta restoration," said Machado, noting that these will be the primary points of debate.

He said he hopes that some kind of Cogdill-Machado bill could emerge from their talks that they could then persuade the rest of the Senate, the governor and the Assembly to accept.

"Dave and I have the ability to try to sort things out from the perspectives of our districts," Machado said. "We can then propose that to our colleagues to go further." #

Sacramento Bee – 3/6/08
By Allen Pierleoni, staff writer

At one point during our hike, as we gazed across a vast grassland in the 40,000-acre Cosumnes River Preserve, I posed a question to Steve Evans, the leader of our group: How similar was the landscape we were seeing, compared with what it was hundreds of years ago?

"The preserve is a great example of what the pre- European Central Valley used to look like," Evans said. "It's nearly pristine, yet next to a major metropolitan area. Other than the slight droning you hear from (Interstate 5), you feel like you're walking back in time."

That was the mood of the day in February as Evans, a veteran conservationist, led and lectured our party of six during a stroll along the River Walk and Wetlands Walk trails, four miles in all. This is a fine hike for birders – the preserve is home to 250 species of migrating birds – and families. The time to visit is now, while the weather is mild and many species of migratory birds are in residence. The trails are flat and wander through ever-changing terrain guaranteed to keep the interest level high. As Evans put it, "Not everybody wants to hike 10 miles at 5,000 feet."

Evans is the conservation director of the 6,000-member Friends of the River, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization whose mission is "preserving and restoring California's rivers, streams and their watersheds, as well as advocating for sustainable water management."

So, just how many miles of river are there in California?

"That depends on what you call a river," Evans said as we walked along. "We did a database search of all the state's rivers and streams, and it came to 194,000 miles. If you talk about major rivers alone, it's more like 30,000 miles."

Still, that's huge. But after all, Evans is a big-time player when it comes to California conservation. In keeping with that, he's also the author of "Top Trails: Sacramento" (Wilderness Press, $16.95, 361 pages). In it, he describes 43 hiking trails that range from easy to difficult, the result of three years of research and hiking. The trails are in the Sacramento Valley, along the coast, in the foothills and in the Sierra Nevada. We chose this one from his book, and Evans agreed to give us a personal tour.

The 80-mile-long Cosumnes River, Evans said, is "one of the few undammed (and un-leveed) rivers in California, because it's relatively small and isn't fed by a lot of snowmelt. It's still connected to its floodplain, so it feeds a lot of wetlands. In winter and spring (when parts of the preserve can be underwater), the floodplains play an essential role as a nursery for young salmon and steelhead trout. Larger rivers have been cut off from their floodplains by dams, and that has hurt fish populations."

Our walk took us by the Cosumnes River and alongside wetlands – acres of land covered by water – and sloughs where the riverside (riparian) forest was thick with willows, buttonbush, box elder, cottonwoods, reeds and cattails.

On higher ground, we strolled through shaded forests of valley and black oak, kicking our way through dried leaves and acorns, and out into open grasslands that are the home of an oak savanna. The dark, twisted trees – hundreds of years old – were too numerous to count.

Surveying that savanna, Evans noted that "any open space in the valley that was dry enough for oaks to grow got cleared years ago. The land was used either to grow crops or to build houses. There aren't very many places like this left."

Parts of the hike looked to be straight out of the Florida swamps. ("This is California's Florida," one of our group observed.) The native reeds could double for sawgrass, and that log floating in the slough current could be a gator.

Farther on, the grasslands resembled an African veldt. As we walked through them, we almost expected a pride of lions to step out of the bush.

But let's mention the actual local wildlife in the preserve – mostly birds, of course. The area is part of the Pacific Flyway, a major route for migrating fowl.

We also saw great blue herons and stately white egrets stalking prey, Cooper's hawks riding the wind and numerous flocks of ducks feeding in the shallows.

Other local denizens include deer, mountain lions, foxes, coyotes, skunks, rabbits, squirrels, gophers, moles, snakes, frogs and lizards, as well as 40 fish species and 230 plant species.

Part of the River Walk Trail was along the top of a berm. Evans explained: "This was a levee at one time, probably built by the farmer who owned this piece of property. He was keeping his fields dry on this side of his levee (he pointed to the right) when the floodplains were under water on that side (he pointed to the left).

"As you get closer to rivers that don't have levees and dams on them, you're rolling the dice on how long you can continue to farm on the (neighboring) land. Sooner or later, there's going to be a flood that will put you out of business."

As a sidebar to that, Evans noted that in 2006, the preserve was closed for much of the spring because of flooding.

We paused for a moment of silence, to appreciate the quiet and calm of nature. The only sounds were of calling birds and the wind sighing through the trees. It was then that the ground began to tremble and a roaring noise grew louder.

More trembling, more roaring. A herd of elephants stampeding across the veldt, perhaps? Unfortunately, no. It was a Union Pacific Railroad train, laden with truck trailers, thundering across an imposing concrete trestle that cuts through part of the preserve. How rude. Just how did that happen?

As the day went on, Evans spoke on a number of fascinating topics, including the interface between groundwater and surface water, the long-term effects of diverting rivers from their natural courses, and how habitats naturally erode and then regenerate with – now, get this – no interference from mankind.

Later, as we said our goodbyes, Evans added this wise observation: "Ecosystems are not only more complicated than we think, they're more complicated than we can think. We simply don't have all the answers." #

Ukiah Journal – 3/7/08
By Ben Brown, staff writer

Dead men may tell no tales, but if you reel in the wrong fish on your line, a dead steelhead can cost you.

It is illegal to keep wild steelhead in California, and though it is rare that a fisherman will catch one, California Fish and Game hatchery employee Michael Carlson said it is important that people know the rules.

"A lot of it is ignorance," he said. "People don't know."

Fishermen can take farmed steelhead in the late winter and spring as they run up the rivers to spawn. Carlson said the way to tell the difference between the two is that the adipose fin, a small fin on the top side of the fish two thirds of the way back from the head, is clipped off by hatchery workers on farmed fish.

Carlson admitted that not every hatchery fish always gets clipped, but said another way to tell is to check a steelhead's dorsal fin, which will be worn and ragged from the fish growing up in a hatchery tank.

Carlson said California fishermen are legally allowed to take two farmed steelhead of any size.

Most farmed steelhead in Mendocino County are found south of Lake Mendocino, where they are released into the Russian River.

Finding and catching a wild steelhead is still fairly rare, due to overfishing and the silt that has eliminated fish habitat, but Carlson said fishermen have reported catching greater numbers of wild steelhead in recent years.

A copy of all fishing laws is available anywhere you can get a fishing license, but it is a fisherman's responsibility to read them.

"It is your responsibility to know what the laws are," Carlson said.

He and other hatchery workers are trying to revitalize the steelhead population by breeding steelhead to release into the river.

The hatchery handles approximately 200,000 yearling steelhead per year, Carlson said. In the late winter and spring, the hatchery releases the yearlings into the Russian River to make their way to the ocean.

On Thursday, the hatchery had about 20,000 fish left in the hatchery. Carlson said hatchery workers would release them on the next new moon, sometime around April 8.

He said they release the fish during the new moon so that the darkness will make it easier for them to avoid predators.

The yearlings, which are anywhere from two inches to eight inches in length, will return in between two to five years to spawn, by which time they can be up to 30 inches long.

Spawning steelhead will usually return to the hatchery twice in their lifetimes, doing their part to breed the next generation. #

Sacramento Bee – 3/7/08
By David Whitney, staff writer

WASHINGTON – West Coast members of Congress appealed to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Thursday to declare a fishery failure, triggering federal aid because of a devastating collapse of the Sacramento River fall-run chinook.

Federal fishery managers recently said that the Sacramento River run could be the second lowest in history, potentially shutting down the West Coast commercial season. A decision on the closure could come as early as this weekend when the Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Sacramento.

"Sacramento River salmon are caught in California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and are considered the 'driver' of commercial salmon fisheries off the Pacific Coast," the lawmakers said.

"The implications of a precipitous decline to the Sacramento River chinook salmon stocks would be detrimental for the commercial salmon fishing fleet and related businesses along the entire West Coast of the continental United States," they said.

The lawmakers want the fishery disaster designation as quickly as possible so that they can include emergency assistance money in upcoming spending bills.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said past experience with the Bush administration following depressed salmon runs on the Klamath River was a motivating factor in the lawmakers' effort to signal their unified support for prompt, early action.

"When we had record lows out the Klamath River in 2006, it took months and months for the secretary to declare the season a failure," Thompson said in a statement. "As a result, fishing families and businesses on the North Coast are just now getting federal relief."

The bipartisan letter was signed by the six senators from the three states and 43 House members. #

Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 3/6/08
By Robert Digitale, staff writer

California fishermen are so frustrated by the precipitous decline of Sacramento River salmon that some suggested Wednesday there may be too few fish to fight over this year.

"It's going to be a real tossup whether it's worth having a season," Duncan MacLean, a commercial fisherman from Half Moon Bay, said at a public meeting in Santa Rosa.

Roger Thomas, president of a charter boat skippers association, said he might support canceling the season if the situation is as bad as federal reports suggest and if that would help restore the salmon.

"If you don't get 'em back, the future of salmon is gone," Thomas said.

He said he was not speaking on behalf of his group, the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association.

A standing-room crowd of more than 120 fishermen met Wednesday with state and federal salmon regulators as they began a two-month process to set the West Coast fishing season. In April, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will recommend season rules to the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees the salmon fishery.

State and federal biologists are predicting an all-time low this year of salmon returning to the Sacramento River, the state's most productive river system.

Don Hansen, chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, called the situation "a major, major collapse of the fishery." He said the council probably didn't have 100,000 chinook salmon to divide between the state's sport fishermen and commercial trollers in California and Oregon.

In contrast, last year California commercial fishermen caught 113,000 chinook salmon and the state's anglers caught nearly 48,000 in the ocean. That was the lowest sports catch on record and a relatively low commercial harvest.

The reasons for the poor salmon runs remain in dispute.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week declared that warmer ocean water and lack of food in 2005 appear to be the "likely culprit" for the lack of chinook salmon last year. Those fish would have recently entered the ocean as juvenile salmon that year.

The scientists point out that coho salmon from streams all along the West Coast also were much reduced last year.

Fishermen have suggested the problem is related to poor conditions in rivers across the West Coast.

"I would be more inclined to believe that those fish are not making it to the ocean," MacLean said.

Wednesday's meeting included sport and commercial fishermen, river guides and charter boat skippers.

Dave Bitts, a commercial fishermen from Eureka, said the various groups should try to help fashion a season by working together and not trying to "take the last fish away from the other guy."

Many speakers called for restoring salmon. They urged regulators to fight water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and to find new methods to get more of the 32 million juvenile hatchery salmon safely to the ocean. #

Public Input Sought to Shape a Statewide Watershed Program
News Release - Sacramento River Watershed Program – March 4, 2008

Contact: Sara Martin, 916-372-7202

The California Statewide Watershed Advisory Committee will host three public forums in the Sacramento Hydrologic Region over the next two weeks.

California Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman has tasked the Department of Conservation with changing CALFED's Bay-Delta Watershed Program into a wider reaching, statewide effort.

To aid in the transition, advisory committee members from the state's 10 hydrologic regions are leading an extensive outreach process. They represent local government, agriculture, resource managers and other groups.

"It is vitally important to our effort to have a broad perspective of input as we develop the California Watershed Program," said Robert Meacher, advisory committee member and Plumas County supervisor.

Public Forums will be held to receive public input in Anderson (March 7), Oroville (March 12) and Woodland (March 13).

"Through these local conversations, we hope to learn what support is needed to help steward natural resources in each watershed," said Mary Lee Knecht, advisory committee member and Executive Director of the Sacramento River Watershed Program.

The program will promote and conduct effective stewardship of natural resources in a watershed context, and will work with local communities and state and federal agencies in collaboration with other stakeholders. The Program will retain many of the important elements that made the CALFED Watershed Program successful.

“The watershed approach is a less intrusive and more cost effective way of managing our state’s natural resources," said Meacher. “The California Watershed Program could be the most cost effective tool in the Governor's toolbox when it comes to managing floods and providing for drought resistance, while at the same time contributing towards protection of the public trust and climate change goals of this administration.”

"If we can develop a process whereby the Program can demonstrate the linkages between the watershed approach to resource management and all the other existing state and federal programs, this will be of great benefit to land managers thought the region,” continued Meacher. “I believe this program can and will accomplish that task."

The Sacramento Hydrologic Region contains all the tributaries to the Sacramento River from above Shasta Lake down to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, including the American River and the Feather River. It includes all of Shasta, Plumas, Tehama, Butte, Glenn, Colusa, Sutter, and Yuba counties, and parts of Modoc, Siskiyou, Lassen, Lake, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, Napa, Sacramento, and Yolo counties.

Additional forums are being held around the state. For more information and for specific times and locations, go online to http://www.conservation.ca.gov or call Mary Lee Knecht at (916) 549-4017. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 3/5/08
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

Kilarc Reservoir is not for sale, but it could remain a fishing hot spot if the right group steps up to maintain it, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials Tuesday told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.

“There are a lot of hurdles to overcome in that area,” said PG&E spokeswoman Janet Walther, after the supervisors’ regular meeting.

A nonprofit, private or other group could take over operation of Kilarc if it earns approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the state Public Utilities Commission, and other state and federal agencies, she said. That group would need to be able to cover the cost of a new fish ladder and screens, as well as permits that those agencies would require.

Those costs could be as much as $1 million for the ladder and screens and up to $500,000 for permits, according to a “white paper,” or fact sheet, PG&E put out in December containing details about operating the 4-acre Kilarc Reservoir for recreation.

In 2002, PG&E had sought a new federal license to continue generating power at Kilarc. The small hydroelectric project about 30 miles east of Redding puts out 3.2 megawatts, or enough to power about 2,000 homes. But after consulting with various agencies, the utility decided that the project would no longer be economical and put it on the selling block.

While Synergics Energy Services of Maryland showed interest in the project, it didn’t apply for a new license to keep it running. Redding Electrical Utility also took a look at Kilarc, but decided against buying the project.

Since early 2007, PG&E has been planning how to shut down the project, with a plan due to FERC next March. Any groups hoping to keep the reservoir for recreation will need to speak up by then, Walther said.

A popular spot for anglers, hikers and picnickers from nearby Whitmore and beyond, Kilarc has a host of supporters who want to keep it full of water — and stocked by the state with trout.

One of those is Glenn Dye, a member of the group Friends of Cow Creek. The group has about 60 members trying to save Kilarc Reservoir. Dye was at Tuesday’s meeting and said he doesn’t feel like PG&E is trying to save the reservoir, despite its value to the community.

“The costs that they put out in maintaining it are really high,” he said.

With Whitmore in his district, Supervisor Glenn Hawes said he is familiar with the reservoir and the effort to preserve it. Hawes said he took his kids fishing there in the 1960s and ’70s.

“I don’t think people around this county want to see that thing go,” Hawes said.

He said he thinks state agencies are trying to get PG&E to close down the project to make its water available for others.

“I think they are just looking for an excuse to ship more water to Southern California,” Hawes said. #

Associated Press – 3/4/08
By Jeff Bernard, staff writer

GRANTS PASS, OR. -- Scientists examining the sudden and widespread collapse of West Coast salmon returns are pointing to the unusual changes in weather patterns that caused the bottom to fall out of the ocean food web in 2005.

NOAA Fisheries Service oceanographer Bill Peterson said Monday the juvenile salmon that left their native rivers and entered the Pacific Ocean in 2005 found little food being transported by the California Current, which flows from the northern Pacific south along the West Coast.

The reason was that the jet stream had shifted to the south, delaying the spring onset of winds out of the north that create a condition known as upwelling, which kickstarts the ocean food web by stirring the water from bottom to top, the agency said.

"If there is no upwelling, there is no phytoplankton growth, no zooplankton growth, and basically you have no food chain that develops, because it all depends on the upwelling," Peterson said from Newport.

"We are not dismissing other potential causes for this year's low salmon returns," NOAA Fisheries Service Northwest Science Center Director Usha Varanasi said in a statement. "But the widespread pattern of low returns along the West Coast for (both coho and chinook) salmon indicates an environmental anomaly occurred in the California Current in 2005."

That was the year that countless seabirds, showing signs of starvation, were washing up dead on beaches and nesting colonies were sparse. Off Oregon, water temperatures near shore — where chinook spend much of their time in the ocean — were 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, the tiny plants that are at the bottom of the food web.

Since then, upwelling has been better, but not much, Peterson said.

However, he is looking forward to this year being very good. This winter has been very unusual, with temperatures colder and winds out of the north and west more prevalent than normal, all of which indicates 2008 could be the best year for upwelling since 2000, Peterson said.

Chinook returns in the Sacramento River in California last year were a third of what biologists expected, and forecasts are for an all-time low this year. Coho salmon returns to streams in Oregon and California were also lower than expected.

Federal fisheries managers will be wrestling with the problem when they meet in Sacramento next week to set options for commercial, sport and tribal fishing seasons for the ocean off California, Oregon and Washington. The Pacific Fishery Management Council will set the final seasons when it meets in Seattle in April.

While no decisions have been made, there are likely to be some salmon fishing closures, said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff for the council.

The council has said that even with no ocean fishing allowed, Sacramento chinook would have a tough time meeting the minimum of 122,000 to 180,000 adults returning to hatcheries and rivers to spawn the next generation.

Sport and commercial salmon fishing off California and most of Oregon was worth an average of $103 million a year from 1979 through 2000, but dropped to $61 million a year from 2001 through 2005, according to council figures.

Salmon fishing cutbacks this year come on the heels of severe limitations in 2006 to protect weak stocks from the Klamath River in Northern California and a poor catch last year despite relatively open seasons. #

Sacramento Bee – 3/4/08
By David Whitney, staff writer

WASHINGTON – A plan to end fighting over Klamath River water along the California-Oregon border took a hit Monday when the Northcoast Environmental Center said the $1 billion deal doesn't provide enough help for salmon.

The NEC said it cannot support the agreement, still in flux, which guarantees water for up-river farmers in Oregon but gives no such assurances for endangered salmon trying to make their way up the 260-mile river to spawn.

Participants touted the January deal as benefiting both fish and farming because it would complement separate negotiations to get Portland-based PacifiCorp to remove a series of dams impeding fish passage.

"This agreement would lock us into supporting water allocations for agriculture that could result in stream flows so low as to cause extinction," said Greg King, the center's executive director.

He said his group wants to reopen the water allocation talks, one of the stickiest parts of the deal.

The Arcata-based NEC's opposition, based on scientific studies it commissioned, will complicate, if not kill, the chances of a deal getting to Congress in time for enactment this year.

"It's disappointing," said Craig Tucker of California's Karuk Tribe, a leading advocate of the deal. "It's a big deal for congressmen like Mike Thompson."

Thompson, D-St. Helena, represents the area with most of the river in Northern California, and Tucker said it would be difficult for him to back a deal opposed by his district's leading environmental organization.

Thompson could not be reached immediately for comment.

The NEC announcement will put pressure on the 26 groups involved in the talks to amend key principles that have taken more than two years to draft. Talks resume Wednesday.

Glen Spain, who represents commercial fishermen in the talks, said his group agrees that fish-friendly changes will have to be made.

"Clearly there are uncertainties about what the fish in the lower Klamath River get out of this in the long term," he said.

Those on the other side of the bargaining table, however, expressed little interest in reexamining the down-river concerns.

Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association that relies on the federal irrigation water, said his bigger concern now is trying to shore up support among irrigators.

"I can't spend more time on that," Addington said of the NEC's concerns. "I've got to spend time in my own backyard at this point."

Time may be the bigger factor. Advocates of the deal are trying to get it wrapped up in the next month or so in order to get it through Congress and signed by President Bush before he leaves office in January. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 3/1/08
By R-S staff, news services

SACRAMENTO -- Officials warn that a total closure of commercial and recreational salmon fishing may be needed this year to protect dwindling Sacramento River fall-run chinook populations.

In a preseason report, the Pacific Fishery Management Council offered data showing the 2007 Sacramento fall run reached its lowest level in 37 years of record-keeping. The report largely confirms data leaked to the media last month.

But various officials went further, warning that all salmon fishing may have to be closed in 2008 to protect the Sacramento fall-run chinook. The normally abundant run underpins a coastal fishery with an average annual economic value of $103 million.

"This is very bad news for West Coast salmon fisheries," council chairman Don Hansen said in a statement. "The world disaster' comes immediately to mind, and I mean a disaster much worse than the Klamath fishery disaster of 2006."

"This is just really nerve-racking for us," said Lisa Manies of Redding, who with her husband, Gary, runs Strictly Fishin' guide service and tackle shop. "It's scary."

Manies said the couple collect two-thirds of their income from salmon fishing.

Officials with the Department of Fish and Game will host their annual meeting from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday in Santa Rosa to update the public -- and collect comments -- on the status of California salmon populations and the outlook for ocean and river fisheries in 2008.

"We're organizing a group to carpool to Santa Rosa, pound on the table. At least we'll feel good about it," said Salmon King Lodge owner and guide Bill Divens of Red Bluff. "We're telling people right know to hold off on deposits and we're going after the fly guys, the trout guys.

"But my gut feeling ... boy we'd like to have at least one fish per angler."

Wednesday's meeting will be staffed by the DFG, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service and will be held at the Sonoma County Water Agency offices at 404 Aviation Blvd. in Santa Rosa.

The cause of the run's decline is not known, but probably is related to both ocean and in-stream problems. The council has developed a list of 46 possible causes.

A full closure of salmon fishing is one option the council will consider when it meets next Saturday to March 14 in Sacramento.

A full closure would not only affect guides, commercial fishermen, party boat operators and tackle shops, but businesses such as hotels, gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants. Tourism officials estimate that each salmon caught during the recreational sportfishing season on the Sacramento -- a season that normally starts July 16 each year from San Francisco Bay to 150 feet below the Sycamore Boat Ramp in Red Bluff -- is worth about $700 to the local economy.

"You have to understand that the fishermen coming in toward the fall, after the summer season, is good for the hotels, the restaurants," said Redding tourism officer Bob Warren. "It's like gravy. (Fishing) is a huge boon to the local economy; a tremendous amount of money gets spent in the local economy."

A closure would be felt throughout the north state.

"At that rate, it would be an impact on us," he said.

A final decision is expected in April.

Despite stalled negotiations with Democrats on a comprehensive water plan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to move forward on studies of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, including a controversial canal, as well as call for a 20 percent per capita reduction in statewide water use, according to a letter he sent Thursday to Senate Democrats.

Department of Water Re- sources Director Lester Snow compared the water conservation proposal to a 2006 law that requires the state to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020.

The Republican governor's four-page letter came after leading Democrats alleged Wednesday that he was working "unilaterally" to pursue a canal that would move water around the Delta, a sensitive ecosystem that provides water to 25 million California residents and 2 million acres of farmland.

In a copy of the letter obtained by The Bee, Schwarzenegger wrote that he intends to direct DWR to begin federal and state environmental reviews on at least four Delta canal alternatives. Those include no new Delta transfer system, a two-part system with a canal and pumps, a stand-alone canal and substantial improvements to the existing pumps.

The studies could take two to three years and cost more than $100 million, paid for by water users under existing contracts, Snow said.

Lawmakers and California governors have long sought a permanent solution that could protect the Delta and provide reliable water transfers. The Delta remains at risk for disruptions because its pumps are viewed as harmful to the ecosystem. State and federal officials had the pumps shut off last summer because they harmed the protected Delta smelt.

Snow said the environmental studies do not predetermine which project would be best. He said Schwarzenegger believes it necessary to have the environmental reviews in place so work can begin quickly when the governor, lawmakers and voters determine which Delta option is best.

"We need to move forward," Snow said. "The history of the Delta being broken is a history of inaction."

Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden, said he was satisfied the governor answered questions posed in the letter he sent with Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. Machado said he was particularly concerned beforehand that the governor sought to pursue only one Delta option that involved a canal and water pumps, but he believes all options need to be considered.

"I'm glad he's finally being open with that, but I'm going to reserve my praise until I see what actions will be taken that improve the Delta," Machado said.

The governor also plans to have DWR complete feasibility studies of three dams, including new projects at Temperance Flat northeast of Fresno, Sites Reservoir in Colusa County and expansion of the existing Los Vaqueros Reservoir north of Livermore. Those studies would be paid for by 2006 voter-approved bond funds.

Schwarzenegger plans to set forth a goal of reducing statewide per capita water use 20 percent by 2020 and will ask state agencies to install a plan "to the extent permitted by current law." Snow said that will involve using bond money to create incentives for local water agencies that pursue new conservation practices, particularly in reducing landscape water use.

Senate Democrats suggested Wednesday that the governor was upstaging his own Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, which has until the end of the year to develop a strategic plan. Snow said that even if the task force were to determine one Delta conveyance solution was better than another, the environmental reviews would be necessary.

The governor wrote that he "will continue to negotiate in good faith" with lawmakers and said the Delta is "in jeopardy of collapse without both immediate action and long-term solutions."

Still, some environmentalists believe the governor is acting prematurely.

"We are concerned that the governor may be trying to do an end run around the very processes that he established to find sustainable solutions to California's water needs," said Jonas Minton, water policy adviser with the Planning and Conservation League, referring to the Delta task force. "It would be counterproductive to short-circuit those efforts, which are showing real progress." #

Chico Enterprise Record – 2/29/08
By Steve Carson, staff writer

Numerous local anglers were left scratching their heads after last year's dismal salmon fishing results in the Sacramento and Feather Rivers. Concerned members of the public interested in giving their input and getting more information will have a great opportunity next week.

The California Department of Fish and Game will hold its annual public meeting on the status of California salmon populations and the outlook for ocean and river fisheries. The meeting this year is scheduled in Santa Rosa from 1 to 5 p.m. on Wednesday at the Sonoma County Water Agency located at 404 Aviation Blvd, Santa Rosa.

Agenda items include: California Salmon Council Report; 2007 Salmon Review; 2008 Ocean Projections; Breakout Discussions; and a Panel Discussion for 2008 Fishery Preferred Seasons.

Presenters and panel members will represent the DFG, California Salmon Council, Pacific Fisheries Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service, Salmon Advisory Subpanel and Salmon Technical Team.

Salmon fishing seasons are developed through a collaborative regulatory process involving the DFG, PFMC, NMFS, and the Department of Commerce. Information gathered at this meeting will help California representatives negotiate the broadest range of season alternatives at the PFMC meeting later in the month.

The public meeting marks the beginning of the two-month process to establish salmon seasons. Representatives will be available to hear from commercial, ocean recreational and river recreational interest groups and constituents. A list of additional meetings for the season-setting process will also be available.

Lake Oroville fish habitat

The Department of Water Resources is completing its annual fish habitat enhancement work, according to DWR biologist Eric See. In conjunction with the California Conservation Corps, the group will use approximately 1,200 Christmas trees to construct 40 fish habitat structures in a cove near the Spillway boat ramp. The DWR will also use 300 trees to construct 10 fish habitat structures near the Vinton Gulch launch ramp.

The structures will measure approximately 15 feet by 30 feet. These trees were collected by the Chico Boy Scouts Troop 2, Oroville Boy Scouts Troop 29, NorCal Waste Systems of Chico and Oroville, and Northern Recycling of Paradise.

Additionally, the group will have planted approximately 3,500 willows in the lake bed, including 1,390 1-year-old rooted trees. These projects provide habitat for juvenile and adult game fish such as largemouth bass, spotted bass and channel catfish. #

Sacramento Bee - 2/29/08
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

SACRAMENTO – Officials warned Thursday that a total closure of commercial and recreational salmon fishing may be needed this year to protect dwindling Sacramento River fall-run chinook populations.

In a preseason report, the Pacific Fishery Management Council offered data showing the 2007 Sacramento fall run reached its lowest level in 37 years of recordkeeping. The report largely confirms data leaked to the media last month.

But various officials went further, warning that all salmon fishing may have to be closed in 2008 to protect the Sacramento fall-run chinook. The normally abundant run underpins a coastal fishery with an average annual economic value of $103 million.

"This is very bad news for West Coast salmon fisheries," council Chairman Don Hansen said in a statement. "The world 'disaster' comes immediately to mind."

The cause of the run's decline is not known, but probably is related to both ocean and in-stream problems. The council has developed a list of 46 possible causes.

A full closure of salmon fishing is one option the council will consider when it meets March 8-14 in Sacramento. A final decision is expected in April. #

San Francisco Chronicle – 2/29/08

The fall run of chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River to spawn was at an all-time low in 2007, according to an official study released Thursday that confirms findings reported last month.

Spawning fish dropped to 88,000 adult fish in the fall, down from peaks of 800,000. The spawning goal is 122,000 to 180,000.

Low numbers are expected to raise prices, hurt the livelihood of fishermen and damage the future health of the state's favorite fish.

"The word 'disaster' comes immediately to mind," said Don Hansen, chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a governmental body that places restrictions on commercial and sport fishing.

The situation was "much worse than the Klamath fishery disaster of 2006," he said, when low returns in the Klamath River due to a lack of freshwater supplies resulted in strict fishing reductions along the Pacific Coast.

Representatives from the Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service and the state Department of Fish and Game are scheduled to hold the first of several public meetings Wednesday from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Sonoma County Water Agency, 404 Aviation Blvd., Santa Rosa.

The final restrictions on commercial and sport fishing will be released in April.

Central Valley Business Times – 2/28/08

Farmers who purchase their irrigation water from the Central Valley Project can expect 45 percent of their allocations, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

But the Bureau says allocations for those north of the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta may be subject to further review for Sacramento River water temperatures to protect salmon.

The bureau is also implementing interim court-ordered measures this year to protect the delta smelt, and water supply for the allocations south of the delta could change.

Farmers south of the delta face an even more uncertain season for irrigation water, according to a Sacramento-based private water law attorney.

Additional court decisions about endangered species protections for salmon and a new fish that may be added to the list could further reduce water flows.

“The Delta smelt interim decision regarding additional restrictions to protect Delta smelt is ongoing. There also has recently been a state decision on the longfin smelt and so we may get additional restrictions on the State [Water] Project,” says Becky Sheehan, a private water law attorney in Sacramento.

On Feb. 7, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to designate the longfin smelt as a "candidate species," the first step toward formal listing of the tiny fish as an endangered or threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act.

Ms. Sheehan adds that there is a decision expected soon in yet another case, this one involving salmon, which could further restrict use of the Delta’s fresh water.

It all adds up to make predictions of water deliveries this year and next very uncertain, says Ms. Sheehan.

“This year is particularly uncertain because of all of the decisions that have been made and decisions that will be made. But it’s not just this year, it’s going probably be the next couple years,” she says. #

Stockton Record – 2/28/08
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

STOCKTON - After years of delay, a plan that is supposed to aid steelhead and salmon in their perilous journey up the Calaveras River may be ready by this spring, a Stockton-area water official says.

The habitat conservation plan will allow the Stockton East Water District to continue diverting water for cities and farms while getting a permit to incidentally kill fish in the process.

District General Manager Kevin Kauffman said flows from New Hogan Reservoir, 30 miles northeast of Stockton, already have been provided for fish. He said he doubts that steelhead have suffered in the years that it has taken to piece together the plan.

"The plan will require minimum flows all year (for fish), and that's basically what we've been doing," he said. "We'll commit to continuing that."

But as long as the plan remains unfinished, the district can be held accountable for fish that are killed as a result of its operation.

And conservationists are watching carefully.

"If they kill a steelhead and we find it, we'll move it into the courts," said Bill Jennings of Stockton, a Calaveras River watchdog. "(Stockton East officials) have pushed delay to an art form."

Steelhead were listed as threatened in 1998 under the Endangered Species Act. In 2000, Stockton East denied that the Calaveras River was steelhead habitat; fishermen begged to differ, and indeed steelhead were stranded when flows were cut in the spring.

In 2004, officials told The Record that a habitat plan to help fish could be released within six months. In 2006, the state Department of Fish and Game criticized a draft of the plan, saying it would not help fish.

Late that year, Stockton East said the plan should be released to the public by spring 2007. Now the target is spring 2008.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency working on the plan with the district, said budget constraints and the need to investigate pressing fish crises in the Delta have delayed the Calaveras process.

However, "the Calaveras River is an important watershed for steelhead and will play an important role in the recovery of steelhead populations in the San Joaquin Basin," fisheries biologist Erin Strange said in a statement.

John Raine, a Valley Springs resident active in Calaveras River issues, said the fact that there was not a lot of water available last fall probably means fish have not been harmed by the delays.

The plan is about more than flows. The district also will build a permanent fish ladder over the Bellota Weir, though that improvement may be several years away, Kauffman said.

"That's the biggest one," he said. "We're going to commit to building this." #

Capitol Farm Bureau Federation – 2/27/08
By Christine Souza, staff writer

Irrigators who once stood alongside one another and protested the Klamath Basin water shut-off in 2001 are now at odds over a proposed settlement agreement that would potentially benefit one group of irrigators and may cause problems for others.

"The proposed settlement was a tough choice for Klamath irrigators," said Chris Scheuring, managing counsel for the California Farm Bureau Federation's National Resources and Environmental Division. "At the same time, folks on the Shasta and Scott rivers have concerns about the blowback. All of it shows that species laws, in their current form, are pitting the human species against itself in a way that perhaps was not contemplated when they were enacted."

The proposed Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, released to the public by Klamath River Basin stakeholders in January, is a $985 million plan that would ensure irrigation water and affordable power for irrigators of the Klamath Water Project and revive the river's salmon populations. The deal, developed by an assortment of groups and agencies including farmers, tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, is contingent upon the removal of four dams on the Klamath River.

"This proposed agreement would implement a true watershed-wide approach to Klamath issues, something we have stressed since 2001," said Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA), one of 26 stakeholders involved in the negotiations. "This is a product of more than two years of blood, sweat and tears.

We believe, given the range of alternatives and needs of Klamath irrigators, that we have negotiated a successful package that secures our future as a viable agricultural economy."

For Klamath Basin irrigators, Addington said the KWUA did make some compromises in its water allotment, but said the association has tools that can help work with those and keep communities sustainable and keep agriculture in production for future generations.

"The agreement is multifaceted and will not be without some controversy," Addington said. "We have to look at what the alternatives are for us. For some groups, status quo is OK. If you are an irrigator in the Klamath Reclamation Project, the status quo is a frightening place to be where assurances related to water deliveries are year to year, month to month."

However, downstream Scott River and Shasta River valley irrigators, who were not at the table during settlement negotiations, are concerned about what this plan could mean for their farming operations.

"Siskiyou County Farm Bureau is concerned that during dry years, with no minimum flow established on the Klamath River, they will look to the Shasta and Scott rivers to make up the flow in times of drought and during dry summer months," said Siskiyou County Farm Bureau President Mike Luiz. "That would be detrimental to irrigators, striking a blow to Scott and Shasta valley agriculture."

Other areas of concern include higher power rates, encroachment of private property rights, a reduction in funding for restoration projects, increased regulations and water quality issues.

"The loss of the power generation capabilities of those dams is something that needs to be addressed," said Luiz, a Montague sheep rancher. "In California and across the West we are still bordering on a power crisis. Every summer we receive warnings of a power shortage and this is good green power that we will be pulling out, so how will they replace that?"

The removal of dams, Luiz said, will also reduce the value of homes located on the region's lakes and the Klamath River.

"If the dams are removed the value of these people's properties is going to be severely impacted. These homeowners are going to go from having lakefront property to desolation-front property," Luiz said. "People have purchased these properties to be next to the lakes and to take advantage of the recreation opportunities so the value of that property is going to be severely impacted."

Retired rancher Ernie Wilkinson, who serves as an associate director for the Siskiyou Resource Conservation District, estimates that over the course of the last 20 years, nearly $15 million has been spent on recovery projects in the Scott River valley. He is worried that these recovery dollars that have been spent on projects such as installing fish screens and riparian plantings, may be directed to other projects.

"We're concerned with fishery health overall because we get an awful lot of pressure from the California Department of Fish and Game to sustain habitat for fish," Wilkinson said. "My concern is that a fairly large portion of whatever is available in the way of recovery project funding may go elsewhere."

For Etna rancher Gary Black, who also works for the Siskiyou Resource Conservation District, one of the main problems for many in the Scott River and Shasta River valleys is not having had a seat at the table during the discussions.

"There are a lot of unknowns and there appears to be no way to fit into the process if we need to," Black said.

Klamath Basin farmer Luther Horsley, president of the KWUA, said Klamath Basin irrigators taking part in the negotiations had three primary objectives: a reliable source of water to irrigate crops; affordable power for irrigation and drainage pumps; and regulatory assurance from lawsuits related to the introduction of new species.

"We believe this agreement achieves those objectives," Horsley said. "We also feel by working together with other interests and parties along the river, we can achieve a lot more than we have from the past status quo of fighting and suing each other."

Horsley recalls how farmers suffered from the water shut-off of 2001, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service issued biological opinions under the Endangered Species Act that required higher water levels to protect endangered sucker fish and higher flows to protect threatened coho salmon.

"In 2001 it was devastating for us in the basin and we just know that we don't want to go through that again, not only for the farmers, but all of the other species that depend on the water life and habitat that we create," Horsley said.

The parties who were involved in the development of the settlement agree that the many restoration projects that the plan sets in motion, combined with the removal of the dams, will translate into significantly improved conditions for coho and other anandramous fish. The key to making this agreement work is the removal of the Iron Gate, J.C.

Boyle, Copco1 and Copco2 dams which are owned by Oregon-based PacifiCorp. This would give threatened coho salmon and other fish species access to 300 miles of habitat in the river and improve water quality.

Negotiations are currently taking place with PacifiCorp to reach an agreement on the removal of the utility's dams.

Stakeholders say the estimated $120 million tab to remove the dams should be paid for by PacifiCorp. PacifiCorp spokesperson Paul Vogel stated that the utility is currently reviewing the 256-page proposed agreement.

"We have made it pretty clear for a long time if dam removal is what is settled upon, we are willing to consider that option, but our customers have to be protected and not be paying the unreasonable cost of dam removal, plus replacement power, plus the liability," Vogel said. "Hand in hand with the liability is the science and what is an accurate scientific understanding of what the impacts are of taking these dams out."

Stakeholders have estimated the cost to implement the restoration is $985 million over 10 years. Of that total, $585 million would come from existing programs and the remaining $400 million would have to be authorized by Congress.

Settlement party negotiators have indicated initial support, but the agreement now needs approval of individual irrigation districts, tribal governments, fisheries groups and state and federal agencies. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 2/26/08

Environmental groups filed a lawsuit Monday against the state Department of Fish and Game, in an effort to get the agency to overturn logging regulations adopted in December.

The groups -- which include the Environmental Protection Information Center, Sierra Club and California Trout -- contend that the regulations don't do enough to protect coho salmon. The lawsuit was filed in the San Francisco Superior Court.

The sea-run fish are protected by the state's Endangered Species Act and found in the north state's Trinity and Klamath rivers. #

Marysville Appeal Democrat – 2/26/08
By Thomas Elias, writes on California politics and other issues

It may be the oddest legal situation seen in California in a generation. A federal district judge makes a decision that could adversely affect tens of millions of people and businesses, but no one files an appeal.

This is truly man bites dog, the very definition of news, but hardly anyone appears to have noticed. For in modern California, almost every significant court ruling gets appealed. When Charles Keating is convicted of defrauding thousands of his savings and loan customers in a Ponzi-like scheme and the evidence against him is overwhelming, he appeals and his state conviction is overturned on a technicality. When a court rules the Pledge of Allegiance is perfectly legal, a parent who doesn't like it appeals and a higher court upholds the complaint. The examples are almost endless.

It's almost as if the operative rule in legal circles were simply that you never run out of appeals until you run out of money.

But when Senior U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger of Fresno ruled last year that the big pumps which take water from the south end of the delta formed by the convergence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers must reduce their take by about one-third for almost six months per year, no one even questions it. This, despite the fact it means less water for the San Francisco Bay area, Southern California and every farm served by either the State Water Project or the federal Central Valley Project.

Immediately, farmers began talking about fallowing fields and cutting down fruit trees because there would be insufficient water to keep all their fields and orchards green. Cities talked of reviving the "drought police" who cited profligate lawn watering in previous droughts. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa exhorted his constituents to use 10 percent less water. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated a plan for new dams and reservoirs and talk of a Peripheral Canal around the delta revived after no politician dared touch the subject for more than 25 years.

But no one talked about an appeal. Why?

For one thing, there's the reputation of Judge Wanger, a jurist whose decisions are rarely overturned by higher courts.

For another, there's the fact that his ruling, aimed at protection of the endangered minnow-like delta smelt, appears to rest on solid legal ground. And for a third, some of the people bleating loudest are likely to benefit from this in the long run.

The law on this — the often controversial Endangered Species Act — is clear and has stood for almost 35 years since that greenest of Republican presidents, Richard Nixon, signed it in 1973. If it can be shown that the pumping kills smelt, whose threatened status no one has seriously questioned, something has to be done to try to bring its numbers back.

Never mind that plenty of experts believe other invasive species, toxic runoff from farms and other land uses, wastewater dumping and the obsolete system of managing the overall delta water scene are all at least as responsible for the plight of the smelt as any pumps. The pumps are highly visible and can be shut down, at least in part, while it's tough to screen out predator fish and waste dumpers.

So when a judge has to do something, he goes for what he can control.

No one seriously affected really objects. Environmental groups have no problem with the decision because they don't want any species anywhere to die out. Business interests also don't mind much.

Their reasons are a bit more complex. But the fact is that no one has managed to significantly expand California's water supply since the last reservoir in the State Water Project opened while Ronald Reagan was governor.

A drought, even a manmade one, might prove very useful to large farms, water districts and others who want more water storage in California, both because of the lower Sierra Nevada snowpacks expected to result from climate change and to facilitate more population growth and housing development.

They reason (but not for the record) that water shortages, whatever the cause, just might dent public consciousness enough to win passage of some of the water system expansions now under discussion in Sacramento.

Environmentalists, thinking similarly, reason that a drought of whatever origin might accelerate the process of fixing the delta, where levees are no longer considered reliable in earthquakes and salt water intrusions threaten water quality and the long-term survival prospects of many other fish besides the smelt.

So there's a convergence of facts and interests here, one that no one involved likes to discuss.

The result is that the most significant federal court decision in California in decades goes essentially without challenge, while untold numbers of appeals are filed in far less important cases. #

Stockton Record – 2/26/08
By Hank Shaw, staff writer

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may issue an executive order jump-starting a controversial plan to build a canal around the Delta, sources familiar with the matter said Monday.

Doing so would bypass the Legislature, which is divided over whether such a canal should be built.

Schwarzenegger supports the idea of a new way to ship water from the Sacramento River to the giant pumps near Tracy that supply roughly 25 million Californians with their drinking water.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Bill Maile neither confirmed nor denied that an executive order is in the works.

Opponents, such as Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, say a canal around the Delta would divert the flow of fresh water away from the area of the estuary near Stockton, turning it into a fetid backwater.

"I don't think this is helpful at all," said Machado, who represents the part of the Delta that would be affected.

"This executive order is a presumption of a direction without any determination that it is the right direction to go.

"It could be a disaster for San Joaquin County."

No argument from Dante Nomellini, a Stockton attorney who represents central Delta farmers.

Nomellini said Monday he's heard whisperings about an impending executive order.

"We'll have to see what it says," he said.

He calls the governor's entire Delta Vision process a "sham," saying that state officials have long known they wanted to build a canal.

South Delta farmer and engineer Alex Hildebrand also is closely following developments.

"They seem to want to get the thing financed and committed before analyzing the consequences," Hildebrand said. "If they're bull-headedly going to go ahead with the plan to build the canal, then we've lost."

Schwarzenegger's proposed state budget includes $1.4 million to begin the environmental analysis needed to determine whether to build a peripheral canal.

His budget request would create eight positions with a goal of developing potential routes for a canal by 2009. A no-build option would be included.

Maile said that plan was written under the assumption that the governor and the Legislature come to a deal on how to proceed with a peripheral canal.

If the governor issues the executive order, it would, among other things, direct eight existing employees to do the environmental analysis. The money to pay for it would come from the State Water Project.

The argument in support of the move is that the environmental review is so time-consuming and so complex that the state cannot afford to delay much longer.

"Nothing is more important to California and its economy than making sure that we have all the water we need now and far into the future," Schwarzenegger said during his weekly radio address Saturday. "There is no more time to waste. We have to plan and build for California's future right now ... because these projects take years to build."

But issuing an executive order over the peripheral canal could prove politically dicey, especially just days after the state's water warriors met behind closed doors to talk about a negotiated solution.

"What it tends to say is that the meeting was a ruse," Machado said. "He's basically declaring war." #

Contra Costa Times – 2/24/08
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

During the Great Depression, the southern and central parts of the state cut a deal with the north: Let us build big pumps and canals to take your surplus water, and we'll give it back when you need it.

The time to deliver on that promise may be nearing -- but coming through will be tough because California's water supply is already threatened by climate change, a declining Delta ecosystem and a desiccating Colorado Basin.

The state agency responsible for doling out water rights, it turns out, has a massive backlog of pending applications for Delta water at the same time experts are coming to the conclusion that the system is already maxed out.

This puts the state Water Resources Control Board in a difficult position: how to satisfy historic assurances for the north at a time when the amount of water available for other parts of the state is already being cut?

"Those (applications from the north) can change the equation pretty significantly," Vicky Whitney, the water rights division chief for the State Water Resources Control Board, testified recently.

The pending applications, which total more than all of the Delta water delivered each year to Southern California, would, to the extent they are granted, take water directly from the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, Whitney told a task force formed to develop solutions to the Delta's water supply and environmental problems.

California, Whitney said, "let permanent demand occur in geographic areas on borrowed water."

Too much demand

The problems posed by the pending applications emerged in recent months during meetings of the Delta Vision task force, appointed to solve the intertwined problems of the Delta's deteriorating ecology and the state's increasingly unreliable water supply.

Members of the task force, who were becoming convinced that too much water was being promised from the Delta, wanted to know how much more water was being sought in the rivers and streams that ultimately drain to the estuary.

The number that came back was startling: 4.8 million acre-feet a year, a figure greater than the 4.1 million acre-feet under contract -- but rarely delivered fully -- from the sprawling State Water Project that serves 25 million people in Southern California and 750,000 acres of farms in Kern County.

And that does not count an additional 3 million acre-feet to 5 million acre-feet being requested by the state on behalf of Northern California counties.

Not all of those unfulfilled claims will prove legitimate.

But played out to its worst extreme, the situation could dry up Delta water supplies to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, regions that are highly dependent on Delta water delivered through the State Water Project and the smaller, federal Central Valley Project.

"I don't get terribly panicky about this," said Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, which manages the State Water Project. "This is something that will play out over a series of years. There will be time to adjust to this."

Solution didn't happen

The situation echoes the fight over the Colorado River, where seven states, including California, divided up rights to the river's flow in 1922. That dilemma arose because states, relying on a string of wet years, assumed the river carried more water on average than it really did.

Meanwhile, Southern California was, for a time, allowed to use more than its share of the Colorado River. That began to end in 2003, when California agreed to wean itself off the excess use of the river so other states, especially Nevada and Arizona, could take their share.

In the Delta, water contracts were signed at a time when optimistic state planners were counting on major new dams to supply water from the Eel, Klamath and Trinity Rivers on the North Coast.

Those dams, which might have supplied an additional 5 million acre-feet of water to the Delta, were never built.

The result is that just like what happened on the Colorado River, parts of California developed on overly optimistic water supply estimates and an obligation to eventually return "surplus" water.

Johns said it is incumbent on Southern California water agencies to develop more water supplies, conservation programs and other plans to make up for future losses on the Delta.

It is unknown how many of the pending applications will be granted. But the fact that the demands in the north are on a collision course with the rest of the state should not be a surprise because the North Coast rivers were put off limits to dams in the 1970s and 1980s when those rivers were designated wild and scenic.

"They've known that water supply wasn't going to be there for about 25 years," said John Herrick, manager of the South Delta Water Agency. "Nobody planned. That doesn't mean the solution would be easy, but they've had 25 years."

Further, the solution most often touted by some water agencies -- an aqueduct to connect the Sacramento River directly with south Delta pumps -- will not work if the underlying problem is an insufficient water supply, some critics contend.

"The early plans anticipated developing a lot more water," said Greg Gartrell, assistant general manager of the Contra Costa Water District. "That never happened. The result is that the system has been squeezed to what appears to be a limit. A (peripheral canal) will not solve the lack of water."

A promise from 1933

The deal over water distribution stems from a string of laws dating more than 70 years that were intended to prevent a repeat of Los Angeles' water raid on the Owens Valley, an incident made famous in the movie "Chinatown."

The laws, referred to collectively as "area of origin" laws, require water users in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley to give Delta water back when the region needs it and can use it.

But the laws have rarely been exercised or tested in courts, leaving it unclear how far the rights extend.

The key is a 1933 promise that water will be made available to the watershed where the water originates or in areas "immediately adjacent to" the watershed that can be "conveniently" supplied with water from it.

Rather than test how broadly that language applies, state water officials in 2002 negotiated a deal with the cities of Benicia, Fairfield and Vacaville that provided the cities with the water they wanted without setting a precedent that defined them as being in the area of origin.

Benicia, in particular, was making a claim that some water officials did not want to see cemented in precedent. That city's watershed drains to the Carquinez Strait, which the city argued was a historical source of fresh water but other water officials said did not properly belong in the area of origin.

Today, the biggest applications are from the Stockton East Water District, Delta Wetlands Properties, a private enterprise that is trying to build for-profit reservoirs in the Delta, and the Westlands Water District, a 600,000-acre farm district whose claim to San Joaquin River flow sparked outrage from other farmers. Other applicants include the growing Sacramento region and the cities of Davis, Stockton and Woodland.

"Part of their responsibility was to go out and develop that water," said Kevin Kauffman, general manager of the Stockton East Water District, which has applied for 1.4 million acre-feet of water to accommodate growth and recharge an overused aquifer. "They just simply haven't done it."

Taken together, those applications represent an enormous potential strain on a water system that has already been stretched past the breaking point.

In December, for example, a federal judge imposed water delivery cuts to prevent one fish species, Delta smelt, from going extinct. State wildlife officials are imposing more restrictions to protect another fish species, the longfin smelt.

And the Delta Vision panel all but concluded that Delta water supplies would shrink in coming years to protect the environment.

"Everything points in the direction of not just being fully allocated, but way overallocated right now," William Reilly, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator under the first President Bush and a member of the Delta Vision panel, concluded at a recent hearing.

Michael Jackson, an environmental lawyer in Plumas County and a director of the California Water Impact Network, said about 5 million acre-feet of water originates in the Sierra Nevada county but only about 2,000 acre-feet of water rights exist there.

He said it is time for the water resources board to open a formal proceeding, likely to take years, to straighten out how much water is available and how best to distribute it while protecting the public trust values of that water.

"The thing that makes the state board the only place you can probably solve it is they have the ability to put everybody's five leading experts on the stand, and then let everybody's leading lawyers cross-examine them," Jackson said. "There's no more B.S."

Jackson said the board has not wanted to exercise that power in the past.

"It comes with unexpected result," he said, adding that the board appears more willing to wade into the problem recently.

"It's like they're waking up from a deep sleep," he said. #

Napa Valley Register – 2/22/08
By Guy Carl, CPA and partner with BDCo Accountants and Advisors in St. Helena

In recent weeks, California’s dwindling salmon populations have received a lot of press. It’s been rumored that this year’s salmon fishing season might be canceled altogether.

Our various species of salmon, along with their relative — the steelhead trout — are among California’s most cherished native fish. Our state has an impressive list of native species, but many of our favorite game fish were actually introduced from other parts of the world.

Here’s a little quiz. Which of the following fish are native to California?

• Largemouth Bass

• Smallmouth Bass

• Striped Bass

• Rainbow Trout

• Brown Trout

You might be surprised by the answers:

• Largemouth Bass

California’s lakes boast some of the finest bass fishing in the nation.

The next world record is expected to come from one of them. But just 120 years ago, not a single largemouth lived here.

The first planting came in 1891 using bass from a lake in Illinois. The bigger Florida-strain largemouths were introduced in 1959, giving rise to trophy bass fishery we enjoy today.

• Smallmouth Bass

Could the bronze-backed brothers of the largemouth be native Californians?

Nope, they came from the state of New York.

Interestingly, California’s first smallmouth bass were introduced in 1874 into our very own Napa River.

But apparently the local fishermen were a little too skillful, and the bass were fished out before they could take hold.

Smallmouths were later introduced into other nearby waters, and now have healthy populations in many lakes throughout northern California.

• Striped Bass

Able to survive in fresh, salt, or brackish waters, stripers seem a perfect fit for the San Francisco Bay region.

That’s what officials thought back in 1879 when they transported 132 small stripers from New Jersey to be planted near Martinez.

Striped bass now can be found throughout the bay, delta, and most major rivers which flow into the system.

They have also been successfully planted in several reservoirs, including Lake Mendocino near Ukiah and San Luis Reservoir outside of Los Banos.

• Rainbow Trout

Stocked in waters across the United States and in locations throughout the world, the rainbow trout is the most famous native Californian in fishing circles.

Originally they were found in the same streams which support steelhead trout, with the only difference being that the rainbows do not swim out to the ocean like the steelhead.

Over the decades, fish hatcheries have performed extensive genetic engineering to the species so anglers will find them more “attractive” (i.e. bigger and easier to catch).

• Brown Trout

One of my personal favorite pursuits, the brown trout is not even native to this continent!

These ferocious fish immigrated to California from Europe in 1893.

They have found life here quite to their liking, and have developed a healthy wild population in numerous mountain lakes and streams.

All of these species, both native and non-native, have done very well in California and provide wonderful recreational opportunities for our anglers.

But in retrospect, should all those foreign fish have been introduced into our waters in the first place?

Could there be a price to pay for tinkering with Mother Nature’s designs?

The Kern River’s native California golden trout are one species which would be much happier if we humans hadn’t meddled in their business.

Thanks to us, brown trout first appeared in the lower reaches of the river and eventually worked their way upstream.

Browns compete with other trout for habitat and, being the larger and more aggressive species, have also become a major predator of the Kern’s goldens.

A series of wire and concrete barriers have been constructed at several points on the river just to keep the browns downstream.

Rumor has it the browns are still finding ways through.

Perhaps even more of a concern on the Kern is the introduction of hatchery-raised rainbow trout.

Rainbows are not native to this river.

They compete in much the same way as do the browns, but the rainbow’s genetics are similar enough to the golden’s that they will actually interbreed with each other.

Large sections of the river now contain only these “hybridized” trout, with the pure golden trout genes only found in the upper reaches.

I can’t help but wonder if non-native species are threatening our salmon and steelhead in much the same way as the browns terrorize the Kern’s golden trout.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin delta is home to strong populations of both largemouth bass and striped bass.

Young salmon and steelhead must pass through this gauntlet on their way out to sea, whereas 120 years ago these predators did not exist here.

The Napa River’s steelhead (along with the few remaining salmon) face a similar issue with the stripers which populate the river’s lower reaches.

Could it now be just a matter of time before our new “recreational opportunities” completely displace the native species in our waters? #

San Francisco Chronicle – 2/22/08
By Sam Whiting

Searsville Dam has held back San Francisquito Creek for about 115 years. It won't make 125 if Matt Stoecker can get it torpedoed to let the steelhead finally come home. Stoecker, 32, is a biologist from Portola Valley.

"Searsville Dam is located within the San Francisquito Creek watershed, which drains through Portola Valley and Woodside, down through Palo Alto and Menlo Park into south San Francisco Bay. The dam is owned by Stanford University. It was initially built to divert water into the Crystal Springs Reservoir to supply drinking water to San Francisco and other communities on the Peninsula.

For several years it was used for irrigation on the campus. It was a recreation facility for the early to mid 1900s.

There were concerts. Joan Baez played there, I think. She still lives right across from the preserve. In the mid-'70s Stanford turned it into Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, which is over 1,000 acres. They shut down public access.

When I was in high school I used to sneak into the preserve to fish.

A steelhead is a rainbow trout that's been to the ocean. The rainbow trout are still in Corte Madera Creek, the main tributary to San Francisquito Creek. Those are the ancestors of steelhead. Because of the dam, steelhead can no longer get up into Corte Madera Creek but the trout are still there. Given the opportunity, those fish will head downstream, become steelhead and repopulate Corte Madera Creek on their own.

Stanford, ironically, has this Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve that is harboring this dam and reservoir that is one of the most negative ecological impacts in the whole watershed. The dam is about 65 feet tall and well over 200 feet wide. The reservoir is 10 percent of what it used to be in terms of its water storage capacity due to all the trapped sediment. This artificial reservoir is full of exotic fish like bass and crappie, catfish, bullfrogs. Stanford has done studies and you can see the non-native fish species are spilling over the dam and migrating down San Francisquito Creek. These fish are eating and competing with steelhead and other native fish and wildlife.

I formed Beyond Searsville Dam in early 2007, as an advocacy group. I'm trying to raise money to support an unbiased feasibility study on removing the dam. If you go to steockerecological.com you can see photos of the dam and underwater photos of steelhead in San Francisquito Creek that I've taken.

Within Stanford there is disagreement about Searsville. The biologists and professors teaching ecology have a different viewpoint than the facilities manager. Stanford definitely wants to preserve its water rights, but there's a way to remove the dam and have Stanford maintain and even improve its water rights.

Stanford has a unique opportunity here to be good stewards of the watershed and also to become leaders in this emerging field of dam removal. They can be one of the first institutions in the world to study the full ecological response of dam removal and how an ecosystem restores itself. It just takes them studying dam removal as a viable option, which they have not done thus far. Removing the dam would restore a valley and gorge that is currently submerged.

I haven't fished in Jasper Ridge since high school. I hope within my lifetime I'll be able to see steelhead upstream of the dam. I don't need to fish for them. Seeing them is enough."

The Lightbulb: I was downstream of Searsville Dam fishing and I saw a huge silver fish jump out of the water and bounce off the dam two times. I figured out it was a steelhead that had been to the ocean and come back, and couldn't swim home to spawn. The idea was to remove the dam and welcome steelhead back to Portola Valley and Woodside. #

Two old dams on the lower Yuba River don't make electricity, provide a water supply or prevent floods.

They do, however, stand in the way of spawning salmon.

The Daguerre Point and Englebright dams upstream of Marysville were designed to capture sediment washed out of the Sierra Nevada by hydraulic gold mining in the early 1900s.

But modern efforts to help endangered fish coexist with the dams have not gone well, according to environmental groups who last week sued the federal government and the Yuba County Water Agency.

They claim inaction has contributed to the decline of three species, all listed as threatened under federal law: spring-run chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.

The South Yuba River Citizens League and Friends of the River claim the agencies violated the federal Endangered Species Act by ignoring their own plans to improve fish spawning. The plaintiffs also claim these plans were inadequate in the first place.

"The Yuba has long been identified as the best opportunity for recovering spring-run chinook," said Jason Rainey, executive director of the citizens league. "There's no hope for recovery without expanded habitat."

Only 242 spring-run salmon returned to the Yuba River to spawn in 2007, he said, compared to about 400 in 2006. The total Central Valley spring run was about 12,500 fish in 2006.

Like other Sacramento River tributaries, the Yuba last year suffered a decline in fall-run chinook that may lead to a drastic fishing cutback this year. The fall run is not protected under endangered species laws.

Neither dam provides adequate fish ladders. The Daguerre Point Dam, built in 1906, has a pair of antiquated ladders that often fill up with debris or provide poor water flow. Englebright, built in 1941, has no ladders.

Rainey wants studies to find the best way to move fish around Englebright. He wants Daguerre Point Dam removed.

It is a diversion point for the Yuba County Water Agency, but that could be accommodated another way, he said.

These two changes, he said, could open more than 100 miles of additional spawning habitat.

Defendants include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the dams, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages the fish species.

Both agencies declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The Yuba County Water Agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal agencies acknowledge the dams are a threat to fish. The National Marine Fisheries Service in 2002 imposed a plan to minimize harm to fish, setting deadlines for projects to improve spawning habitat and upgrade fish ladders at Daguerre Point Dam.

The plaintiffs claim the corps completed none of the projects.

Last year, the fisheries service adopted a new plan to guide corps operations. It required even fewer improvements and imposed no standards to ensure success, the plaintiffs allege.

Greg Pasternack, a professor of watershed hydrology at University of California, Davis, has studied portions of the Yuba River below Englebright Dam for the past five years.

Unlike many Central Valley rivers, he said, the Yuba has plentiful spawning gravel in some locations to accommodate more fish, and its flows are good because its upstream reaches are relatively undammed.

"The Yuba is a pretty ideal location for fish overall," Pasternack said. "The main thing is to manage Daguerre and Englebright appropriately. The habitat is there. We just need more fish." #

Eureka Times Standard – 2/20/08
By Jessie Faulkner, staff writer

EUREKA -- The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to conditionally approve the Klamath Basin Agreement -- once the separate agreement on the dam removal has been reached.

At the earlier request of the supervisors, Public Works Department Director Tom Mattson -- with the assistance of retired Deputy Public Works Director Don Tuttle -- reviewed the agreement and presented three conclusions to the supervisors:

* that the agreement did not jeopardize the board's local control;

* that the increased flow in the river would not adversely affect public works facilities; and

* that language in the agreement may force the county to reallocate waterway restoration dollars to the Klamath.

The latter raised concern among board members about the ability to prioritize the use of existing rehabilitation dollars

After further discussion, the focus on reallocation of rehabilitation dollars was clarified as dealing with newly acquired federal and state funds - not monies already granted, according to Yurok Tribe attorney John Corbett.

The objective, Corbett said, was for all involved parties to go to Congress to seek funding.

”It was intended to be new money,” Corbett said. “We're after new monies, not old monies.”

Yurok Tribal Chair Maria Tripp also encouraged the board's approval of the Klamath Basin agreement.

The agreement, Tripp said, restores the fish and the river without giving away sovereign rights. The tribe's support of the agreement, she said, came after extensive consultation with tribal members.

”The Yurok Tribe has no other river -- (there's) no more important battle,” she said.

Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist -- who has been attending years of meetings leading up the agreement -- acknowledged that asking for conditional approval of the agreement is venturing into uncharted territory.

River advocate Denver Nelson of Eureka urged the supervisors to approve the agreement and praised Geist's attendance at the numerous meetings that led to the agreement's semi-final form.

While not convinced that taking out the dams will restore the river's fisheries, Nelson reminded the board that the license for those dams lasts 50 years. If its not done now, it won't be for another 50 years.

The Klamath Basin Agreement, a lengthy effort to balance the agricultural water needs in the upper basin with restoring flows for the health of the fisheries, first came before the board Jan. 22 and was continued until this week.

PacificCorp -- owner of the dams on the Klamath -- is currently asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to relicense its dams. #<

Chico Enterprise Record – 2/17/08

The next phase of regulations over water that leaves farms and enters public waterways will be pondered over the next several months as water quality officials meet with growers to ask for input.

It may be that different crops or different growing areas have different approaches.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board will meet from 6-8 p.m. April 8 at the Durham Memorial Hall, 9319 the Midway. It's one of several meetings the agency has scheduled.

The meetings are to gather input about the long-term regulatory program.

In the past, farmers were exempt from requirements to have a permit to discharge irrigation water from their lands.

That changed and in 2003 conditional waivers were granted, at the same time requiring landowners to join a coalition that conducted water quality monitoring.

Landowners pay an assessment on their land to pay for the tests.

But that is just an interim program, with the guidelines for the long-term program to be decided in the future.

Some of the proposals call for having different requirements for different types of agriculture or for different regions that have different water quality issues.

The Water Quality Control Board also might decide to treat different farms differently, such as small operations, organic farms, nurseries, wetland, etc.

Groundwater impacts from irrigated lands is another issue to look at more closely..

Comments on the program must be submitted by May 30. #

Stockton Record – 2/17/08
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

THE DELTA - For 129 years, they've shared the Delta, swimming the same sloughs and even eating the same food.

Can it be that the striped bass has been chowing down on its neighbor, the diminutive Delta smelt, the whole time?

So claims a coalition of farmers, which filed suit last week against the state of California for allowing and encouraging non-native striped bass to coexist with - and eat - native species like smelt.

The south San Joaquin Valley landowners care because the well-being of the smelt has a lot to do with how much water they get from the export pumps near Tracy.

About eight months ago, they formed a group called the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, and it has filed suit in federal court in Sacramento.

But the lawsuit appears to contradict what some experts say about the biology of the Delta and the relationship between the two fish species.

"All the studies that have been done on striped bass feeding habits show that they virtually never take Delta smelt," said Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis, professor and a leading expert on the state's native fishes.

And that's supported, he said, by studies in which striped bass have been cut open and their stomach contents examined.

Although they were introduced into California waterways in the late 19th century, experts today consider striped bass a beneficial species in the Delta. Although it's a sport fish and much larger than the smelt, it thrives under the same conditions, and the two species have declined in the past three decades.

The farmers' coalition admits the striped bass is not the sole cause of the smelt's decline, but neither are the export pumps, said Michael Boccadoro, a spokesman for the coalition.

The group says there are a range of reasons. For example, it has also threatened to sue two power plants in Pittsburgh and Antioch, claiming that their water intake systems kill fish.

"The reality is a convergence of all these factors," Boccadoro said. "Everybody's going to have to contribute" to a solution that will lead to a sustainable Delta.

The latest lawsuit also illustrates how difficult it has become to tell who is who in the Delta wars.

The various interests groups have adopted similar names: Coalition for a Sustainable Delta sounds like it would have much the same cause as Restore the Delta, a Stockton-based group that calls for reducing water exports.

Indeed, at least one media report from last week mistakenly said that environmentalists had filed the legal action.

Boccadoro said that the coalition's name is perfectly appropriate; the landowners are seeking solutions to make the Delta sustainable.

Jay Sorensen, a longtime striped bass fisherman in Stockton, calls it spin.

"That's why you have all these organizations that are being formed, because of the political rhetoric that's going on now for fish and wildlife in this state," he said.

The state Fish and Game Department once stocked striped bass in the Delta but suspended that practice because of concerns that the striped bass might eat smelt as well as baby salmon.

The lawsuit claims striped bass eat 5.3 percent of the Delta smelt population each year, as well as 6 percent of the winter-run chinook salmon and 3 percent of spring-run salmon. The numbers come from Fish and Game documents, the coalition says.

Also, rules that prohibit fishermen from taking striped bass less than 18 inches long, and from taking more than two striped bass longer than 18 inches, have allowed more smelt to be killed, the lawsuit says.

A Fish and Game spokesman said he could not comment on pending litigation.

Moyle, the UC Davis fish expert, said trawling in the 1970s would frequently yield samples that were half-smelt, half-striped bass, evidence that both species once thrived together.

"There's very little evidence of (stripers) being major predators of smelt, even when smelt were abundant," he said. #

Sacramento Bee – 2/14/08
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

LODI – The public is invited to join top fisheries experts for a conference March 5-8 about restoring salmon habitats and populations .

The Salmon Restoration Federation event is the first in the San Joaquin Valley in its 26-year history, marking the importance of a 2006 court settlement to restore the San Joaquin River. It is also timely after last year's collapse of fall-run chinook salmon spawning in Central Valley rivers.

Events will include panels on scientific and restoration issues, a film festival and field tours. About 500 people are expected to attend from around the world.

"A lot of people have contacted us and said they really want to tailor their presentations to some of the crises that are going on," said Dana Stolzman, conference executive director.

The conference will be held at Hutchins Street Square in Lodi. Co-sponsors include various state and federal wildlife and water agencies.

Registration is $160 for nonmembers if submitted by Friday, and $190 thereafter. Tours are extra. Federation members and students pay less. For information, visit www.calsalmon.org or call (707) 923-7501. #

Guest Column: Smelt key to a thriving ecosystem
The Santa Clara – 2/14/08

By Ann Thomas, senior political science and environmental science double major

Why should you care if a six centimeter-long fish in the Delta is now listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act?

Well, your drinking water could depend on it.

The Delta smelt, a fish species endemic to the San Francisco Bay and San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, is of great importance to the Delta ecosystem. Not only do many other species depend on it, but their presence signifies a healthy Delta ecosystem.

The livelihood of fishermen and the economy of the Delta are dependent upon its health and, therefore, upon the health of this fish.

The smelt's declining population can be attributed to the large water pumps near the San Joaquin Rivers. These straw-like mechanisms suck water from the Delta up and over hills and southbound to the water-thirsty agricultural industries and residents of Southern California.

The pumps are so strong that they actually change the direction of the river's current, negatively impacting the smelt.

The immense amount of fresh water diverted from the Delta also means that the salinity of the water changes. When fresh water is pumped out of the Delta, salty water from the San Francisco Bay replaces it. This is harmful to the smelt's life cycle because they depend on the mixture of salt water and fresh water for breeding.

If you are still not convinced that you should care about the fate of these small fish, here are some more reasons.

First, the demise of these fish is representative of the impact of the water conflict in California and the 22 million California residents that depend on the water that flows through the Sacramento Delta.

Pumping the majority of Northern California's water through large pumps and over hills and hundreds of kilometers is not sustainable, requires lots of resources and negatively impacts the environment.

Also, we at Santa Clara should care because we are dependent on water from the Delta for our drinking water. It is our responsibility to be conscious and engaged in the management and distribution of our water.

So what can we do to act as stewards of an environment which we directly impact on a daily basis?

On a small-scale level, we can conserve the Delta's resources by rethinking and altering our lifestyle choices. We can use less water, take shorter showers, use low-flush toilets, let it mellow when it's yellow (yes, I'm referring to that lame riddle you learned in fifth grade outdoor camp), etc.

There are also large-scale initiatives, like implementing efficient irrigation systems or recycled water programs in cities and counties that will help protect the Delta ecosystem.

We must reduce our water consumption out of necessity, respect for the environment and so that water conflicts in California do not continue to escalate.

Unfortunately, it is not students and professors like you and me that will have the most impact in changing our habits.

It is the highly consumptive agricultural industries that often only pay a flat monthly rate for their water bills, giving them little incentive to reduce their usage, which have the most impact on the Delta. To address this, the local, state and federal governments need to pass legislation mandating more efficient water use and monitoring. As active, educated and conscientious citizens, we must support public policy bills that advocate sustainable use of our water resources.

Not only does the fate of the Delta smelt depend on our actions to conserve water, but the millions of others in California that depend on this precious resource. It is our duty to critically analyze the allocation of water throughout California.

We need to change the way we think about water and focus on the impact of our daily actions on the environment and surrounding communities that sustain us. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 2/14/08
John Keenan, Special to the Record Searchlight

MCCLOUD -- An overflow audience in the multipurpose room of McCloud Union Elementary School was stunned Tuesday evening when Nestle Waters North America asked to reopen the environmental review process for its proposed water-bottling plant on the site of the California Cedar Products lumber mill in McCloud.

"Feedback from the community has led us to ask that the EIR process be instituted once more to provide more scientific information on stream flow and water quality evaluations," said Dave Palais, local Nestle project manager.

Palais was one of several speakers who presented new information regarding the proposed bottling complex.

Nestle also declared it will limit the amount of water used annually to 1,600 acre feet, which amounts to 520 million gallons. There are no proposed groundwater wells in the new plans.

"We feel what's good for Nestle, will be good for McCloud," Palais said. "We are looking for additional public input from the community regarding our proposed project."

To that end, the McCloud Watershed Council distributed survey sheets at the meeting, asking the public for their comments regarding Nestle's plans. Comments will be collected through February and the results will be distributed to the public in March.

Water rights attorney David B. Mooney of Davis said the new environmental review process will include Siskiyou County as the lead agency and the McCloud Community Services District as the responsible agency.

"What this means," Mooney said, "is if final agreements between Nestle and the services district are at odds, it will be up to the district to resolve those differences, not the county, before a final agreement is reached."

The value of the water itself was part of the presentation made by Kristin Lee, co-author of the ECONorthwest report commissioned by the McCloud Watershed Council.

The contract now calls for Nestle to pay $183 per acre foot to the McCloud Community Services District, compared to an earlier proposed rate of $26 per acre foot.

"This compares to the $2,183 per acre-foot Nestle is currently paying for water at its Pure Mountain Spring plant," Lee said. "Population growth, climate change and other competing uses, industrial and environmental, will only increase in value McCloud's most viable asset, spring water."

"There could be real value to the town for this project," said Darlene Mathis, owner of the McCloud Mercantile building, "but I wonder about the impact it will have on the overall quality of life here in town." #

Guest Column: Salmon live in Yolo's backyard; Why fish love Yolo Bypass just as much as birds
Woodland Daily Democrat – 2/9/08
By Ted Sommer, Senior Environmental Scientist with California Department of Water Resources

The recent rainy weather gives us hope that we will not have another drought year, and the sight of water in the Yolo Bypass is a reminder that in about two-thirds of years, winter and spring rains cause the Sacramento River and its tributaries to spill out into the Yolo Bypass, creating a vast inland sea.

One of the most visible changes during flood is the inundation of the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, the largest area of public open space in Yolo County, and a key stop on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds. These floods cause wildlife to flee to higher ground, and many waterfowl to seek shallower refuges. One of the great surprises, however, is that these floods represent a great windfall to fish.

For the past 10 years, my team has been doing research on how fish use the Yolo Bypass, especially during floods.

We started studying the system because it is the largest floodplain of the San Francisco estuary, where our program's monitoring data shows a long-term unexplained pattern of higher fish production during wetter years. Research by our team has revealed that inundation of Yolo Bypass is at least part of the reason for why increased flow produces more fish.

Chinook salmon is perhaps the best example of why Yolo Bypass is so important to fish. Locally, the process typically starts in fall when adult salmon migrate upstream to their "home" streams along the Sacramento River and its tributaries including Feather, Yuba and American rivers. Most young salmon produced in these streams subsequently migrate downstream in winter and spring towards the ocean. During high flow periods, these young migrating salmon can either continue down the Sacramento River, or move out into the seasonally inundated Yolo Bypass or its upstream counterpart, the Sutter Bypass.

The most important finding from our work is that Yolo Bypass is one of the primary nursery areas for young salmon.

During floods, fish that move into the Yolo Bypass stay for long periods, typically one month or more. Compared to the narrow, rip-rapped channels of the Sacramento River, the floodplain creates an immense area of shallow rearing habitat for little salmon. These fish thrive on the flooded lands of the Yolo Wildlife Area, as well as adjacent rice and corn fields, areas that are not traditionally recognized as fish habitat.

Rearing salmon grow much faster in Yolo Bypass than in the Sacramento River because of the floodplain's rich food web.

The food web is fueled by midge, an insect that is a key food source for fish, bats, and birds. Midges (technically known as chironomids) are present in dramatically higher numbers in the Yolo Bypass than the Sacramento River, resulting in much more food for young salmon. One of the unexpected findings of our study was that the midges were mostly from a single species that had not previously been identified by scientists. This fact that this midge was a "new" species was confirmed by UC Davis chironomid expert Dr. Peter Cranston, who travels the world hunting new species of midge. Our research revealed that the midge has resting stages that hatch out of Yolo Bypass soils as soon as they are wetted by floodwaters. The resulting hatch can be an annoyance to commuters on the Yolo Causeway, but represents an exceptionally important food source for many species.

The young salmon also are apparently fairly good at leaving Yolo Bypass once floodwaters recede.

The Yolo Bypass has a relatively even grade with few obstructions, allowing most of the fish to drain off with the floodwaters . The Yolo Bypass rejoins the Sacramento River near the Delta town of Rio Vista, where salmon continue on their journey to the Pacific Ocean.

Although some fish are trapped in ponds in Yolo Bypass, they are a minor portion of the overall population, and provide a useful food resource for predators including egrets, herons, raccoons, and otters.

The legacy of Yolo Bypass for salmon does not end after the fish swim off of the floodplain. Our research on tagged fish suggests that the fast-growth rates of salmon that rear in Yolo Bypass helps them throughout the rest of their lives.

Young fish tagged in Yolo Bypass during flood events typically produce as many or more adult salmon in the ocean than groups tagged in the Sacramento River. Hence, Yolo Bypass provides a unique fish nursery area that has benefits far beyond our local landscape. The fact that Yolo Bypass also supports countless numbers of wildlife, provides flood control benefits (it is Yolo County's primary floodway), generates farm income, and it a major open space resource for Valley residents only adds to its role as the "heart" of the southern Sacramento Valley. #

Stockton Record – 2/8/08

Central Valley chinook salmon are in deep distress.

Their rapidly disappearing numbers during their fall run upstream are alarming evidence of the misuse and declining health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's.

The collapse also reflects oceanic changes and the continuing clash of humanity and wildlife.

The number of chinook - or king - salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries dropped by 88 percent in 2007.

This disturbing decline is the latest in a series of ecological setbacks for the troubled estuary:

» Delta smelt could be nearing extinction.

» The number of striped bass sank to the third-lowest level ever in 2007.

» Two species of shad are in unprecedented danger.

The salmon disaster, which threatens commercial fishing operations on the California, Oregon and Washington coastlines, will cause negative economic impacts.

Pacific Fishery Management Council members will meet in March in Sacramento to discuss options.

One possibility would be shutting down completely the salmon fishing season, which is scheduled to begin in May.

That would damage the fishing industry and cause consumer prices to escalate rapidly.

Beyond that, the salmon crisis is certain to be the focal point of an ongoing debate regarding state water policy. All aspects of the situation must be thoroughly and fairly examined.

Too many people with special interests - sport fishing groups, environmentalists, agricultural and urban water managers - focus too narrowly on their perceived solutions to a very complex problem.

The San Joaquin River's restricted flow is critical. Court-ordered increases in releases from Friant Dam can't start soon enough.

Pumping stations near Tracy have so threatened fish species that a judge shut down diversions to Southern California for 10 days in June.

The fear of that happening again prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to establish the Delta Vision Task Force.

So far, that group's best recommendation has been to increase storage capacity for water runoff during wet years. Its worst idea has been to build a better north-south "linkage," a euphemism for a peripheral canal.

Neither option addresses sustainable changes that would benefit aquatic life over the long term.

There are larger, harder-to-address global issues. Marine biologists theorize the salmon crisis can be attributed to ocean conditions - linked to global warming - that disrupt marine life cycles.

While wild salmon populations in Oregon and Washington also are shrinking, the Central Valley chinook's distress is causing the greatest concern.

A comprehensive review of every factor is necessary. A mechanism that establishes overall decision-making authority must be developed and fully empowered.

The Delta is declining dangerously because it's being redirected, stressed, misused and neglected. There is no common agreement on how to fix it.

The declining fish populations, especially among chinook salmon, are very disturbing signs.

How many more negative indicators are needed? #

Associated Press – 2/7/08
By Garance Burke, staff writer

California fish and wildlife managers moved forward Thursday with plans to protect a fish species that plays an important ecological role in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a move that could further restrict water pumping throughout the state.

The Fish and Game Commission voted 3-0 Thursday to consider listing the longfin smelt as a threatened or endangered species under state law.

It also adopted emergency regulations requiring state and federal water managers to scale back pumping operations in the next 180 days whenever longfin smelt are near the massive pumps that send water to more than 25 million Southern Californians.

As much as 400,000 acre feet of water could be lost, although it's not known what the full impact might be, said Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors Association.

"It raises the risk, the uncertainty for ag contractors if all of a sudden they've put planting in and restrictions are added in the spring," King Moon said.

Environmental groups blame excessive water pumping from delta for the plummeting of the longfin smelt and their cousin, the delta smelt.

Last summer, a federal judge ordered federal and state water authorities to reduce the amount of water they pump through the delta in a bid to protect the delta smelt.

The pumping restrictions adopted Thursday for the longfin smelt could mean additional stoppages because longfin smelt move into the delta and spawn earlier than the delta smelt, according to a Department of Fish and Game memo.

While authorities review biological information about the fish over the next year, the longfin smelt will benefit from the same protections as endangered species, spokeswoman Adrianna Shea said.

The population of the longfin smelt is 3 percent of the level measured less than 20 years ago, according to a petition filed by the Center of Biological Diversity, which asked the commission to list the species under the California Endangered Species Act.

Surveys by the Department of Fish and Game show the population of the longfin smelt in the of fall 2007 reached their lowest since the surveys began in 1967.

The silvery fish, which grows to about 5 inches long, is distinguished by its long pectoral fins and is considered an indicator of the health of the delta.

"The collapse of the longfin smelt is another alarming indication that the Bay-Delta ecosystem is in critical condition," Tina Swanson, a senior scientist for The Bay Institute, said in a statement. #

San Francisco Chronicle – 2/7/08
By Jane Kay, staff writer

The numbers of endangered coho salmon returning to spawn this winter in west Marin County have been low enough to persuade officials to ban streamside building in the lush San Geronimo Valley for two years.

People were disappointed this season as they lined up at the Shafter Bridge on Sir Frances Drake Boulevard to watch the olive green and red coho fight their way up the San Geronimo and Lagunitas creeks to spawn. The winter numbers declined drastically, as did the numbers of the fall run of the Sacramento River chinook salmon.

Only 175 redds - the river nests of at least two coho salmon - were counted in the creeks this season. That's down from the 728 redds counted in 2004-05, one of the more healthy runs in recent years.

On Wednesday, Marin County officials announced that they had negotiated an agreement with an environmental group called SPAWN, the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network in Forest Knoll. It would ban new construction, including house additions, within 100 feet of all streams in the San Geronimo Valley for two years while scientists come up with guidelines for building and other activities that would better protect the coho salmon.

Development can alter streambeds by eliminating floodplains and vegetation that the salmon need to survive.

The county's Board of Supervisors is expected to approve the building moratorium at a meeting Tuesday. The environmental group has been urging the supervisors to put stricter coho salmon protections in a countywide growth plan.

"We've been on opposing sides for years, and now we've decided to try a collaborative approach which would work for the fish as well as the community," said Supervisor Steve Kinsey, who represents west Marin.

"There will be folks who will be significantly inconvenienced by the moratorium and others who won't like it. But we agree that to protect the species for the long-term warrants a short timeout," Kinsey said.

The fact that the salmon "commingle with inhabited communities is amazing," he said. "It's a pinnacle experience in nature to see them. We don't want to be known as the generation that ended that phenomenon."

In San Rafael, Klif Knoles, general manager of Marin Builders Association, said his 1,000-company trade association would "like some time for public comment" on the agreement.

The San Geronimo Valley, 3 1/2 miles long by 1 mile wide, is a rural region of 5,000 people laced with creeks and streams. Since the 1960s, summer cabins have turned into year-round residences. About one to two houses are built there a year, county officials say. Property owners have already had to show county officials that their development wasn't harming the coho, one of the last runs left in California.

The coho salmon - which is considered endangered by state officials and is a threatened species according to the federal government - has lost 90 percent of its population over the past decades. The fish use Lagunitas, San Geronimo, Devils Gulch, Olema, Pine Gulch and Redwood creeks.

Threats include development, dams that block migration, pollution and warming ocean conditions that diminish food supply, scientists say.

Development destroys the floodplains that slow the flow of rushing rivers and offer sanctuary for the little salmon during a rain storm, explained Paola Bouley, a watershed biologist with SPAWN. The fish need fallen trees for cover as well as streamside trees such as alders, maples and willows. Bankside oaks and redwoods cool the water for the coho, Bouley said.

In 2005-06, a huge rainstorm washed out the juvenile salmon growing in the creek, the same fish that would have been returning this year to spawn, Bouley said.

"We don't expect them to be alive. They only get one shot. They're on a rigid three-year cycle, and don't have any flexibility."

The big, tasty and hard-fighting striped bass is a top prize for fishermen in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

For everybody else who depends on the Delta's limited water, the racy chrome fish has become a flash point in California's next water war.

Farmers in arid Kern County last week sued the state for protecting the striper as a sportfish. They allege the nonnative striper has been allowed to damage the Delta, preying on endangered native fish, including salmon and the ghostly Delta smelt.

The legal action came like a Taser strike to the state's vocal angling community. And several water law experts say the case may stand as the first blast in what's expected to be a protracted battle over California's most precious resource.

The new lawsuit shows that this war's front has moved beyond the traditional realm of environmentalists versus government. Rhetoric has also hardened between interest groups that have spent the past 10 years trying to cooperate on water issues.

"They're executioners," Roger Mammon said, bluntly labeling water exporters.

Mammon is a board member of the West Delta Chapter of the California Striped Bass Association. "They don't care about the Delta except that it's water and money in their pocket. I think they're full of it."

Anglers call the striped bass innocent. Yes, it's a predator, but they say it successfully coexisted historically with salmon and smelt, and all thrived.

Instead, they blame water exporters – including the Kern farmers – for a bottomless thirst that has pumped Delta water to millions of homes and farm fields at a record pace over the past seven years.

"What's new is that the crisis is upon us," said Dante Nomellini Sr., a longtime water lawyer in Stockton. "This thing's going to heat up a lot more than what we've got right now."

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. It naturally collects about two-thirds of the state's runoff and funnels it to the sea via San Francisco Bay, along the way providing vital habitat for an array of fish and other wildlife.

But it's also the hub of California's complex water distribution system. The 740,000-acre estuary is the diversion point for state and federal water projects serving 25 million people and more than 2 million acres of rich farmland. Those diversions, at separate pumping facilities near Tracy, reverse natural water flows, alter habitat and kill millions of fish each year.

A recent truce in California's water wars began in 1994 with creation of the CalFed Bay-Delta Program. This collaboration between government agencies, water consumers and environmentalists sought to protect the Delta and improve water deliveries.

But CalFed did not have the money and authority to meet all its goals and is now being reformulated, leaving most participants feeling shortchanged.

Since 2001, water exports from the Delta have neared record levels while numerous fish populations sank – including the threatened smelt, now near extinction.

This combination made litigation seem inevitable.

"A number of folks feel, for whatever reason, they are reduced to pursuing litigation as the last available option to vindicate their interests," said Richard Frank, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Berkeley.

The truce may have ended last August, when a federal judge in Fresno ordered Delta water exports reduced to protect the smelt. That case was brought by environmental groups.

The striped bass case can be considered return fire.

That's according to Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the plaintiffs. Calling themselves the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, they include the Belridge, Berrenda Mesa, Lost Hills and Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa water districts.

All are in Kern County and depend on Delta water.

Boccadoro said water exports get too much blame for the Delta's collapse, while other threats are ignored. The coalition fears this narrow focus will further harm fish, followed by more water cutbacks, creating a vicious cycle that will only hurt farmers.

Other threats they cite are poor water quality from upstream farm and urban runoff, and thousands of unchecked farm water diversions in the Delta itself.

The coalition will "absolutely" act on such issues, he said.

"They won't all be legal actions," Boccadoro said. "But there will be actions on each of the issues we believe are causing decline of the estuary."

Frank found it ironic that a farm group brought legal action over the Delta, when it is farmers who often decry court meddling in the Delta.

But he said this signifies the new battle at hand.

"It looks like at least some of them have decided the best defense is a good offense," he said.

Nomellini agrees. He represents the Central Delta Water Agency – farmers who cultivate the Delta's rich soil.

On Delta issues, these farmers have different interests from those in Kern County. Generally, they seek to preserve the Delta to avoid disrupting farm communities, and oppose excessive water exports which often make Delta waters too salty for their crops.

Yet they have a kinship with their farm brethren in the south.

That may be eroding.

"Our farmers view the other guys as breaching faith," said Nomellini. "They're part of the water grab. I don't know what we can do now other than just fight." #

According to a Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fish survey, Delta fish species numbers are at their lowest.

On Jan. 10, the state department of Fish and Game biologists released the latest results from an annual survey of Delta fish species. Results included the lowest numbers for three species and continued low numbers for two species.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is one of the state's most important habitats for fish species, according to the state department of Water Resources website. The 740,000-acre estuary also houses drinking water accessible to 25 million Californians.

>From the survey, record-low numbers were released for the American shad, Sacramento splittail and longfin smelt. Delta smelt and striped bass had near-record low numbers.

An expert on California's native fish, UC Davis professor of wildlife, fish and conservation biology Peter Moyle stated in an e-mail interview that his concern lies with the delta smelt, an endangered fish species that survives only in the Delta.

"If the [Delta] levees fail, the smelt will immediately become extinct," Moyle said. "It's an ecological change that's going to shift a part of Californian heritage."

The delta's levees play a role in fish extinction. Depending on the size and timing of a levee breach and what is done with it, breaches can drastically change the water quality in the Delta, said Marty Gingras, supervising biologist of the state's Department of Fish and Game.

Gingras said fish extinctions are usually the result of environmental changes and habitat loss.

"To avoid extinction, all fishes need spawning, rearing and foraging habitat in appropriate proportions and sufficient individuals to preserve genetic diversity," Gingras said. "We need to protect each of these."

Gingras said efforts to save Delta fish from extinction include research and monitoring, education and outreach, habitat restoration and legal measures.

"Most stakeholders respond well to all efforts except legal measures," he said. "With laws, mandatory mitigations and regulations, there are usually winners and losers."

In the event of a Delta flooding or crisis, solutions that include a habitat conservation plan are suggested. This is addressed in the "Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin" a 2007 publication written by five UC Davis professors - Jay Lund, William Fleenor, Richard Howitt, Jeffrey Mount and Peter Moyle - and Ellen Hanak of Public Policy Institute of California.

State Representative Lois Wolk (D-Davis), who chairs the State Assembly's Water Parks and Wildlife Committee, said she is developing three bills to address the Delta's problems.

"To restore the entire ecosystem that [would] include the endangered fish species," Wolk said. "It's not enough to introduce legislation. We have to engage in politics and speak out."

Wolk recently introduced Assembly Bill 1806, which addresses rescue or relocation and emergency contingency plans concerning fish and wildlife. Under the bill, a state or local public land management that identifies endangered species of fish or wildlife must develop an emergency contingency plan to rescue or relocate the identified endangered populations. The new requirements for local public management entities would require a state-mandated local program dedicated to fish and wildlife rescue efforts.

"We need a plan so that we can respond swiftly and efficiently in the event of future disasters," Wolk said.

Last year, The Bay Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a petition to change the current status of delta smelt from "threatened" to "endangered" under the California Endangered Species Act. The state department of Fish and Game is currently requesting data and comments on the petition.

To submit data and comments related to the petition or the status of the delta smelt, contact Marty Gingras at (209) 948-3702. Comments must be received by Feb. 29. #

With shameless abandon, lawyers and monied players are abusing the state's premier environmental law – the California Environmental Quality Act.

Lawmakers enacted CEQA in 1970 so citizens could identify development projects that posed an unacceptable environmental impact, and change them or challenge them. Over the years, various interests have hijacked this law for nonenvironmental purposes, and conservation groups have looked the other way.

All of us know about "neighborhood groups" that have exploited this law to prevent construction of affordable housing. Corporations have used CEQA in an attempt to stifle competition. An example is the Westfield Corp., the Australian owner of the Downtown Plaza mall, which is now suing the city over its approval of the railyard development, slated to bring new retail and housing to downtown.

Labor unions are an even larger abuser of CEQA. In recent years, labor groups have used environmental lawsuits, or the threat of such suits, to stop or slow down power plant construction, hospital expansions and housing developments. The unions' lawyers always seem to disappear once a developer has signed an agreement to hire only union labor.

Critics call this practice "greenmail," a polite term for legal extortion. The combined effect is to drive up the cost of new houses, hospital beds and other projects, with little or no benefit for the environment.

Consider the example of William Kopper, a former mayor of Davis. Kopper is suing, or threatening to sue, the railyard, the Greenbriar project in Natomas, Placer Vineyards and the Yuba Highlands project in Yuba County over alleged CEQA violations. Kopper won't disclose his clients, but his history is well known.

In the late 1990s, the Mid-Valley Trades Council hired Kopper to challenge the impacts of a proposed auto raceway in Yuba County. After the trades council reached agreement with the developer, Kopper dropped his objections. "I wasn't authorized to do any more work on it," Kopper told The Bee.

A few years ago, Kopper sued to halt Roseville's westward expansion. The lawsuit was dropped after developers signed a project labor agreement with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 340, the United Association Local 447 and the Sheet Metal Workers Local 162.

Oddly, environmental leaders in California have remained mum on this hijacking of environmental law. Their silence reflects a marriage of convenience between labor and environmental groups and, possibly, some financial entanglements.

For several years, a group called California Unions for Reliable Energy has used CEQA to slow or block power plants, including a geothermal plant in Imperial County. As it happens, CURE employs a law firm founded by Tom Adams, the current president of the California League of Conservation Voters.

Defenders of CEQA should be outraged. They also should be worried. As the abuses and misuses mount, they create ammunition for industry groups that would like to see California's landmark law revoked or seriously weakened.

Greenmail hurts CEQA's credibility. Why are leading environmentalists complicit with their silence? #

Associated Press – 2/2/08
By Terence Chea, staff writer

SAN FRANCISCO—Humboldt County fisherman Dave Bitts is bracing for another lean year after the sudden collapse of California's most important salmon run.

Like many West Coast fisherman, Bitts depends on wild "king" salmon for up to two-thirds of his income. Now, he doesn't know how he's going to pay his bills.

"We've never been in this situation before," said the 59-year-old Bitts. "It's my bread-and-butter, as it is for all my pals. And this year, it appears our bread-and-butter is not there."

Federal fishery regulators said this past week that the number of chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River and its tributaries last fall was astonishingly low. That could trigger severe fishing restrictions and economic hardship for fishermen and related businesses from Central California to the Canadian border.

Restaurants and consumers will have to pay high prices or do without the prized wild salmon, and the crash could force the state to change the way it manages its increasingly precious water.

"This is an economic rumbling that will go right through every coastal community," said Rep. Mike Thompson of California's North Coast. "It's not just the commercial fishermen that are economically harmed; there are all kinds of businesses that depend on the fishery."

Experts are unclear about what caused the collapse, but many fishermen are blaming an increase in the amount of water being pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to drought-stricken farms and cities to the south.

They plan to aggressively lobby for reduced water diversions from the delta, through which the migrating salmon must pass. Environmentalists who have fought for years to draw attention to the damage done by the water diversions believe the salmon collapse might be the thing that finally stokes public outrage.

"It's proof that the operation of these water projects is harming salmon," said Mike Sherwood, an Earthjustice attorney who is suing the state and federal governments over delta water diversions. "It may put more pressure on state and federal agencies to do something."

Only about 90,000 adult salmon returned to the Central Valley to spawn in the fall of 2007, the second lowest number on record. By comparison, 277,000 spawners were counted there a year earlier, and 804,000 in 2002.

Even more troubling, only about 2,000 2-year-old male fish, or "jacks," were recorded—the lowest number ever and far below the 40,000 counted in a typical year. Jacks are used to predict returns of adult chinook the next year, so this year's numbers are likely to be even smaller.

Because Central Valley chinook normally make up 90 percent of wild salmon landed in California, and a big share of those caught in Oregon and Washington, it's fishermen who will immediately feel the impact.

Craig Barbre, of Morro Bay, said he and his wife took their boat to troll off the coast of Alaska last summer and may have to do the same this year. But with soaring fuel costs, there's no guarantee they can make ends meet.

"Taking our boat to Alaska is a pure gamble," said Barbre, a 57-year-old second-generation fishermen. "We don't know if we'll make enough to cover our costs, but that's our only choice."

The anxiety is being felt as far away as Washington state. Although Central Valley salmon only make up a fraction of their catch, fishermen there worry that regulators may limit all West Coast fishing in order to protect the Sacramento stocks.

Even if their fisheries remain open, Washington fishermen could face competition from California and Oregon boats unable to fish their home waters.

"The mood here is extremely grim," said Joel Kawahara, 52, of Quilcene, Wash., who relies on salmon for all his income. If there are more fishing restrictions, "for me it would pretty much be an economic disaster."

The Pacific Fishery Management Council will hold hearings over the next two months to discuss restrictions on this year's salmon season, which typically starts in May.

Most fishermen expect extreme restrictions—perhaps even a total ban on both commercial and sport fishing.

The industry is preparing for a third straight year of poor salmon harvests. In 2006, the federal government imposed strict limits on ocean salmon fishing to protect dwindling stocks in the Klamath River, where chinook runs have been devastated by hydroelectric dams and disease. Regulators allowed more ocean fishing last year, but fishermen complain there weren't many fish to catch.

If fishing is allowed at all this year, trollers can expect the harvest to be even worse.

"I think we have to provide some sort of emergency relief for these folks," said Thompson, who will ask the federal government for a disaster declaration that would open the way for financial assistance for fishermen and affected businesses.

"I don't think we want this industry to go away," he said. "We don't want to see these working families disappear."

The federal government declared a disaster in 2006, and Congress approved $60 million in aid. But it took a massive political effort to secure that funding, and the checks just began arriving two months ago.

Besides the impact on commercial fishing, the Central Valley crash could devastate the region's sport fishing industry.

In California alone, there are 2.4 million recreational anglers who generate as much as $4 billion in economic activity each year, according to the American Sportfishing Association. Salmon restrictions will be felt by fishing gear manufacturers, charter boat operators, tackle shops, marinas and coastal motels.

Meanwhile, the collapse is stirring fierce debate about the cause.

Regulators and biologists say salmon stocks are down throughout the West Coast, which could mean the crash is related to ocean conditions—possibly linked to global warming—that have disrupted the marine food chain.

"We don't know what's behind it," said Chuck Tracy, a salmon expert with the fishery council. "It appears to be a coast-wide phenomenon. That usually indicates something in the marine environment."

But fishermen are convinced that increased water exports from the delta are to blame.

"Obviously, climate change has affected some of these fish, but it doesn't explain the total collapse," said Zeke Grader, who heads the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "Other runs are down, but they haven't gone into a tailspin like this one."

State and federal scientists are studying the impact of the water diversions on salmon, and they could make changes if there's evidence that fish are being harmed, said Barbara McDonnell, a biologist with the California Department of Water Resources.

The crash is especially troubling because more than a decade of restoration efforts had brought Sacramento River salmon runs from the brink of disaster in the early 1990s to the record-high number just five years ago, she said.

"It's very unhappy news," McDonnell said. "We had been getting good results, so this is discouraging after all the work we've done." #

YubaNet.com – 1/31/08
By: South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL)

Nevada City, CA January 31, 2008 - Yesterday's news headlines in the Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, among others, announced that Central Valley's most abundant salmon run is in "collapse." A news release by the Pacific Fishery Management Council has warned "all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock may be affected." The Council states that "The low returns are particularly distressing since this stock has consistently been the healthy 'work horse' for salmon fisheries off California and most of Oregon."

The Council reported additional bad news in that the count of "jacks"

(immature salmon that return 1 year prior to the main run) was only 2,000 compared to a long-term average of about 40,000 and a previous record low of 10,000. A routine forecast for next year's salmon run, the jacks suggest that we may see an even worse run of salmon in 2008.

In a statement to the press, Pacific Fishery Management Council Executive Director Donald McIsaac characterized the 2007 Central Valley run as "an unprecedented collapse."

In a press release issued on October 19th, 2007, the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) sounded the alarm regarding the initial counts of the Fall-run Chinook on the Yuba River, with the headline: "Yuba's Wild Salmon Run Collapsing." The news release was based on preliminary data from the fish counting technology installed at Daguerre Point Dam on the lower Yuba River, a salmonid monitoring project of the California Department of Fish and Game, in partnership with SYRCL, Yuba County Water Agency and other fisheries agencies.

According to the PFMC, roughly 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second lowest number on record. The population was at 277,224 in 2006 and 775,499 five years ago. The 2007 run size is less than the conservation objective (122,000) necessary to ensure optimal production.

On the Yuba River, the decline in salmon appears to be no less severe.

Although the California Department of Fish and Game has yet to authorize public release their year-end data for the fish-counter on the Yuba, NOAA Fisheries has published data indicating that mere 242 Spring-run salmon were counted at Daguerre in 2007. DFG estimates through their escapement surveys that 2,600 Fall-run Chinook spawned in the Yuba in 2007, compared to an estimate of 18,000 in 2005.

"Yuba River salmon are considered one of the strongest wild populations in the state, so the poor run here suggests that all salmon are at risk"

says Gary Reedy, SYRCL Fisheries Biologist.

What has most alarmed fisheries biologists and water managers is that the Fall-run has been the strongest Chinook run in the Central Valley in recent decades. The Winter-run Chinook is listed as "endangered" and the Spring-Run is listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act. The Yuba River hosts a uniquely wild (non-hatchery

produced) population of Fall-Run and Spring-Run Chinook, as well as the threatened population of Steelhead Trout.

A Recovery Plan for these threatened species is required of NOAA Fisheries, but has not yet been completed. However, a February 2007 report by twelve scientists from NOAA Fisheries and other organizations concluded that "to recover Central Valley salmon and steelhead ... some populations will need to be established in areas now blocked by dams".

The Upper Yuba River Studies Program recently published a report concluding that substantial habitats for salmon and steelhead exist in the watershed above Englebright Dam. "We have an opportunity, already backed by substantial public investment, to return the Yuba's wild salmon to their historic habitat in the upper Yuba River. What's missing is the will of federal agencies to meet their legal obligations to recover these fish," says Jason Rainey, Executive Director of SYRCL.

SYRCL, joined by Friends of the River, has also filed suit in federal court against the Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service and Yuba County Water Agency for alleged failures to protect and recover the Spring-run Chinook Salmon, Steelhead trout and green sturgeon of the Yuba River, all of which are listed as "threatened"

under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"While the federal attorneys drag their heels in our legal claims, the conservation community will need to work with anglers and commercial fisheries to try to forge an enduring solution for salmon recovery. The salmon collapse represents a real unraveling of California's aquatic heritage. We need bold solutions from our federal partners, not courtroom dithering," states Rainey.

In December 2007, NOAA Fisheries issued an updated Biological Opinion that is meant to govern operations at and around the two federal dams on the lower Yuba River. SYRCL and Friends of the River immediately re-issued a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue and expect to file a formal complaint in federal court at the conclusion of the 60-day notice period in early February.

SYRCL is a grassroots river advocacy organization that has been active in Yuba salmon issues for much of our 25 year history. A comprehensive overview of Yuba Salmon was delivered by SYRCL's Gary Reedy at a "Town Hall" meeting in October 2007.

Editorial
San Francisco Chronicle – 2/1/08

Wow, this is rich: After two of the worst salmon fishing years in California history, the farm groups who've been siphoning off the fishes' water are suing state agencies that the farmers say are killing the fish. Got that?

If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it is. We're not saying that California's practice of maintaining non-native, predatory striped bass in the delta - so that sport fishermen can have some fun - is a healthy one. It's surely not. The striped bass devour fish, whether they're endangered or not, and there is evidence that they eat delta smelt and chinook salmon, both of which have collapsed in the delta over the last two years. Michael Boccadoro, spokesperson for the coalition that filed the lawsuit, pointed to statistics saying that the bass consume between 3 and 6 percent of these fish.

These numbers are not insignificant, but nor can they hold a candle to the damage that water pumping and diversions have done to these fish. A recent federal court decision stated that California must reduce water delivery to agricultural interests in order for the delta smelt to survive. Last year, a lawsuit led by the Natural Resources Defense Council forced state and local water agencies to shut down the pumps for a few months because of concerns about the smelt's survival.

Still, the coalition says that it's just as important to stop other "factors" in the fish's decline.

"There's a host of factors contributing to the decline of the fish in the delta," said Boccadoro. "We're not suggesting the pumps aren't a factor. They are. But they're one of many factors. We're committed to researching all of those factors and taking action where necessary."

He added that the coalition had not yet done research to see how much damage pumping does to the smelt and the salmon. "We don't have the resources for that," he said.

Yet they had the resources to file a "thoroughly researched" lawsuit against two state agencies.

Well, they say the best defense is a good offense. Let's hope the smelt and the salmon will have such defenders from the public.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 1/31/08
By Robert Digitale, staff writer

North Coast sport and commercial fishermen fear they might lose this spring's salmon season, a mere two years after federal officials declared the same fishery a disaster.

"When they start talking about no fishing at all, that's obviously a concern," said Chuck Wise, a Bodega Bay fisherman and president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"It would be devastating to the charter boats in Bodega Bay," said Rick Powers, the skipper of the New Sea Angler. Powers' vessel and other charter boats provide ocean salmon fishing trips for sport anglers.

The possible fishing closure is tied to reports of a dramatic drop in the number of adult chinook salmon returning to spawn in the Sacramento River, the state's most productive salmon river. About 90,000 adult chinook returned this fall to the Sacramento, the fewest since 1992.

Federal regulators suggested in a press release that they might be unable to conserve enough Sacramento salmon this year "even without any commercial or recreational salmon fishing where these fish are found."

The regulators will meet in early April in Seattle to devise season rules and recommend them to the U.S. secretary of commerce.

The state's commercial fishery has declined sharply during the past two decades, even as the number of salmon raised worldwide in aquaculture, or fish farms, has grown exponentially. More than 2,500 commercial vessels landed salmon in California in 1988, compared with fewer than 500 in 2006, the most recent year of record.

That year, the federal Pacific Fisheries Management Council sharply curtailed fishing because of low salmon stocks from the Klamath River north of Eureka. The federal government eventually provided $64 million in relief for West Coast fishermen and related industries.

Now attention is turned to the Sacramento, from which come the majority of salmon caught in both California and Oregon.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who sponsored the disaster relief legislation, said Wednesday that a fishing ban on salmon this year could cost West Coast fishing ports upwards of $80 million.

"It's terrible news for both the fish and the industry," Thompson said.

If the fishery is once more declared a disaster, Thompson said he again will seek aid for the fishermen.

State and federal officials are reporting low salmon runs this year from California to British Columbia.

"As you go up and down the West Coast, there are not very many bright spots," said Harry Morse, spokesman for the state Department of Fish & Game.

Returning chinook salmon on the Russian River this fall numbered 1,900, compared with an average this decade of about 4,500, said Sean White, a fisheries biologist for the Sonoma County Water Agency.

Federal regulators said the reason for the decline is unclear but probably related to ocean conditions.

However, Zeke Grader, executive director of the federation of fishermen's associations, maintained the decline is much sharper on the Sacramento than other rivers. Water diversions for farms and cities "is at least a major cause" of the problems in the river system, he said.

"We've just taken too much water out," Grader said.

Despite the grim outlook for this season, fishermen maintained the declines aren't permanent.

"I fully expect these fish to bounce back," said Chris Lawson, president of the Fisherman's Marketing Association of Bodega Bay. Nonetheless, he said, "I'm concerned with the season we're going to get this year." #

After months of losing fights over how much water can be pumped to farms from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a coalition of farm groups is striking back with a federal lawsuit blaming state agencies for endangering native fish in the Delta.

In a suit filed in Sacramento federal court, the groups ask for a halt to California's practice of maintaining predatory, nonnative striped bass in the Delta for the benefit of fishermen, claiming the policy violates the Endangered Species Act.

The bass feed on spring- and winter-run chinook salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt – all protected by the Endangered Species Act – and their dwindling populations harm the overall health of the estuary, ultimately resulting in reduced water deliveries to farmers, the lawsuit charges.

"Allowing this destruction to continue when the populations of several of these species – including the Delta smelt – are crashing is outrageous," said Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed late Tuesday.

Biologists already are concerned about drastic reductions in the Sacramento River's fall chinook salmon run, saying it is near collapse.

Sport fishermen, however, scoffed Wednesday at the lawsuit's thesis, saying the real threat to the Delta is all the water channeled to farmers through the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.

"We're irrigating desert that never should have been irrigated anyway," said Jim Crenshaw, president of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "The real resolution is to stop sending water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

"Anything they can do to relax the restrictions on pumping they'll do," Crenshaw said of the agriculture interests. "I suspect the judge will see through this foolishness."

Members of the coalition include four large agricultural water districts in Kern County, at the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley. The districts supply State Water Project deliveries to land within their respective boundaries through contracts with the Kern County Water Agency.

The agency has grown over the past 10 years into one of the most powerful and wealthy water players in California.

The coalition's tactics suggest it aims to draw attention from the effects of water exports on the Delta's habitat and fish. Its Web site, for example, offers information about virtually every other problem affecting the Delta except the major pumping systems.

The Delta ecosystem is deteriorating due to a number of factors, including degradation of water quality from urban and agricultural runoff and water withdrawals to support the needs of the state's growing human population.

A federal district judge recently ruled that State Water Project and Central Valley Project water deliveries must be reduced substantially to protect the Delta smelt.

The coalition's suit names as defendants the California Fish and Game Commission and the Department of Fish and Game, along with the agencies' top officials. It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr.

Department spokesman Steve Martarano declined comment Wednesday.

The suit claims one factor in federal regulators' past decisions to cut San Joaquin Valley farmers' water allocations has been the declining Delta populations of the protected fish, and the "illegal and unmitigated" killing of them aggravates the problem.

Matt Nobriga, a staff environmental scientist at the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, said Wednesday very little is known about whether striped bass are a serious threat to any other fish species. Much of the available information, he said, is decades old.

In 2001 and 2003, Nobriga examined about 1,000 striped bass stomachs to find out what they were eating. He learned they were mainly eating lots of shad and goby, both nonnative species. But, he said, more research is needed before drawing any conclusions.

"It should be studied, but all we can do right now is guess," he said.

He said striped bass are definitely a top predator in the estuary, and are themselves preyed upon only by humans and sea lions.

The coalition's suit says the Department of Fish and Game estimates that, at a population of 765,000 adults, striped bass annually consume 6 percent of Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon and 3 percent of the Central Valley spring-run chinook salmon.

It says that, at the same population, the department estimates striped bass annually consume 5.3 percent of Delta smelt.

Despite those facts, the Fish and Game Commission's policy "establishes a long-term bass restoration goal of 3 million adult striped bass in the Delta," the suit says. The policy also "requires the Department of Fish and Game to stabilize and restore the striped bass fishery in the Delta," the suit says.

The suit asks Damrell to enjoin the state from enforcing its strict limits on striped bass sport fishing and policies that tend to protect the bass, and to direct the state "to remedy their violations of the ESA." #

California Farm Bureau – 1/30/08
By Ching Lee, Assistant Editor

Debate on how to fix the ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and California's water supply problems will intensify this year as stakeholders from around the state weigh in on the best approach to protect the delta ecosystem while ensuring reliable water deliveries to the 25 million Californians and 7 million acres of irrigated farmland that depend on delta water.

To help guide the debate is a 70-page report released in December by the governor-appointed, seven-member panel known as the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. This committee developed 12 recommendations and several near-term actions that are intended to serve as a framework for a more detailed plan due in October.

While the report's sweeping proposals attempt to address the needs and concerns of a variety of interests, stakeholders in different parts of the state remain divided over key issues that pit those who receive water directly from the Sacramento River and delta and those that depend on state and federal pumping facilities in the south delta and the state's extensive, man-made water distribution system to the south.

The panel agreed that repairing the estuary's health and maintaining a reliable water supply are equally important. To achieve these goals, it recommends that more water conservation is needed, as well as possible reductions in the amount of water taken out of the delta, or at least changes to when that water is exported.

The report also mentions the need to build new facilities to move and store water, with dual conveyance as a preferred direction. Such a system would pump water both through and around the delta, an approach that state water officials hope would protect endangered fish such as the delta smelt.

In addition, the task force recommends creating a new governing structure that would have complete authority over delta levee standards, ecosystem restoration and water diversions and exports. As proposed, this new entity would have secure funding and the power to impose user fees.

For stakeholders south of the delta, one of the biggest sticking points in the report is the notion that water diversions from the watershed may have to be reduced, particularly when one of the recommendations also calls for investments in a new multi-billion-dollar conveyance system, which south-delta stakeholders support.

"Reducing those exports means you reduce the ability to pay for the kind of infrastructure fixes recommended by the report," said Brent Walthall, assistant general manager of Kern County Water Agency. "It seems contrary to logic that you would fix the delta with a new conveyance facility that is intended to allow you to continue to export enough water to pay for that facility but then reduce the exports."

Other water groups, including State Water Contractors and Westlands Water District, also have been critical of the Delta Vision report, saying it makes premature judgments about how much water a new and improved system can deliver to its users. Both are pushing for new conveyance.

Tom Birmingham, general manager of Westlands Water District, which represents west valley growers who rely almost entirely on delta water, said in a statement that the public will not support paying for a system if they're going to wind up getting less water in the end.

"Not only is there no basis for this 'spend more to get less' assertion, from a political perspective, it would make passage of a bond issue virtually impossible," he said.

However, many stakeholders in and north of the delta are concerned that building a canal around the delta, also known as an isolated conveyance facility, could result in a water grab by the south state. California voters rejected plans for a conceptually similar canal back in 1982 known as a "peripheral canal."

Topper van Loben Sels, a north-delta farmer who vice chairs the Delta Protection Commission and is on the board of directors of the North Delta Conservancy, said he would rather see the hydrology of the existing through-delta facility modified to better protect fish species and improve how water is routed to the pumps.

He is also in favor of building more water storage facilities so that southern users could have access to "new" water from the system. Delta stakeholders fear that a canal that bypasses the delta would allow the south state to take water from the system when there is not an adequate supply, thereby damaging the ecosystem and the delta's water quality.

"We have to create new storage upstream, more groundwater storage and more above-ground storage downstream so we can take the water out of the delta when it doesn't do damage to the ecosystem, when it doesn't do damage to the in-delta agricultural interests," van Loben Sels said.

"Without it, people are going to be faced with the court systems running the water system for the state of California, which is a very sad state of affairs," he added, referring to last year's court ruling in which a federal judge imposed limits on how much water can be pumped south through the delta due to declining fish populations.

As a farmer who also lives and recreates in the north delta, van Loben Sels said it is imperative that the Delta Vision implementation plan include strategies that would protect and enhance water quality, levees, delta recreation, upstream flood control structures and contracted water rights.

For Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors, whose 27 member agencies include a number of irrigation districts and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, that plan must also include new conveyance options for managing the delta.

"This is a key and central component for any comprehensive fix for the state's broken water system," she said. "New conveyance facilities will ensure that we have a reliable water supply for the state and will also help protect the delta's valuable ecosystem."

Whether it's going to be an isolated facility or a continued operation of a through-delta conveyance, Ryan Broddrick, executive director of Northern California Water Association, said he wants to make sure that the operating rules don't rely upon Sacramento water agencies having to alter water diversions in a way that is not integrated with the needs of the Sacramento Valley.

For those in the west delta, maintaining water quality is another huge issue, said Mike Reagan, a Solano County supervisor. Specifically, the concern is about salinity intrusion in the western part of the Suisun Bay, which Reagan said the Delta Vision report did not adequately address.

By not building water storage needed upstream, he said, more freshwater will be exported out of the Suisun Bay, doing potential damage to the ecology, agriculture and communities in the western delta.

Another issue of concern for Reagan is the Delta Vision report's near-term recommendation to acquire development rights in floodplains to prevent urbanization. This could remove thousands of acres of prime farmland out of production, at least seasonally, to be flooded.

While it is important to encourage good land-use decisions, Reagan said the plan doesn't go far enough to mitigate impacts on neighboring farmers who would have water intrusion seepage into their properties or local governments that would experience economic losses due to farmlands being taken out of production or removed from the tax rolls.

But the one Delta Vision recommendation that has raised red flags on all sides of the debate is the idea of creating a new, independent governing body that would have total authority over management of the delta water supply. Some fear that such a "super agency" will usurp land use authority from local governments and diminish the responsibilities of many existing agencies.

"The proposed governance structure is so large and so broad that it will bring into the process many opponents who otherwise would not be in opposition to the report's recommendations," said Walthall.

Reagan characterized the idea of this new governance structure as "a can of worms" that is likely to collide with opposition from local governments.

"From a local government perspective, obviously what we have is some entity arrogating to itself land use authority over lands now managed from local government's hands," he said. "I don't see the League of Cities or the California Association of Counties rolling over for that."

The Blue Ribbon Task Force identified excessive fragmentation, duplication and lack of strong centralized authority as a fundamental obstacle to effective management of the delta. With so many existing interrelated governing bodies that have different constitutional and legislative obligations, however, Broddrick said he's not sure putting another governance structure on the top of that will resolve any conflicts.

"If you're going to establish a different governance structure and consolidate, make sure that they have both the authority and the financial wherewithal to accomplish that authority, and that authority is not dependent upon a process that is so onerous that we spend millions and millions of dollars on process and pennies on implementation," he said.

Linda Fiack, executive director of the Delta Protection Commission, also questioned the need for a new governing structure. She said she would rather see existing entities such as the Delta Protection Commission, which has diverse stakeholder representation, be used and built upon.

"Our perspective is that there are some good existing models that can be looked at without creating something new," said Fiack. "You could look at all those models and determine what's lacking and then enhance the Delta Protection Commission to accomplish a governance structure."

Despite such outstanding concerns about the Delta Vision report, Chris Scheuring, managing counsel for California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division, said it is important to "keep moving forward to address outstanding issues and put actual detail to the concepts."

"Any solution to California's water supply problems must begin, first and foremost, with additional surface water storage. Beyond that, Delta Vision is trying to get to a perfect solution set that protects the environment, improves water supply reliability to users currently dependent upon the delta for conveyance and respects the historical agricultural landscape of the delta," Scheuring said. "A tall order to be sure, but one it seems stubborn optimists and reluctant skeptics alike must shoot for in the next year and beyond." #

San Francisco Chronicle – 1/30/08
By Jane Kay, staff writer

The Central Valley fall run of chinook salmon apparently has collapsed, portending sharp fishing restrictions and rising prices for consumers while providing further evidence that the state's water demands are causing widespread ecological damage.

The bad news for commercial and sport fishermen and the salmon-consuming public surfaced Tuesday when a fisheries-management group warned that the numbers of the bay's biggest wild salmon run had plummeted to near record lows.

In April, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will set restrictions on the salmon season, which typically starts in May. A shortage could drive up the price of West Coast wild salmon. The council's leaders said the news is troubling because normally healthy runs of Central Valley chinook salmon are heavily relied upon by fishermen. Runs on the other river systems historically have been smaller.

"The low returns are particularly distressing since this stock has consistently been the healthy 'workhorse' for salmon fisheries off California and most of Oregon," the council's executive director, Donald McIsaac, said in a statement Tuesday.

At its peak, the fall run has numbered hundreds of thousands of fish, exceeding 800,000 in some years. But this year the preliminary count has put the number at 90,000 adults returning to spawn in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries. During the past decade, the number of returning fish has never fallen below 250,000.

Through the years, the chinook, or king, salmon that pass through San Francisco Bay have suffered from diversions of freshwater to cities and farms, the operation of the water-export pumps that send delta water to other regions, exposure to pollutants and warming ocean conditions.

"We've known that the numbers were going to come in low, but we didn't know they would be this low," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents commercial fishermen.

"This could end up closing us," Grader said. "Part of what we're trying to do is put a fish on the table that people can afford."

A few more than 1,000 commercial fishermen who catch the Central Valley salmon in the ocean from Santa Barbara to southeast Alaska received $40 million in federal relief funds two months ago. The fishermen were given the funds for losses they incurred due to fishing restrictions in 2006 initiated to protect the Klamath and Trinity river runs that were suffering from a lack of fresh river water. In addition, related businesses received $20 million in aid.

Grader, along with representatives of most sport and environmental groups, attribute the salmon decline primarily to Central Valley dams that flood or block spawning grounds and the delta water pumps that move water around the state.

"Twenty years ago, we identified the amount of additional freshwater we needed for healthy fish," he said. A federal law was passed in 1988 to reserve water to help fish, but the water only makes it as far as the delta - not out to the bay, where it would help migrating fish like salmon, he said.

Pollution that drains off farms also hurts the fish, Grader said.

Heidi Rooks, an environmental program manager in the Department of Water Resources, said the salmon's woes probably are linked to the Pacific Ocean.

"Although there are environmental challenges in the Central Valley and the delta, I'm concerned that ocean conditions, including currents and food sources, are influencing our salmon populations as well," she said. "We're working on habitat restoration, but it's not going to address ocean conditions."

Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the federal part of California's water system, said he couldn't comment on the preliminary salmon numbers. He said the federal system is operated based on input from fisheries biologists.

The economic impacts from the loss of salmon also would affect businesses associated with sport fishing, including the boating, hotel and manufacturing industries.

"The last two years have been the worst salmon fishing years in all of California history," said Dick Pool, president and owner of Pro-Troll Fishing Products in Concord, a company that makes salmon-fishing equipment.

"The main reason has been the collapse of the delta. The tiny little smolts aren't making it the 100 miles from the rivers to the bay. As the water exports have increased over the last five years, the food chain has been significantly affected," he said.

According to the American Sportfishing Association, there are 2.4 million recreational anglers in California. The economic value of recreational fishing and related activities reached $4 billion in 2001, according to the association.

The popular chinook salmon is the most recent of the fish that feed in the rivers, delta and the bay to suffer a loss in numbers, said Tina Swanson, senior scientist at the Bay Institute, an environmental group.

Delta smelt, threadfin shad, longfin smelt and striped bass have declined in numbers starting in the early 2000s, she said. "That's the same time that the salmon that returned this year to spawn were going through the delta," she said.

The five highest water-export years have all occurred since 2000, she said.

Today's adult fish were migrating out to the ocean in 2005, the year the delta exports hit a record high, Swanson said.

Salmon are hatched in the rivers and feed in the delta and bay. At three to four months, they move to the ocean, where they feed near shore before they head for the open ocean.

"Dams along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are holding back water, and the flows are usually less than what the salmon need," Swanson said. The low flows of freshwater to the bay can also raise overall water temperatures beyond what is healthy for juvenile salmon, she said. In the delta, the water pumps suck up salmon and other fish.

The pumping system moves the juvenile salmon into large, open areas of the delta, where they are prey for bigger fish.

Scientists studying the decline in fish populations also consider the effect of the ocean environment, although they agree that it is still too early to measure the effects of global warming. They look at the timing of migrations and food availability, said William Sydeman, a biologist with the Farallon Institutes for Advanced Ecosystem Research.

He found that in 2005, 2006 and, to a lesser extent, in 2007, the breeding failures of the Cassin's auklet on the Farallones could be linked to the demise of krill in the marine environment at the time when the birds needed it.

Salmon, too, feed on krill, anchovies and other small aquatic creatures, which are affected in abundance by ocean conditions.

When salmon come through the bay to the ocean, they spend time in the Gulf of the Farallones, the same as the Cassin's auklets, where they need to find sufficient zooplankton and other food.

"The ocean environment has a strong influence on how many survive the initial period at sea and how many come back to spawn three to four years later in the Sacramento River," Sydeman said. #

Associated Press – 1/30/08
By Terence Chea, staff writer

SAN FRANCISCO -- The state's largest salmon run is suffering an "unprecedented collapse," part of a broader decline throughout the West that has scientists vexed and likely will trigger severe fishing restrictions, according to federal fishery regulators.

The number of chinook, or king, salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Sacramento River and its tributaries this past fall dropped 67 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal memo to members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The Central Valley salmon population has fallen by more than 88 percent from its high five years ago, when salmon restoration efforts in the Sacramento watershed were being touted as a wildlife management success story.

However, recent years have seen salmon populations steadily dwindle in the Sacramento and many other western rivers, and scientists are trying to understand why.

Some say they believe it's related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming. Others blame the troubles in California on increased pumping of fresh water from the Delta.

In his e-mail to members of the fishery management council, Executive Director Donald McIsaac offered "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse in the abundance of adult California Central Valley ... fall Chinook salmon stocks."

"The magnitude of the low abundance ... is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned," he said.

About 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second lowest number on record, the memo said. The population was at 277,000 in 2006 and 804,000 five years ago.

It's the second time in 35 years that the Central Valley has not met the agency's conservation goal of 122,000 to 180,000 returning fish, according to the council, which regulates Pacific Coast fisheries.

More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old juvenile chinooks returned to the Central Valley last year, by far the lowest number ever counted. On average, about 40,000 juveniles, or "jacks," return each year.

The low number of juvenile salmon means this year's runs are likely to be even smaller.

Complete statistics on other key salmon runs won't be available for two weeks, but experts said it looks like a bad year for salmon elsewhere in the West.

Ron Boyce, a salmon program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the Rogue River barely hit its goal of 20,000 fall chinook in 2006 and 2007.

Coastal rivers farther north are in even bigger trouble.

Oregon's Coquille River has seen steadily diminishing returns the past three years, and the Siletz River farther north saw 500 fish, less than 20 percent of the goal.

"This is a large-scale phenomenon affecting chinook stocks and other species coastwide," Boyce said. "It appears for those northern Oregon coast streams, we will not be able to make escapement goals even without any fishing on them."

It is difficult to point to a cause, but the fact that both hatchery and wild fish are showing low returns points to the ocean and estuaries, where salmon spend most of their lives, said Curt Melcher, deputy director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Last year there were very unusual conditions in the ocean, Boyce said. Southwesterly winds blew all summer, driving warm waters near shore and disrupting the marine food chain.

Some fishers and environmentalists say they believe the sharp decline in Central Valley chinook is related to increased water exports from the Delta, which supplies drinking water to millions of people in drought-stricken Southern California, as well as irrigation for America's most fertile farming region.

"It's time to reduce pumping of Delta waters before we destroy the fish and wildlife species we appreciate so much in California," said Mike Sherwood, an attorney for Oakland-based Earthjustice.

Salmon that spawn in Central Valley rivers form the backbone of the West Coast's commercial and recreational salmon fishery and are caught by fishers from Southern California to British Columbia.

More than 90 percent of the wild salmon harvested in California originate in the Sacramento River system, officials say.

"Sacramento fish are really what the fishery depends on," said Chuck Tracy, the council's salmon management officer. "When Central Valley fish are low, it gets really hard to catch fish even if you're given the opportunity."

The council plans to meet in Sacramento in March to discuss possible restrictions, including a complete closure of the salmon season that begins in May. Final decisions will be made at its meeting in Seattle in April.

"Even if they have a salmon fishing season, there won't be very much salmon to catch without a strong Central Valley component," said Alan Grover, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game.

Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay fisher who is on a team that advises the fishery council, said he's bracing for hard times.

"It's probably going to be worse than anything we've experienced before," said MacLean, 58, who relies on salmon fishing for as much as 70 percent of his income. "It's going to put a lot of us out of business. I don't know how I am going to be paying my bills through the summer."

Dick Pool, who owns Concord-based fishing gear manufacturer Pro-Troll, said the salmon collapse will be felt in fishing communities all along the coast, noting that a recent study found that recreational anglers spend more than $2 billion annually in California.

"The impact is going to be huge," said Pool, a former board member of the American Sportfishing Association. "It will take its toll on manufacturing, retailers, wholesalers, fishermen and the charter fleet."

The salmon fishing industry is still reeling from severe limits on West Coast salmon fishing in 2006 to protect dwindling populations on the Klamath River in Northern California and Oregon.

After three years of poor returns, the number of returning Klamath chinook in 2007 exceeded minimums set by federal fishery managers. Preliminary counts showed about 50,000 spawners, though low numbers of juvenile fish indicate there may be poor returns of adult salmon this year.

The precipitous decline of Central Valley chinook marks a dramatic reversal for what's traditionally been one of the West Coast's most abundant salmon runs.

After hitting a record low of 83,000 returning adult salmon in 1992, Sacramento River salmon returns rose steadily during the next decade as the state and federal government spent about $1 billion to restore salmon runs throughout the river system. #

Chico Enterprise Record – 1/25/08
By Steve Carson, outdoors columnist

Last week's International Sportsman's Exposition Show in Sacramento hosted a panel discussion titled "The Plight of our Fisheries." A group of six experts discussed their perspective regarding California's dwindling fishing opportunities.

Without a doubt the most compelling speaker was Jim Martin, retired Oregon Chief of Fisheries. Martin pounded his fists and boldly challenged the audience to "raise hell and demand change."

"Where is the outrage?" implored Martin. "Think about your children. The numbers are trending towards zero, and we will feel the deep burning pain of having lost something. The issue of the future is water, and we are losing our fish an inch at a time."

All of Martin's impassioned remarks from the previous week's San Mateo conference can be seen on either YouTube or Google by using the combined search words, "fisherman angry speak out."

Also up was John Beuttler of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. Beuttler proclaimed that, "Our fisheries are in ruin, it's nothing short of a disaster. Primarily due to water exports, at least 90 percent of historic habitat has been lost. How do we find the political will to tell the government to do its job?"

Dan Bacher of Fish Sniffer Publications gave details of the disastrous fish kill at the Delta's Prospect Island in December of 2007. "Several agencies approved the Bureau of Reclamation to do some levee work; they didn't think there would be a kill. The agencies then failed again by prohibiting rescue volunteers from going into the area for 10 days. The volunteers still managed to save 1,831 striped bass and over 10,000 smaller fish."

When her turn came up, California State Assembly member Lois Wolk said, "Fish are the canary in the coal mine, and part of the problem is that nobody is in charge. A steward is needed for the Delta, it's a huge area. I am introducing a bill to classify the Delta as both a water supply and an ecosystem. Make your voices heard, let your politicos know how you feel."

Dan Wolford, Science Director for the politically active Coastside Fishing Club, specifically addressed the coastal closures known as MPAs. "We must find a balance; the general public is aligned with fishermen. From 15 to 40 percent of the coastline will be affected in some way. We need to minimize the socio-economic impacts."

Dick Pool of the grassroots organization "Water4fish" spoke ominously, "If you didn't like salmon fishing this year, then you won't like next year at all." Pool urged the audience and all concerned anglers to go to Water4fish.org and sign the online petition. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 1/16/08
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

After years of disputes and lawsuits, those often at odds over water in the Klamath Basin have come to an agreement -- the dams have to go.

In a historic proposal announced Tuesday, salmon and steelhead would return with the removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Growers still would get irrigation water from the river, which runs from southern Oregon and through Siskiyou County on its way to the Pacific Ocean. The proposed 50-year agreement would cost $96 million per year, according to a coalition of 26 basin stakeholders.

"This agreement only works with the removal of four dams," said Troy Fletcher, a consultant, and former executive director for the Yurok Tribe, which has a reservation near the river's mouth on the north coast.

Removing the dams -- Iron Gate, J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and Copco No. 2 -- would open up an estimated 300 miles of habitat for salmon and steelhead. Stakeholders involved with the agreement include federal and state agencies, environmental organizations, grower groups and fishing interests.

But Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp is working with the federal government toward keeping the dams in the river and producing power, said company spokesman Paul Vogel.

"Kind of makes me question what was settled," he said.

And not all Klamath stakeholders agree there is an agreement.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe, whose reservation flanks the lower stretch of the Klamath River, said it won't endorse the agreement because it doesn't assure water for salmon.

"The terms of this so-called restoration agreement make the right to divert water for irrigation the top priority, trumping salmon water needs and the best available science on the river," said Clifford Marshall, tribal chairman.

The 26 groups who crafted the 256-page agreement after 2½ years of closed-door talks said it could squelch the embers of dispute remaining from the summers of 2001 and 2002.

In 2001, the federal government cut off the usual supply of water to growers in the Klamath Reclamation Project -- which straddles the California-Oregon border -- because of water requirements for fish protected by the Endangered Species Act.

It sparked a water war that drew national media attention. The following summer, the regular supply of water again flowed into the irrigation canals and more than 30,000 salmon died downstream in the Klamath River, which critics blamed on low flows in the river because of the diversion.

Along the river, PacifiCorp has a string of power dams, which produce about 150 megawatts of power, or enough to power about 70,000 homes, that are up for a new federal license. Because of the negotiations involved with the relicensing process, the different groups started a dialog that became the agreement talks, Vogel said.

The company, which is owned by billionaire Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, pulled out of the talks "several months ago" when a pillar of it became the removal of the dams, he said.

Although PacifiCorp wasn't involved with the talks, Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, said he recently called the company's official heading up the relicensing to tell him the agreement was coming

"They certainly should have known we were getting close," he said. #

Stockton Record – 1/15/08

One week after officials reported yet another decline in several Delta fish species, biologists say the number of salmon returning to spawn in the San Joaquin River or its tributaries plummeted last year.

For the entire river basin, 1,158 adult salmon were counted in 2007, compared with 5,672 fish in 2006, according to the environmental consultant FishBio.

Over the past seven years, counts on the Stanislaus River have dropped from 8,498 salmon in 2000 to 405 fish last year.

Experts last fall said they were unsure exactly why the numbers were sagging. Since salmon are migratory, spending at least part of their lives in the ocean, San Francisco Bay, the Delta and upstream rivers, there are many potential causes. #

Stockton Record – 1/11/08
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

A handful of ecologically key Delta fish continue to dwindle, with one species declining to a record low, the state Department of Fish and Game said Thursday.

Data from surveys conducted last fall confirm the decline not only of species such as the Delta smelt, a minnow with little ostensible value, but also striped bass, which is prized by fishermen.

"It's disappointing, but not surprising," Fish and Game supervising biologist Marty Gingras said about the recent figures.

Longfin smelt was the fish of greatest concern, he said. Population estimates for fall 2007 were lower than any other year since the surveys began in 1967.

The Delta smelt's continued decline, meanwhile, bodes poorly for the state's water supply. A federal judge last summer ordered reductions in water exports to millions of Californians to protect that fish, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

This week's numbers represent "one of the most depressing sets of data I've ever seen," said Tina Swanson, a biologist with the conservation group The Bay Institute.

"A lot of people are saying, Why all the fuss about Delta smelt? It's one fish," she said. "These numbers show it's about more than one fish."

In addition to young striped bass and longfin and Delta smelt, American shad and splittail declined in 2007.

The only fish on the upswing was the threadfin shad, which nevertheless is about 20 percent of its population a decade ago.

State water officials are scheduled to hold a hearing on the ongoing fish decline Jan. 22 in Sacramento. Experts have suggested a number of potential reasons, including water exports, poor water quality, toxic runoff and invasive species.

The latest numbers are not merely a call to action, The Bay Institute's Swanson said; they are the Delta's "scream of anguish." #

Modesto Bee – 1/10/08
By Alex Hildebrand, of Manteca, is a farmer and engineer

Prior to the Delta Vision process, the Blue Ribbon Task Force members and the governor apparently decided that a peripheral canal of some sort was necessary to supply water to the state, and that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could be protected better than it is now while operating an isolated conveyance canal.

These assumptions are wrong. The task force did not discover these errors because they ignored the reasons a canal is not necessary for water supply and the reasons the delta would be trashed if Sacramento River water were diverted into a canal before it enters the delta.

This apparent pro-canal bias led to a failure to address either the impacts of a canal or alternatives that would meet Delta Vision's goal of water supply without a canal.

The report does not call for analysis of the increase in salinity in the delta that any isolated export of Sacramento River water would cause, particularly during months and years when flow in the river is low. Fresh water inflow from the San Joaquin and east side rivers already has been largely eliminated by export to the Bay Area and elsewhere. A technical analysis soon will be available that demonstrates this inevitable rise in salinity. Such a rise would be a disaster. It not only would destroy delta agriculture, but would cause the delta to become a salty inland bay.

The report ignores the fact that exporting water through the isolated portion of a "dual- conveyance facility" would increase salinity to higher than acceptable levels in the through-delta portion for either export to others or for use in the delta. A dual-conveyance system is therefore unsustainable.

The report does not make it clear that a canal would have to go through the delta -- not around it -- because of existing development on the east side. It would sever waterways, roads, farm fields, irrigation and drainage systems, and the circulation of channel waters.

It would create blind sloughs where salinity, dissolved oxygen and water hyacinth could not be controlled. It would be a barrier to major flood flows from south and east of the canal and cause increased flooding. It would cost billions of dollars and do nothing to increase the already inadequate statewide developed water supply.

The report does not even mention the plan submitted to the task force by the South and Central Delta water agencies, which incorporates the Delta Corridor Plan. It would separate and protect the San Joaquin fishery from the export system; it would keep in-channel salinity at levels that would preserve delta farms, and it would assist in quick recovery of exports and delta protection in the event of multiple levee failures caused by a major earthquake. It would maximize the water available for export while protecting the delta.

It also would cost less and could be implemented faster.

The task force report also does not mention that the fish species most endangered thrive best in water with low salinity.

Delta farmers are the primary mountaineers of the nonarable levees that preserve the basic pattern of channels and lands that now constitute the delta. The report does not acknowledge that these farmers could not survive an increase in salinity caused by isolated conveyance of export water. It does not propose another means of levee maintenance. It does not discuss the consequences if levees are abandoned.

Overall, the report proposes protection of delta agriculture, and then makes proposals that would destroy agriculture. #

Contra Costa Times – 1/10/08
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

A severe ecological decline in the Delta worsened substantially in 2007 despite major efforts to stop it, including an unprecedented nine-day shutdown of state water deliveries in June.

The results of a key survey, made available Wednesday, offer no hope of relief anytime soon for increasing tension between the Delta environment and state water supplies, worrying biologists that one fish, Delta smelt, could be nearing extinction.

The new numbers also greatly increase the possibility that another fish might disappear from the region. Longfin smelt range from the Delta north to Alaska, but in 2007 their numbers here plunged far below previous record lows.

Striped bass, a popular sportfish, also fell into deeper trouble. The young-of-the-year striped bass numbers dropped sharply last year to their third-lowest level ever. And the December portion of the survey turned up just two fish -- the fewest collected in any single month since the survey began in 1967.

Biologists said that last year's dry weather was not enough to explain the severe declines and noted fresh evidence that pollution and a toxic algae may have struck severe blows.

"It's looking pretty bleak," said Randall Baxter, a senior fisheries biologist at the California Department of Fish and Game. "These are very concerning levels."

The numbers are from a four-month fall survey used to gauge the overall health of the Delta's open-water fisheries. This same annual survey was used in 2005 to show that after decades of gradual decline, the Delta's open-water, or pelagic, species dropped sharply beginning about 2001.

Delta smelt, longfin smelt, young striped bass, threadfin shad and a key food source all were collapsing. The cause of the decline has not been fully explained, but scientists say it is a combination of water supply management, pollution and invasive species, especially a clam infestation that appears to be removing food from the water.

The latest survey showed extremely low numbers for two additional fish species, Sacramento splittail and American shad. The significance of those measures is unclear.

"We need to look at those," said Bruce Herbold, a fisheries biologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

He echoed a growing sense of pessimism about the health of the Delta, the bottom of a watershed that drains about 40 percent of California and is arguably the state's most important source of water.

"It's very grim," he said. "We had a very dry year, which is usually bad for fish, but it was really bad."

The only bright spot in the survey was a slight increase in the threadfin shad population.

The Delta's ecological crisis already has had a major effect on water deliveries into a system that irrigates 2 million acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley and is relied upon by two of every three Californians for at least some of their water.

In June, shortly after state and federal courts ruled separately that pumps near Tracy were being operated in violation of endangered species laws, the Department of Water Resources took the unprecedented step of shutting its pumps down for nine days to protect Delta smelt.

Shortly after Christmas, water deliveries were slowed for the first time under a new court order that sets the conditions under which the pumps can operate. State and federal water agencies say that order could cut water deliveries up to 30 percent in an average water year.

Tina Swanson, a fisheries biologist at the environmental group the Bay Institute, said that the severity of the ecological crisis was made worse because of the reluctance of state and federal water officials to take action before courts got involved.

"It took a federal court to bring that about. What does that say about the management of the agencies that are managing the system?" she asked.

Even if Delta smelt were somehow resuscitated now, water managers have another fish to worry about. Longfin smelt are being considered for protection under endangered species laws by state and federal wildlife agencies, and the latest numbers are certain to bolster the case.

All of the fish caught were in the second year of a two-year life.

Without first-year fish in the estuary, there will be no fish to spawn next year. State biologists, concerned about that possibility, evaluated a separate survey that found young longfin smelt in central San Francisco Bay, far downstream from where they were expected in a dry year.

Baxter said biologists found other oddities in the locations of longfin smelt, Delta smelt and first-year striped bass, with most of the fish found upstream or downstream of Suisun Bay and the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, near Antioch.

"Suisun Bay used to be the breadbasket," Baxter said.

A major bloom of a toxic blue-green algae occurred last year, which could have affected the fish.

"This particular year seems to be particularly dramatic," Baxter said. "It's definitely something we're looking at."

And biologists recorded three instances last year where water was toxic to test organisms in areas where they thought Delta smelt were swimming. That toxicity came from pesticides, Baxter said.

Baxter and other biologists said that even if the severity of the downturn in 2007 was due to toxic algae and pesticides, that does not let water operations off the hook.

"There's a lot of interaction among stressors," said Herbold, adding, "What's killing the fish in dry years is different from what is killing them in wet years."

Baxter said the water operations in general are artificially stabilizing what was a dynamic estuary for the benefit of invasive pests and weeds.

"We're creating kind of a lake system here," he said. #

Sacramento Bee – 1/10/08
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

THE ISSUE The simultaneous drop in several Delta species suggests deeper ecological problems are at work, such as poor water quality or a rupture in the food chain.

Ultimately, experts say, humans could be at risk.

Five Delta fish species continue marching toward extinction, according to new data released Wednesday, a result that some observers warn may signify a major ecological shift in the West Coast's largest estuary.

The data come from an annual fall survey for fish that live in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 740,000- acre estuary that also is the primary diversion point for drinking water enjoyed by 25 million Californians.

For four months each fall since 1967, California Fish and Game officials have used trawl nets in an effort to estimate the Delta's fish population. The product of that survey for 2007, released Wednesday, shows record-low numbers for three species: longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and American shad. Two others, Delta smelt and striped bass, posted near-record lows.

The shad and bass are not native, but are important to the economy as sportfish.

The Delta smelt is listed as threatened under state and federal endangered species laws.

Environmental groups last year submitted formal petitions to list the longfin smelt.

"These species are on the verge of extinction, and they should not be allowed to go extinct," said Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis, professor and one of America's leading fish biologists. "It's an ecological change that is knocking out a precious part of our California heritage."

The Delta fish decline has been unfolding since 2003, and a team of government biologists has been working for three years to understand the collapse. It has yet to find a smoking gun.

But the team identified a combination of factors that may have converged to imperil the fish, including excessive water diversions from the Delta, poor water quality caused by urban and farm runoff, and competition for food from invasive species.

"These are very discouraging numbers," said Marty Gingras, a member of the investigative team and a supervising biologist at the Department of Fish and Game. "We're trying to understand the mechanisms for the variations in fish abundance. If it turns out the actions of man are contributing, we may be able to undo that and improve conditions for the fish."

Environmental and fishing groups have argued for years that the contributing factors are all manmade, and they blame a sluggish government response for the death spiral.

The state and federal governments operate separate canal systems that divert Delta waters to urban and farm consumers from the Bay Area to San Diego. These water exports have reached near-record volumes over the past five years.

The pumping systems are strong enough to reverse natural flows in the Delta, sucking tens of thousands of fish to their deaths each year.

Government agencies in September lost a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups that contested the pumping practices. The resulting court order requires water exports from the estuary to be reduced to protect the Delta smelt.

The first of those cutbacks began Dec. 29. Ultimately, urban water users from the Bay Area to San Diego who depend on Delta water could see their deliveries slashed as much as 30 percent this year. More than 2 million acres of farmland will be affected as well.

But water exports alone aren't to blame. State regulators have been slow to protect water quality in the Delta, and Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, said all Californians share some blame for their wasteful water habits.

He said we will all share in the consequences.

"I've always maintained that a world that is not safe for fish is probably not long safe for little boys and girls," Jennings said. "The tragedy is that what we're seeing could have been avoided with a little common sense and a recognition that there are limits to using these waterways as sewers and bleeding them of their water."

Solutions are in the works. State officials are simultaneously preparing a habitat management plan for the estuary and drafting ways to reconfigure the Delta to protect the environment and secure water deliveries. New operating rules also are being developed for the export pumps.

It remains to be seen, however, if these efforts will come in time. Just in case, officials also are scrambling to breed a refuge population of Delta smelt in case the species goes extinct in the wild. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 1/9/08
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

In an effort to stop the spread of a tiny, invasive snail, anglers are being asked to freeze or dry out their waders after a dip at Lake Shasta.

Last month the lake was discovered to be the latest body of water in California where the hardy New Zealand mud snail lives, said Kyle Orr, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game.

"There is no known way to eradicate them," he said.

So officials are asking for the public's help in preventing them from spreading into new waters.

To do so, anglers should put their waders in a deep freeze, or let them dry out completely, after fishing at Lake Shasta, he said. The small mud snails -- the biggest measures a quarter of an inch -- can survive for weeks in the moist conditions of damp waders.

Boaters should also take time to wash down their hulls after pulling their boats from the water, Orr said. People should check other gear that came in contact with the water, as well as their dogs, for the snails.

First found in the Owens River in Mono County in 2000, the snails have spread -- mostly likely by clinging to people's gear and boats -- to more than 20 other bodies of water in the state, he said.

The mud snails are asexual, meaning they do not need a male or a female to reproduce, so a solitary snail can spring into a robust population.

The mud snails also don't have parasites or predators to keep their numbers in check as they do in their native New Zealand, Orr said, so their population can explode to as many as a million in about 9 square feet of waterway. The snails can survive being eaten by fish because they can pass through their digestive systems alive and unscathed.

The snails are a nuisance because they can cause a drop in the number of bottom-dwelling invertebrates, a food source for native fish, Orr said. This can cause fish numbers to drop as well. #

NPR – 1/9/08
By Tamara Keith

Day to Day, January 8, 2008 · The storms that battered California over the weekend dropped several feet of much-needed snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The runoff from that snow melt this spring will be crucial for water resources in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That's the hub of a complicated water supply system that serves much of California.

But, if climate change predictions come true, the delta's role may change.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is where two major rivers and the San Francisco Bay come together. It used to be a wide-open marsh, where the balance of salt water and fresh water fluctuated with the tides.

Then a century ago, a thousand miles of levees were built, creating dozens of delta islands and draining the marsh.

Now, there's a system of channels and pumps designed to carefully manage all the precious water that moves in and out of the delta.

On Sherman Island, one of the largest islands in the delta, is at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the bay, where the salt water meets fresh water. It is California's water supply.

"It comes down the Sacramento here, turns left and toward San Francisco Bay and is sucked back up to the pumps and is exported to 4 million people in the Bay Area, 3 million acres of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley, and 21 million people in Southern California," says University of California Professor Jeff Mount.

Mount says climate change is conspiring against the fragile balance at work in the delta. In order to serve millions of Californians, the salty water of the San Francisco Bay must be kept away from the pumps that bring fresh water to cities and farms. It requires constant management and enough fresh water at all times to push the salt water back.

Change Drives Salt Inward

"The climate change is driving the salt inward," Mount says. "Where we are sitting now, which is now fresh because of heroic efforts that we're doing to manage water supply, this will inevitable be salty in the future."

Mount heads an independent board of California scientists advising the state. They are projecting the sea level could rise a foot by the year 2050 and 3 feet or more by the end of the century. That means trouble for the levees, rock and dirt mounds that keep the water in its place.

Mount says there are two types of levees: Those that have failed, and those that will fail. On Sherman Island, wind-driven waves lap up against a rocky levee. During a typical storm, with extreme high tides, there's about a foot between those waves and the top of the levee.

"It's a game of inches out here. You're just sort of clinging to the edge here, with very little margin for error.

Regrettably the sea level is rising. So, that's going to go over the tops of the levees much more often in the future," Mount says.

Islands Lose Elevation

And to make matters worse, delta islands lose about an inch of elevation a year, as soil is oxidized and blown away.

That's a problem because, as Mount puts it, nature abhors a vacuum.

"We may be as much as 15 feet below sea level. And just on the other side of this levee is water that is at or above sea level, and it is trying real hard to get in here. And it is just that crummy little levee that is keeping it from getting in here," he says.

Mount and most delta experts agree that the current situation in the delta isn't sustainable. Eventually, that fragile balance of salt and fresh water will shift in favor of salt.

"It's going to do one it of two ways," Mount says. "It's going to do it gradually — sea level rise and changes in inflows — or it's going to do it suddenly through the collapse of the levees."

And if there's a major levee collapse, Mount says, water will rush in so quickly it will suck salty water out of the bay and into the delta in what Mount calls "the big gulp."

"Just the noise of the water rushing into this island, and it's the sound of like a waterfall as this rushes in, and scours this hole in the ground as the water rushes in, and hurling pieces of soil way out onto the island. I mean, the power of these levy breaks is immense, unimaginable, and there's nothing you can do about it," he says.

California's political leaders are now debating alternative plumbing scenarios for the state's water supply. #

Marysville Appeal Democrat – 1/7/08
By Robert Parsons, staff writer

With the congressional passage last month of the so-called "Omnibus Appropriations Bill," Mid-Valley farmers holding water contracts with the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority may finally have hope for relief.

The bill, HR 2764, passed late last month, contains $5.5 million in funding this year for the Fish Passage Improvement Project at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

Tehama-Colusa authority officials say the funding is good news for Mid-Valley farmers as the money assures continued progress towards a permanent solution that protects both a reliable water supply for farmers and endangered Sacramento River fishery resources.

Congress has directed that there be a more fish-friendly alternative than current diversion operations. Part of the proposal is a pumping plant that would better serve farmers drawing water from the canal.

"The funding is instrumental in working toward completion of final feasibility reports, design and engineering, permitting, and commencing the construction phase of the project," said Jeff Sutton, the authority's general manager.

Farmers hope the legislation is a step toward meeting irrigation demands on more than 150,000 acres of agricultural land.

But not everyone was excited about the funding news.

Martin Nichols, Red Bluff city manager, was much more cautious about the additional money.

"I think it's potentially both good and bad," he said. "The potential good news is that (the spending package) includes funding for additional research on the migratory and spawning needs of the endangered green sturgeon."

Nichols said the potential bad news, from his perspective, is that the funding will be used to push the proposed pumping plant project forward.

"Which is a solution we feel is a waste of money that will make fish habitat much worse," he said.

Currently, the dam contains more than 10 iron gates that, when lowered, divert water to farmers in 18 water districts in Colusa, Tehama, Glenn and parts of Yolo counties.

According to the authority, the water supports a variety of crops that contribute more than $1 billion to the regional economy each year.

However, environmental studies have shown that when the gates are lowered they interfere with the migratory and spawning patterns of salmon, steelhead, and the green sturgeon.

Sutton said any further reductions to the four-month irrigation window would be "catastrophic" for communities reliant on canal deliveries. The authority's preferred solution involves the pumping plant, which would lift water directly from the river into the canal headworks. #

Modesto Bee – 1/6/08

The battles over the delta are heating up, and it has nothing to do with climate change. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the heart of California's water world. Through it, flows water to 23 million residents and thousands of acres of ag land in the Southern San Joaquin Valley.

Unfortunately, our watery heart is quite sick. The delta smelt are said to be near extinction. The salmon that once migrated through the delta into the Tuolumne, Merced and Stanislaus rivers are disappearing. Urban encroachment as near as Manteca and Lathrop is adding to the historic loss of wetlands. Exotic species are driving out native ones.

Polluted urban runoff is poisoning fragile ecosystems. Many scientists agree, the delta is on the verge of collapse.

There are conflicting explanations for every crisis, but there are few solutions. While everyone wants to fix the delta, no one wants to admit they are part of the problem. Judges have stepped in, ordering reductions in pumping from the delta this year.

Last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed a Blue Ribbon Task Force to investigate what bedevils the delta and to suggest how to remedy its ills. Headed by former legislator Phil Isenberg, the panel included former Livingston resident Sunne Wright McPeak.

The task force released its report in early December, outlining 12 recommendations or goals. The most important was making the restoration of the delta's ecology "co-equal" in importance to providing reliable water supplies.

That would reverse decades of treating the delta like a plumbing fixture or a real estate venture.

The task force notes that revitalizing the delta "will require reduced diversions, or changes in patterns and timing of those diversions ... at critical times." The task force also said that two things were essential tools for fixing the delta: more water storage and a more reliable "conveyance facility" for moving water out of the delta.

Now you can see why the water is getting warmer. Farmers can't tolerate talk of reduced pumping while environmentalists deplore the idea of new dams. And those who live around the delta abhor even the hint of a canal.

The problem is that these solutions must work together, or they won't work at all.

Too many rely on delta water to just stop pumping. Yet, most agree that too much pumping is killing the delta and its fish. To reduce pumping, another way of moving the water to those who depend on it is needed. A "conveyance facility" (i.e., peripheral canal) would carry part of the Sacramento River's flow around the delta and directly to the pumps. But that would diminish the flow of water through the delta, which could be just as harmful.

That's where additional storage comes in. During critical times, releases from dams would keep water flowing through the delta. Dams also could generate electricity and provide water for other uses.

The task force won't offer specific solutions until June, but already opposition is mounting. Water agencies don't like the thought of any reduction in flow. And environmentalists who decry the effects of climate change elsewhere appear content to ignore them closer to home. Unfortunately, many environmentalists prefer to believe that dams are built only to enrich a few farmers, so they are lobbying against bonds to build surface storage.

This fails to recognize that as California warms, its Sierra snowfields will diminish and their water will be released into the rivers more quickly. Unless more of that water can be captured and held for later use, there won't be enough to save the delta.

While some environmentalists hate dams, they can tolerate a canal. Those who live in the delta region are blasé about dams, but abhor the thought of a canal. Early this week, The Record in Stockton reported that Dean Cortopassi, owner of Modesto's Stanislaus Foods, gave $250,000 to Californians for Clean, Safe Drinking Water. The political action committee includes state Sen. Mike Machado of Linden and is controlled by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.

The task force is in the middle of all this, yet it has provided an excellent starting point for discussion when it proposes solutions in June. It emphasized the equal goals of protecting the delta while assuring sufficient water for the state.

Schwarzenegger must make certain that the recommendations of his task force -- all of them -- are given a fair hearing. If the Delta Vision report ends up collecting dust, or getting picked apart, it will mean business as usual in the water world. And the delta will remain in peril. #