Eureka Times-Standard – 6/28/05
By John Driscoll, staff writer

The federal government is spending $618,000 to buy Trinity River water as an insurance policy against a fish kill on the Klamath River.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation expects to sign an agreement soon with a slate of contractors it identified as the Sacramento River Exchange Group. It would buy 20,000 acre feet -- 6.5 billion gallons -- for about $30 an acre foot.

"We've isolated a hunk of water and we've got a handshake," said bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken.

A subcommittee of the Trinity Management Council will meet this week to determine what would trigger the release this fall. The size of the salmon run, the flows in the lower river, and the incidence of disease will all be considered.

In 2002, up to 68,000 adult chinook salmon died of stress-related diseases in the lower river. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found low, warm water during a relatively large run was at the heart of the devastating fish kill.

This year on the Klamath is considered a below-average year, and there is concern that low flows scheduled in August and September could endanger the salmon again.

The Trinity water can't be carried over until next year if it isn't needed, McCracken said, creating a use-it-or-lose-it situation. If it isn't used, the bureau would try to sell it to irrigators in the Central Valley Project, but probably at a loss, he said.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has repeatedly rejected requests to allow water promised to Humboldt County to be used for the same purpose. The county was pledged 50,000 acre feet before the Trinity River's dams and diversion were constructed.

"Given the fact that Humboldt County is willing to donate its water it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to pay $600,000 for something the bureau could get for free," said Tom Stokely, a senior planner for neighboring Trinity County.

The bureau has also spent millions in recent years -- $7 million this year -- on a program to buy water from farmers in the Upper Klamath Basin and send it downstream during the spring for young salmon. Prior to 2002, as many as 200,000 juvenile salmon died of diseases in the river. This year, 100,000 acre feet is being sent down the Klamath as part of the water bank. #

Redding Record-Searchlight – 6/18/05
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

If the competition for a recent state grant is any indication, restoring north Redding's Sulphur Creek must be a high priority, indeed.

The Sacramento Watersheds Action Group (SWAG) and Redding recently beat out dozens of other applicants, earning $300,000 to carry on a nearly decadelong project resurrecting the historically abused creek.

The money, dished out by the state Department of Water Resources, comes from a larger $4.6 million pie sliced up for worthy projects throughout the state. The grants were made available through Prop. 40, the 2002 voter-approved initiative that allocated billions for clean water, air, parks and coastal-protection projects.

Ninety communities requested a chunk of the $4.6 million, but only 17 got it -- including Redding.

"We ranked really well," said SWAG Director John McCullah. His group formed in 1996 and has focused its labors on Sulphur Creek.

What's more, McCullah said, this grant is a little heftier than some of the others SWAG has snagged over the years.

"This is a good one," he said.

Sulphur Creek drains a nearly 3,000-acre watershed, dumping into the Sacramento River at Turtle Bay. Parts of the creek, thoroughly dredged in mining days, were blocked with large boulders and cobbles. The construction of North Market Street and the Casa Blanca Motel -- now torn down -- also disrupted the channel from its original flow.

Previous grants allowed SWAG to tackle two major phases of stream improvements. Bolstered by the latest grant, workers will begin a third phase, focusing on the area between the former motel site and the Union Pacific tracks farther upstream.

Tasks will include widening the creek, stabilizing its banks and improving fish passage and habitat. The city might also upgrade a deteriorating access road and sewer line that runs through the area.

Terry Hanson, Redding's community projects manager, said the city would seek a resolution from the City Council to go forward as a coapplicant for the latest grant. The city owns about 30 acres of land along the creek just below the railroad crossing -- a potential area for new trails.

"It's quite an achievement to be selected," Hanson said Friday. "It's an important component of our open space program."

Future work on Sulphur Creek might include improvements allowing fish to pass upstream from the Union Pacific tracks.

One other north state group also obtained a Water Resources grant. Yreka and the Yreka Greenway Committee earned $300,000 to acquire land in the flood plain of Yreka Creek and develop a restoration plan for that waterway. #

Eureka Times-Standard – 6/14/05
By John Driscoll, staff writer
Conservancy to weigh Klamath sediment study

Hydropower dams on the Klamath River have been holding back much of the upper river's share of sediment since 1918, when Copco Dam was built.

Some 15.2 million cubic yards of sediment -- almost enough to build a foot bridge 1 cubic yard thick from San Francisco to Tokyo -- sit behind the six dams. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering relicensing the dams owned by Pacificorp, and a parallel settlement process aims to hash out an agreement.

Many in that process, including tribes, fishing interests and downstream communities, want the dams removed, since they block salmon and other fish from about 300 miles of spawning grounds. For the tribe and others who rely on salmon -- which once numbered between 650,000 to 1 million in the Klamath -- the stakes are high.

Removing some dams would send huge amounts of sediment downstream. But while the amount behind the dams is known, its exact size and composition is not.

Now the California Coastal Conservancy may authorize $350,000 to study whether the sediment is mostly silty, sandy or rocky, and whether pollutants like PCBs are mixed into it. A huge slug of silt could smother spawning beds, while large amounts of pollutants could contribute to the river's already poor water quality.

"It's great to dream about dam decommissioning, but what does that really mean?" said Michael Bowen, a coastal conservancy project manager. "Would you be able to release it, or would you have to truck it out? Is it clean?"

The need for the information is urgent. An understanding of the quality of the sediment behind the dams will likely factor into settlement talks, and a draft environmental impact statement is due on the relicensing alternatives in June of 2006.

Yurok Tribe senior fisheries biologist Dave Hillemeier called the type of study being proposed essential to understand what it will take to decommission the dams.

"When you take out dams there's going to be some ramifications downstream," Hillemeier said. "I see these studies as a step in the process of taking out the dams to improve fish and water quality."

The State Water Resources Control Board has identified the information that would be gleaned by the study as the most significant gap in understanding dam removal on the Klamath. Pacificorp can't get its license renewed -- it expires in March -- without a water quality certification from the board.

Bowen hopes to have the drilling and coring of sediments behind the dams completed this summer. The conservancy is expected to approve the item, and the National Marine Fisheries Service would make a $50,000 in-kind contribution.

The conservancy meeting is Thursday at 10 a.m. in Oakland at the Trudeau Training Center.

The board will also consider:

* Authorizing $433,000 to the Mattole Restoration Council for watershed improvement work in the Mattole River.

* Allotting $270,000 to Trinity County to prepare new fish passage projects for the Five Counties Salmon Restoration Program. #

Redding Record-Searchlight – 6/10/05
By Alex Breitler, staff writer

Californians would be wise to wring some use from every drop of water, stretching supplies to meet an expected population surge in the next 25 years.

That's the message in a state Department of Water Resources report that will be the subject of a public workshop in Redding on Monday.

The voluminous California Water Plan Update was released earlier this spring. The report follows similar documents that have been issued dating back to 1957.

Water needs have changed since those days, officials said. The idea now is to develop a road map for meeting water demands in 2030, when the population in the Sacramento River watershed alone is expected to have jumped to about 4.5 million people -- up from 2.5 million in 2000.

The report is a collaborative effort involving a 65-member advisory committee and 2,000 citizens, said water resources Director Lester Snow. It includes "the very best" ideas for meeting water challenges, he said.

Water conservation, water quality protection, desalination, infrastructure improvements and even cloud seeding are among the tools mentioned in the document.

"A big challenge now and for the future is to make sure water is in the right places at the right times," it reads. "... As competition grows among water users, water management during dry years will become more complex and, at times, contentious."

A series of workshops around the state will be conducted to gather public comments. Redding's workshop is planned for 1 to 5 p.m. Monday afternoon at the Veterans Memorial Hall on Yuba Street.

The report's many suggestions include:
- Increasing the amount of municipal water that is recycled.
- Promoting environmentally and economically sound water transfers that will help prevent any one region from running dry.
- Protecting surface water and aquifers from contamination.
- Rehabilitating drinking water and sewage treatment facilities.
- Improving flood management by bolstering degraded levies and other protections.

The recommendations are directed at decision-makers throughout the state.

Contra Costa Times – 6/9/05
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

SACRAMENTO - The organization responsible for maintaining a 10-year cease-fire in California's water wars detailed plans Wednesday to emerge from what appears to be the worst crisis in its history.

The California Bay-Delta Authority said it would hire an auditor to produce a report within six months to answer questions about how it spent more than $3 billion, including more than $1 billion in state bonds. The review will attempt to answer what taxpayers got for that money.

It also said it would embark on a major reorganization of a science program that was caught flat-footed following a discovery this year that the Delta's open-water ecosystem appears to be collapsing.

Meanwhile, the legal cease-fire that has held more or less since the early 1990s is showing signs of cracking.

"We haven't been litigating much lately, but we're beginning to go back down that path," said Gary Bobker, program director for the Bay Institute and a member of the key CalFed advisory panel. "We can't rely on the vagaries of this process."

Launched as the most extensive ecosystem restoration project and the most ambitious water management program in the world, CalFed today is faced with severe problems.

The bond funds it has relied on extensively over the past five years will be exhausted soon. First up to run out, possibly next year, is money used to maintain the Delta's levees. Meanwhile, the program has failed to impose fees or otherwise secure financing beyond the immediate future.

In response, angry legislators cut the program's budget in half and eliminated money for a new water intake pump to improve drinking water quality in the Contra Costa Water District.

"We are at a point at which we need desperately to put a solid foundation under this," said Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis. "The bond monies will run out very quickly, and it's time to take stock of what we need to do."

The Schwarzenegger administration said it would seek to get those cuts restored before the budget is finalized, but CalFed has already agreed to conduct an audit, reorganize and come up with a new finance plan.

Complicating the financial crisis, biologists realized this year that the fish and zooplankton species of the open-water Delta are collapsing. And no one knows why.

Even with aggressive research, scientists do not expect to figure out what is going on in the Delta this year.

The twin crises are bringing environmentalists and water agencies -- traditional adversaries -- to agree that a comprehensive plan for the health of the Delta is needed.

"There is a rapidly emerging consensus that we need a framework for the Delta," said Steve Hall, director of the Association of California Water Agencies. "We can't just keep putting Band-Aids on it. We need to find a way to ask scientists the right questions."

The lack of information about the Delta fish crash added greatly to concerns that CalFed, in an effort to keep scientists isolated from political pressure, has awarded tens of millions of dollars in grants for scientific research without focusing that research in priority areas.

"That was one of the most fundamental mistakes we made in CalFed," said Tim Quinn, a vice president of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. "It's got to help us solve inherently political problems."

The organization's lead scientist, Johnnie Moore, released a major reorganization plan Wednesday that would, among other things, replace the method used to award money for scientific research.

Rather than select from the best proposals submitted by scientists, CalFed instead should direct where research should be focused in order to better understand how the state's water operations affect the environment and how to improve management of water and ecosystems.

Moore said the program has fallen short of expectations and failed to consistently meet three basic goals: to do science correctly, to focus research on the right areas and to ensure its research supports good policies and management decisions.

"It is time to ask hard questions about the viability of the program and, more importantly, plot a course that will assure the viability of the scientific process within the CalFed program as a whole," Moore wrote in his recommendation.

Moore, who recently resigned after less than a year on the job for "personal and professional" reasons, agreed to help with the reorganization during the coming months.

COLFAX - On a 2,500-foot ridgetop in his private forest, Allen Edwards closes a fence gate and looks west, down into a wide valley of evergreens sprinkled with housetops.

It's true what he said earlier over a deli-style sandwich at his kitchen table: "The edge is here. I'm dealing with it."

Sixty years after Edwards' father bought 520 acres of oak, fir and pine forest an hour east of Sacramento, the son struggles to dream up enough new ideas - raising goats, selling vegetables, cutting firewood - to keep it from being overrun by homes.

Far from the state's population centers, 30,000 acres of private forests and woodlands are swallowed by development each year - an environmental change so profound that it has brought together the forest industry and environmentalists to sound an alarm and to push for changes.

"You could liquidate it for $10,000 an acre," Edwards says of his hilly forestland.

That would make millionaires of his family: wife Nancy, son Collin, 16, and daughter Sarah, 14.

"Or you make $150 an acre if you're just looking at timber," says Edwards, a retired state economist and the Colfax area's last working tree farmer. "I have all the economics to realize what a dismal investment it is, but it's a great place to work."

That business equation is leading experts to predict that California will lose at least 1 million acres of private forest and woodlands - 8 percent of its 12.2 million-acre total - to development by 2040.

Timber country is increasingly fulfilling the desires of 36 million Californians to get away from it all.

Next door to Edwards' land, real estate agent Lynn Tausch is touting a 597-acre former working forest as a prime site for three estate-sized lots. "If you want privacy, this would be it," she says.

Tausch, owner of Sierra Junction Real Estate, says inquiries largely come from Sacramento and Bay Area residents.

An earlier generation of forest homes sprang up in Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino County and in regional developments such as Sly Park in El Dorado County and Lake of the Pines in Nevada County. Today, forests and lakefronts pull would-be homeowners to Placer, El Dorado and Nevada counties, as well as to Shasta, Humboldt and Mendocino. As housing prices continue to rise, Californians are willing to pay more for home sites than the land is worth in timber.

"The Sierra foothills is the sprawl capital of California now," says Bill Stewart, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Private forest owners say they are tempted to sell to developers or to split properties into estate-sized parcels because log prices have dropped 38 percent in the past decade to an average $292 per thousand board feet, and the state has the nation's toughest wood-cutting regulations.

The value of California's wood harvests has fallen from $1.1 billion in 1994 to $500 million last year, due to lower prices and a drop in tree cutting.

Some forest advocacy groups acknowledge that timber-cutting rules meant to protect forests, rivers and water are at least one factor conspiring to bring development and its pollution threats from lawn chemicals, fertilizers, septic tanks and oil leaks.

"We cannot lose track of why we have regulations," said Paul Mason, forestry representative for Sierra Club California. "Even with the regulations we have, we've still driven salmon nearly to the brink of extinction largely due to timber harvesting."

More people moving into forests results in declining populations of native birds and animals, new pests and tree diseases, more air pollution and watershed erosion, according to a CDF assessment of the state's forests.

"If a shift from second growth to second homes becomes the only financially feasible course of land use," says California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman, "we must recognize that California will experience undesirable environmental effects."

Two years ago Cecil Wetsel sold his 17,500-acre forest in El Dorado Hills to Sierra Pacific Industries. At its height, Wetsel-Oviatt Lumber Co. produced enough timber to build 2,000 homes a year.

Wetsel, who believes it is inevitable that some of his former acreage will be sold for home sites, says his workers' compensation costs had doubled to $1.6 million annually, fewer trees came to his sawmill, and he tired of the rising costs of state approvals for his timber harvest plans.

What once cost $15,000 for a three-year plan on 1,500 acres rose to $60,000 as Wetsel's consultants maneuvered it through a multitude of state departments headed by CDF and including Fish and Game, Water Resources, and Parks and Recreation.

"I did not see any relief coming as time went on, and we sold out," Wetsel says.

The harvest plans tell foresters where and where not to cut timber to keep hillsides from eroding, streams from being dirtied, birds' nests from being disturbed and downstream fish from being harmed by higher water temperatures.

Edwards says his plans must take into account the views of eastbound drivers on Interstate 80. Some counties, including Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Marin, have their own stricter rules.

About 5.4 million acres of private forestland are in a state-designated Timberland Production Zone, in which an owner agrees not to sell for development for 10 years in exchange for property taxes based on timber value rather than residential value.

But counties can allow large-lot parcel splits within these zones, as long as the parcels remain a working forest. Some allow one home per 160 acres, while others allow one home per 40 acres.

Counties also vary in how many home lots are allowed on forestland that is not in such zones. Rural residential zoning could allow anywhere from one home per acre to one home per 40 acres, says Steve Frisch, director of natural resources for the Truckee-based Sierra Business Council.

Concern over development of the state's private forests and woodlands brought together more than 250 forest industry representatives, environmentalists, academics and government officials two weeks ago in Sacramento to discuss how to slow encroachment.

Among the ideas: streamline regulations without reducing environmental protection; promote "California Grown" wood as a brand; or spend more money on conservation easements that restrict logging while keeping forests free of development.

The Santa Rosa-based Pacific Forest Trust recently negotiated such a deal in Shasta County. Forest Systems, a timber investment group for institutional investors, will be paid to keep 9,146 acres in forest in perpetuity. The trust is now seeking public and private money to fund the deal, whose monetary details are still being negotiated, says trust president Laurie Wayburn.

Panelists also promoted steering more growth to smaller lots in existing foothills towns and paying forest owners for their trees' ability to soak up carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

"I think the good news is: What has been an extremely polarized set of battles over the last several decades between timber interests and environmental interests are perhaps subsiding a bit," says Tom Graff, California regional director for New York-based Environmental Defense.

But mutual cooperation between the two old adversaries is largely a scenario yet to be written. Examples of joint projects and campaigns are rare, and the conference goal was mainly to "launch a public discussion."

Far from the conference circuit, Colfax realty agent Tausch says she'd rather see limited development of large lots rather than see forests cleared for housing tracts. "You can't stop the pressure, so there needs to be a compromise," she says.

On his neighboring property, Edwards contemplates his 1.5 percent annual return from growing and cutting trees. He eyes his lowland garden as a place to grow vegetables to sell at farmers markets. On the high ground, his goats fatten themselves on the green bounty of heavy spring rains. With his chain saw he can cut 30 cords of firewood this year. And soon he plans to cut 500,000 to 1 million board feet of lumber.

Edwards' son, Collin, works the forest with him and wants to be the third generation to own these trees.

"I don't want to run away from it," Allen Edwards says. "I feel some responsibility to change the formula. So I'm looking real hard to figure out: What do you do with this land?" #

WASHINGTON - Salmon fishermen from Northern California and Oregon are facing steep cuts in their harvest this summer, a result they blame on warm water and low flows in the Klamath River in 2002 that killed off a sizable number of young fish that should be returning to spawn this year.

Fishery advocates said the cuts, up to half of last year's commercial ocean season harvest in some areas, are especially damaging this summer because fall chinook returning on the Sacramento River to spawn are forecast to hit record numbers.

Because salmon stocks mingle in the ocean as they head back to their native rivers to spawn, harvest restrictions to preserve the few returning Klamath River fish mean that huge numbers of Sacramento River returns - perhaps a million or more - will go unfished.

The restrictions, which vary by coastal location, will slice the number of days open to commercial fishermen by up to half.

"There's going to be fish washing up on the banks of the Sacramento River system that are basically going unused," said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff officer in Portland, Ore., for the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets West Coast fishing seasons.

Exactly how bad it will be is unclear, but some estimates put the damage at $100 million or more. It's not just the value of the fish, but processing and service-industry jobs as well. Millions of dollars more will be lost in the sport fishing and tourism industries, fishery managers say.

The developing situation has extensive and bitter political undercurrents.

The Klamath chinook collapse four years ago occurred at a time when, faced with a drought, federal water managers had to balance Klamath River water distributions between protected fish and angry Klamath basin farmers.

Now the Bush administration, through the Commerce Department and its fisheries arm, has to decide whether the consequence of providing more water for farmers created an economic disaster for fishermen. If they find that it did, the Republican-controlled Congress will have to decide how much federal taxpayers will pay to compensate for those policies.

Stirred into this boiling political cauldron is the federal Endangered Species Act, which is a key part of the mix in determining water flows to protect endangered fish on both the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.

Federal efforts to improve flow and wildlife habitat along the Sacramento have resulted in improved fish returns. This year, three times as many chinook are expected in the river system than 20 years ago. A staggering 1.68 million salmon are expected when, according to federal fishery biologists, only 180,000 or so are needed to spawn an average 2009 run.

By contrast, the return of spawning 4-year-old chinook on the Klamath will be the worst in 20 years, and roughly a third of what returned last year.

Federal fisheries managers anticipate a Klamath run of 48,000, which is just 13,000 more than needed to spawn an average 2009 run.

"The Sacramento River run has been an Endangered Species Act success story," said Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "The Klamath River is an ESA disaster."

In 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation angered Klamath Basin farmers by turning off irrigation supplies to save fish. By the next spring, the agency reversed course under pressure from Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration, and river flows dropped to preserve water for irrigators.

This was the very period that little fish that should be this year's chinook harvest were getting their start. Spawned by returning 2001 adults, the juvenile fish encountered low flows and warm water on their way out to sea in early 2002, and most didn't make it.

Later that fall, more than 30,000 returning adult chinook also turned up diseased and dead in lower reaches of the river.

The Federation of Fishermen's Associations, one of the harshest critics of the Bush administration over Klamath policy, jumped on the forecast of weak 2005 returns last year, and in a letter to President Bush last July asked for preparations for economic disaster relief.

"The low flows causing the fish kill were the direct result of actions taken by the Klamath Irrigation Project, operated by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation, which diverted water from the river that year that was needed for fish survival," wrote W.F. "Zeke" Grader Jr., the association's executive director.

That letter triggered an economic disaster study under way by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries arm. The study is required for the administration to issue an economic fisheries disaster determination, a precursor to a congressional relief package.

Eric Chavez, a sustainable fisheries specialist for the agency in California who is doing the report, said part of the calculus will be the foregone fishing opportunities on the huge Sacramento run.

"Part of the fishermen's frustration is knowing that all those salmon will be out there but can't be fished because of the need to protect the Klamath numbers," he said.

He said the study is precedent-setting in that never before has the agency been called upon to make a determination so early in the process. The salmon season, which runs through the fall, only recently opened.

When asked if a disaster declaration can be made before a season ends, Chavez said: "That's a good question. This has never been done before."

Democratic lawmakers from California and Oregon already are pounding on the administration's door over the situation.

In a letter May 12 to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, all 37 Democrats from the two states demanded completion of the economic disaster finding by June 1, in time for Congress to include disaster relief in spending bills for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said his office contacted Republicans from both states urging them to join in on the letter but all declined. #

News Release, Association of Water Agencies (ACWA) – 5/18/05
Contacts: David L. Reynolds, 202-434-4760, Jennifer Persike, 916-441-4545 or 916-296-3981 (cell)

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 2005--The House Appropriations Committee today approved $35 million in direct spending for the CALFED Bay-Delta Program in fiscal year 2006, nearly four times the amount spent last year. California water agencies are applauding the funding as key to keeping important projects for environmental, water supply, flood control and water quality moving forward.

The funding is divided into the following programs:

-- $12.7 million for storage program feasibility studies; to include:

-- $4 million for the San Joaquin River Basin,

-- $3.2 million for Los Vaqueros,

-- $4 million for Shasta enlargement, and

-- $1.5 million for Sites Reservoir.

-- $5 million for the Environmental Water Account;

-- $6.3 million for conveyance; to include:

-- $3 million to the San Luis Reservoir Low Point Project,

-- $1 million to Frank's Tract, and

-- $2.3 million for Administration requests.

-- $500,000 for planning and management;

-- $6.5 million for water use efficiency, to include:

-- $2.3 million for the Westside Regional Drainage Program,

-- $200,000 to the Butte County Groundwater Model,

-- $1 million to the Inland Empire Utilities Agency Regional Water Recycling Project, and

-- $3 million for Administration requests.

-- $1 million for ecosystem restoration in the Sacramento River Small Diversion Fish Screen Program; and

-- $3 million for water quality; to include:

-- $2 million goes to the Contra Costa Water District Alternative Intake Project, and

-- $1 million to the South Delta Temporary Barriers Project.

"We're very pleased that the administration and the Congress are committing to the CALFED Program -- we believe it is money well spent," said Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). "The direction provided in this appropriations bill will enable important real-world projects to continue."

State and federal agencies are poised to complete studies of new water storage, and implement a suite of specific actions that will improve the effectiveness of ecosystem restoration work, and stabilize water supplies from the Delta. More reliable water deliveries, healthier fish populations, safer levees in the Delta and other improvements will result from the actions.

"We congratulate Chairman Lewis and Vice-Chairman Doolittle for helping move CALFED's actions forward," said Hall.

This important appropriation was made possible by bipartisan legislation passed last year to renew federal participation and to advance program implementation. Sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Representatives Richard Pombo, Ken Calvert and Grace Napolitano, HR 2828 was signed by President Bush in October 2004.

ACWA is a statewide association whose 440 public agency members are responsible for about 90% of the water delivered in California. For more information, contact ACWA at 916-441-4545 or visit www.acwa.com. #

Chico Enterprise-Record – 5/18/05
RED BLUFF - The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority is voluntarily delaying the diversion of water from the Sacramento River to enhance conditions for migrating fish.

Canal officials chose to maximize fish passage until water user demands increase over the next several weeks.

"In light of the extraordinary weather and water supply conditions this year, we have a unique opportunity for the local farmers and ranchers to demonstrate their commitment to enhance the fisheries in the Sacramento River by utilizing a flexible management approach to meet our water needs," authority chairman Ken LaGrande said.

The authority supplies water to more than 130,000 acres of farmland in Tehama, Glenn, Colusa, and Yolo counties.

A federal biological opinion under the Endangered Species Act limits the authority to diverting water at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the Sacramento River for four months each year, starting on May 15.

This year, the authority is willing to accept the risk to the farmers and ranchers by further delaying its water diversions to later in the spring.

"Our directors felt strongly that the environmental benefits associated with the delay will more than compensate for the risks," said authority General Manager David Bird. #

Redding Record-Searchlight – 5/18/05
By Kimberly Bolander, staff writer

DUNSMUIR -- The voices of those living above Shasta Dam have been drowned out in the argument over whether to raise the dam and provide an extra 636,000 acre-feet of water for thirsty California, a watershed stewardship group says.

Friday is their chance to be heard.

A public roundtable discussion from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Dunsmuir Community Center will feature a speaker from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, as well as opposing views from American Indians and a river conservation group.

The Dunsmuir-based Upper Sacramento River Exchange will host the informal discussion.

The public is encouraged to attend, ask questions and give input, Executive Director Vince Cloward said Tuesday.

"The viewpoint from above the dam is often overlooked, and yet, this (proposal) affects us the greatest," Cloward said.

The bureau is researching the impact of raising Shasta Dam 6 feet. That would raise the level of the reservoir 18 feet and provide up to 636,000 acre-feet of additional water storage. A proposal to raise the dam 200 feet, more than doubling the dam's volume, has been tabled.

But raising Shasta Dam's walls would also back up the rivers flowing into its reservoir, Lake Shasta.

The extra water would inundate sacred tribal sites, as well as marina properties and cabins, said Mark Franco, headman for the Winnemem Wintu tribe. Bureau representatives haven't told property owners about that, Franco said.

"They don't tell the whole story," he said.

Friday's panel will include Franco, Friends of the River representative Steve Evans, and Donna Garcia, the project manager for the bureau's Shasta Lake Water Resources Investigation.

Garcia said she hopes to update the public on the status of the study, its purpose and timeline. A draft of an integrated feasibility report and the bureau's recommendations on how to proceed is scheduled for completion in winter 2007.

Although public meetings have already been held in the north state, a formal scoping process won't begin until this fall, when landowners will receive notice about how the proposal would affect their properties around Lake Shasta, Garcia said.

"In general, the public is probably aware of it, but specific landowners, not all of them may be aware," she said.

Garcia may also address allegations that the bureau has signed water contracts that opponents claim could only be honored if Shasta and other dams are raised -- obligating the government to push those projects.

Those claims are incorrect, Garcia said.

"It's all based on how much water is available," she said, adding that in the most recent round of contract renewals, the amount of water to be supplied decreased.

"Even if the population increases, that's not going to affect the contract amounts," she said.

Evans, from the Sacramento-based environmental group Friends of the River, said raising Shasta Dam is unnecessary. Water conservation is working in California and a larger dam would further hamper salmon and other fish habitats, he said.

"Raising the dam even 6.5 feet will come at a high cost and will provide relatively little reliable water," he said.

Others say a deeper dam's colder waters could be healthier for salmon populations. #

LEWISTON, Calif. — A series of short siren blasts signaled a climactic moment in a decades-long battle over the Trinity River, which, like so many rivers in California, has lost much of its water, its fish and its freedom.

As a gate lifted on the small concrete Lewiston Dam, about an hour's winding drive west of Redding, water spilled down an apron into the Trinity. Federal dam managers, who have spent the last 40 years sucking water from the river and sending most of its flow to the farm fields of the Central Valley, were letting the Trinity go.

The river ran frothy and aqua-green, knocking down willow trees along its banks, muscling over its sandy shoulders and roaring under bridges. It was fast. It was rambunctious. For four days, it was its old self.

The water release, which tapered over the weekend, is key to one of the most ambitious river restoration efforts in the West, intended to revive the Trinity's long-suffering salmon and steelhead runs.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the West's preeminent dam master, has increased flows on other rivers to protect endangered fish. But the agency says that it has never given back so much water to a single river for environmental restoration anywhere in the country.

"This is exciting. A lot of people have been working for this for a long time," Rod Wittler, senior scientist with the Trinity River Restoration Program, said as he watched the dam gate inch open. "I think of all the rivers in California, the plan for restoring this one can work. There's a real chance of success here."

The restoration, ordered by then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 2000 but stalled by lawsuits until this year, allows about half the Trinity's volume to stay in the 130-mile-long river, which cuts through the Trinity Alps before veering west and joining the Klamath River on its way to the Pacific.

Up until now, 75% of the Trinity's water — and at times as much as 90% — has been piped through a mountain tunnel to the Sacramento River, which carries it south to the Delta and a federal aqueduct that feeds the Central Valley.

Babbitt's was the most sweeping order of several issued in the last 25 years to maintain flows for the river's steelhead, chinook and coho salmon populations, which have plunged to roughly one-fifth of what they were before the Trinity and Lewiston dams were completed in 1963, capturing the river's frigid headwaters.

"It was nothing to catch 100 fish if you left your net in. Today you're lucky if you catch 10," said LeRoy Jackson, a council member of the Hoopa Valley Indian Tribe, one of the driving forces behind the river's restoration.

The dams stopped spring flooding that scoured sand from the river's bottom, washed young trees and bushes out of the channel, and kept the water cold. The riverbed grew narrower, its edges choked with growth. Fish spawning beds were buried in sand; the shallow back pools in which juvenile salmon could rest and feed disappeared. Trapped behind the dams, gravel was no longer washed downriver to replenish spawning beds.

By letting the Trinity keep more of its water, and releasing it in ways that mimic nature's cycle of high spring flows, scientists hope to restore conditions that will help the fish spawn and grow healthy and plump for their journey downriver to the sea.

"We're basing it on the premise that if we build the habitat, the fish will find it," said Nina Hemphill, a restoration program fisheries biologist.

It was with a bit of glee that her colleague Wittler watched a tall tree sway as the rising river threatened to topple it. "The whole idea is to start getting these guys out of here," he said.

Using heavy equipment, restoration workers are also going to clear vegetation from 16 miles of the river channel to give the Trinity more room to roam and create fish-friendly shallow pools.

The program is spending $6 million in federal funds building higher bridges to replace a series of small private spans that would be washed out with the higher flows. The new bridges will be turned over to the private landowners who maintained the old ones.

The Bureau of Reclamation has bought a house downriver from Lewiston that sits in the Trinity's path and will probably help move some others.

"I hope they accomplish what they're trying to accomplish," said the house's owner, Donald Tullis, who is moving into town. On his porch, friends stood sipping beer as the swelling river lapped at the foundations and made an island of a birdbath on Tullis' submerged lawn.

For the most part, people in this sparsely populated, richly wooded stretch of Northern California are happy about the dam releases, said Howard Freeman, chairman of the Trinity County Board of Supervisors. "It's been no secret we need water in the river to keep it healthy. That's been the mantra for the last 30 years."

Freeman, his head shaved and three rings dangling from his ears, recalled a local high school conservation teacher who bemoaned the Trinity's dammed state back in the 1970s. High school students held protests as the band played funeral marches for the river.

So few steelhead and coho returned to spawn that "we thought about giving them names," remembered Jim Smith, an 80-year-old former county supervisor who fished the Trinity as a youth.

A local congressman campaigned for restoration money, and in 1981, the secretary of the Interior ordered Reclamation to nearly triple the Trinity's flows in all but dry years. He also ordered a study on the amount of water needed for the river to rebound. Another 18 years passed before the report was completed, during which time Congress and another Interior secretary mandated that the higher flows be maintained.

Based on the study, Babbitt signed a decision five years ago ordering still higher flows, as well as a broad restoration effort. Under the decision, the amount of water released into the river will vary according to how wet or dry the year is. But on average, water exports from the Trinity will drop 28%, reducing reclamation's total water deliveries to the Central Valley by 1% to 4%.

Northern California hydropower producers and Central Valley irrigators sued to block Babbitt's order. Last November, a federal appeals court upheld the restoration plan, clearing the way for the program's launch.

A couple hours' drive downriver from Lewiston, on the Hoopa reservation, tribal leaders aren't yet ready to claim victory. The Interior Department should be spending more, they say, to clear vegetation and restore the river channel to its pre-dam condition.

The Hupa people have lived on the banks of the Trinity for thousands of years. When the salmon all but disappeared, so did a main staple of the Hoopa tribe's diet and a cornerstone of tribal culture.

"It's not about a few more fish," said tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshal.

"It's about a quality of life, a way of life." #

YubaNet – 5/13/05

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a $200,000 grant to the California Conservation Corps to restore habitat vital to salmon, steelhead and other coastal California species of fish.

The NOAA award will allow more than 300 California Conservation Corps members to implement habitat restoration projects along California streams and estuaries. Project work includes stabilizing stream banks, planting trees, constructing riparian fencing, installing log and/or boulder structures, modifying barriers to fish passage and stabilizing yards of sediment in upslope areas. These efforts give salmon and the other species natural cover from predators and swift water; reduce water temperatures; improve the fish access to historic spawning and rearing areas; and prevent excess sediment from entering the coastal streams. The objective is to implement on-the-ground habitat restoration projects that restore habitat, with the goal of recovering populations of salmon and steelhead in Coastal California.

"The continued partnership between NOAA and the California Conservation Corps demonstrates both organizations' commitment to restoring fisheries habitat," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "These habitat restoration efforts support NOAA's goal of ecosystem-based management and promote local stewardship of the habitats that sustain our nation's fisheries resources."

"The long term relationship between the California Conservation Corps and NOAA has proven essential to the survival of the CCC work force to implement habitat restoration. The effects of the severe budget reductions to the CCC can only be mitigated with a strong network of partnerships and the realization that we are all part of a Resource Community that work together and support each other in good times and bad," said Larry Hand, Fortuna Center Director for the CCC's.

The NOAA funding will support the second year of a three-year partnership between the CCC and the NOAA Restoration Center Community-based Restoration Program for restoration projects that benefit California's estuarine and riverine habitats.

The NOAA Restoration Center is a financial and technical assistance program that promotes strong partnerships at the national, regional, and local level to restore fisheries habitat. NOAA CRP works with organizations and government to support locally-driven habitat restoration projects in marine, estuarine, and riparian areas. NOAA CRP funds on-the-ground habitat restoration projects that (1) offer educational and social benefits for citizens and their communities, and (2) provide long-term ecological benefits for fishery resources. Since 1996, more than 900 projects in 26 states have been implemented using NOAA funding and leveraged funding from national and regional habitat restoration partners.

Each year, NOAA awards approximately $900 million in grants to members of the academic, scientific and business communities to assist the agency in fulfilling its mission to study the Earth's natural systems in order to predict environmental change, manage ocean resources, protect life and property, and provide decision makers with reliable scientific information. NOAA goals and programs reflect a commitment to these basic responsibilities of science and service to the nation for the past 35 years.

NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources.
The California Conservation Corps engages young men and women in meaningful work, public service and educational activities that assist them in becoming more responsible citizens, while protecting and enhancing California's environment, human resources and communities. As a non-regulatory agency, the CCC works in partnership with California Department of Fish and Game habitat staff, land managers, and land owners to scientifically identify and restore coastal watersheds that could benefit most from restoration and enhancement activities. During the 2004 fiscal year, the CCC partnered with over 40 watershed groups, land conservancies, federal agencies, counties, and nonprofit organizations to develop habitat enhancement projects. To date the CCC has restored close to 1,900 miles of coastal anadromous streams. #

Chico Enterprise-Record – 5/13/05
Associated Press

Democratic House members from California and Oregon called Thursday for disaster relief for salmon fishermen and others affected by sharp fishing reductions in the Klamath Basin.

"This will result in catastrophic economic losses for fishing families and for fishing dependent communities," said the letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez signed by California's 33 House Democrats, led by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, along with Oregon's four-member Democratic delegation.

"The estimated loss to the West Coast commercial fishing fleet could, by conservative estimates, be tens of millions of dollars," the letter said.

California Department of Fish and Game biologists have said the likely cause of the low returns this year is the increasing numbers of young fish succumbing to parasites as they migrate to the ocean. Last month, the Pacific Fishery Management Council set ocean salmon fishing seasons sharply shorter than last year to be sure a mandated 35,000 Chinook return to the Klamath River to spawn.

NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency that overseas ocean fishing, is looking at whether losses suffered by salmon fishermen qualify for a disaster declaration under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs ocean fishing. A disaster declaration would qualify fishermen and others for long-term, low-interest loans and other assistance programs.

The letter sent Thursday asks NOAA to speed its deliberations and declare a disaster by May 31. A NOAA spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Farmers, fishermen, Indian tribes and conservation groups in the Klamath Basin have been fighting over water since 2001, when the bureau cut off supplies to farms during a drought to meet Endangered Species Act mandates for fish. Irrigation was restored the following year, but more than 30,000 adult fish died after returning to the river and succumbing to gill rot diseases in low warm water conditions. #

Stockton Record – 5/11/05
By Dana Nichols, staff writer

LATHROP -- More than 25,000 baby salmon, each with identification tags pierced through their noses, were released Tuesday into the San Joaquin River at Dos Reis Park, an attempt by biologists to understand how to keep the San Joaquin Valley's dwindling salmon populations from sliding to extinction.

The smolt release is part of a 12-year, $400,000-a-year study that began in 2000 to examine why salmon have such difficulty migrating to the ocean and then back up Valley rivers to spawn. The identification tags will help biologists discover where the fish may be killed and how many fish die.

Giant water-export pumps near Tracy that send water south are one of the dangers the smolt face. Each year from April 15 to May 15, water officials slow the rate of pumping. At the same time, dam operators in the Sierra release a little extra water to try to flush the baby fish across the Delta to the ocean. Without that effort, biologists believe, the baby fish can get easily sucked into the pumps and die.

The test smolt released Tuesday will help determine what happens to the fish that will try to get to the ocean. In all, 75,000 smolt will be dumped into the river this spring, each batch released from a shiny fish tank truck driven by Dale Gates, a California Department of Fish and Game fish habitat assistant.

The smolt's noses were first pierced with a fine stainless steel surgical wire about as thick as a human hair, Gates explained.

The tiny wires are coded. The code is 06-45-99 for 25,338 of the fish released Tuesday. The group all came from the same tank at the Merced

River fish hatchery operated by the California Department of Fish and Game.

A few weeks from now, or even a few years from now, when some are adult salmon in the ocean, tankmates from the class of 06-45-99 will still have their tags.

The tags are invisible from outside the fish. But anglers who catch one of these salmon will know it is a research fish by a notch cut in the fin on its back.

Fishery researchers use metal detectors to find the tagged fish.

Pat Brandes, a fisheries biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was on hand Tuesday as the finger-length fish were released from Gates' shiny fish truck, down a pipe and into the river.

"They are at the point in their development when they want to go to sea," she said.

Brandes said that history shows that the biggest runs of adult salmon come back in the fall 1/2 years after the biggest spring flows.

Eventually, researchers tally the numbers that make it across the Delta, end up mashed on fish screens, get caught in the ocean, or even that few that return to spawn.

Brandes said usually less than 1 percent of the smolt who set out for the ocean make it back to spawn.

"The real reason for doing this experiment is to protect the wild fish in the long run," she said.

The study is paid for by a combination of funds from the state and federal government as well as the water agencies that rely on water pumped from the Delta. #

Oroville Mercury-Register – 5/7/05
By Mary Weston, staff writer

Lake Oroville's salmon stocking has been postponed for the last two years because of a disease in Coho Salmon eggs, and locals want the problem solved before the cold water fishery is compromised.

The Oroville Recreation Advisory Committee met with state agencies and local fishers Friday to discuss a solution.

Bill Cox, Ph.D., fish health coordinator for California Department of Fish and Game, said the department started stocking Coho Salmon about three years ago, because they are resistant to Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis (IHNV), a virus that affects trout and salmon, but doesn't affect humans.

The virus was killing three to five million fish a year, Cox said. The pathogen was probably already in Lake Oroville and stocked Chinook Salmon became hosts transmitting the virus back to the Feather River Fish Hatchery, he said.

However, for the last two years, Aqua Seed, a supplier in Washington, hasn't been able to ship Coho Salmon eggs, as eggs are infected with a bacterial kidney disease.

"We're working with Aqua Seed to produce a disease free egg," Cox said.

Fish and Game is also hoping that in the next two years, agencies can find another fish that won't get the virus.

Cox said he is trying to contract with a Washington firm that can work with Aqua Seed to produce disease free eggs.

Solving the problem has been compounded, as Fish and Game has gone from eight pathologists and one technician to four pathologists and no technician over the past few years.

"However, the department still addresses important issues, Cox said, "and this is an important issue."

Cox said eggs coming into the hatchery from approved suppliers are already tested. Then, the fish hatchery, operated by Fish and Game, tests the young fry after they hatch and also tests fish in the lake.

Dan Peterson, of the California Department of Water Resources, asked if IHNV could ever completely be eliminated from the lake. "Can we ever stock Chinook Salmon again?" Peterson asked.

"I don't have an answer to that," Cox replied.

Other audience members and fishers asked why Fish and Game couldn't import eggs from other states or another supplier. Cox said they hadn't been able to find disease free eggs, and currently, Aqua Seed was the only option available to Fish and Game.

Don Reighley of ORAC said that if people stop fishing for salmon in Lake Oroville the economic impacts will be noticeable in local motels and other businesses.

"It hasn't previously come before the mass media that we're out of a fishery," said Reighley, who owns a sport fishing shop.

If that happens, Oroville will be drastically impacted, he said.

Cox said they're hoping to have some solutions in the next year or so. This could happen within a few months if Aqua Seed is able to produce disease-free eggs.

"I will continue to work toward a solution," Cox said. #

Los Angeles Times – 5/4/05
By Jordan Rau, staff writer

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is shelving yet another part of its once ambitious effort to refashion state government.

After months of discussions, officials have decided against going forward this year with a reorganization of the state's environmental agency, according to an internal administration e-mail obtained Tuesday.

The postponement is the latest instance in which the administration has given up, at least for the short term, on one of Schwarzenegger's top priorities in his first year in office: his desire to reorganize California's vast bureaucracy, which the governor called "a mastodon frozen in time and about as responsive."

The Republican administration last year created the California Performance Review, which examined all state agencies and made more than 1,000 recommendations. But so far, only changes to the prison system have been passed by the Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats.

In February, Schwarzenegger withdrew a plan to eliminate 88 state boards and commissions, one of the central proposals in the California Performance Review. It was widely panned as unwise in hearings before the state's Little Hoover Commission, which evaluates all reorganization plans before submission to the Legislature.

Much of the California Performance Review's recommendations on reorganizing environmental oversight had been deeply criticized when they came out in August. In particular, environmentalists and others strongly opposed abolishing the independent boards that establish rules and standards for air quality, waste management and water.

The administration had wanted to give these boards' regulatory responsibilities to agencies that report directly to the governor, but opponents said that would have made rule-makers too susceptible to political pressure from industry.

"They are less vulnerable to mismanagement by the executive branch," said Ann Notthoff, the California advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national nonprofit with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

But other parts of the plan have been more warmly received by environmentalists and Democrats. The California Performance Review had concluded that there were needless jurisdictional disputes within the California Environmental Protection Agency, with the hodgepodge of regulatory departments and boards in charge of overseeing solid and hazardous waste, oil spills and other environmental hazards.

"We know there are limited dollars to go around, so efficiency is good for the environment," said Bill Allayaud, state director of Sierra Club California.

The review noted, for example, that responsibility to prevent and deal with oil spills is split among three separate parts of the state bureaucracy; consolidating them, the report said, would eventually save $1.9 million a year. Pollution prevention efforts also are divided among multiple entities.

"Creating a centralized point of authority would increase responsibility and accountability for cleanup and public health protection," the report states.

In an e-mail sent Monday to other members of the administration, Alan Lloyd, Cal/EPA's secretary, wrote: "This is to inform you that after much discussion a decision has been made not to proceed with a governor's reorganization plan for Cal/EPA in the current year. We will continue to work with the governor's office and internally to improve our organization."

Terry Tamminen, Schwarzenegger's Cabinet secretary, said that the administration still hoped to reformulate Cal/EPA next year or later. He said the administration was likely to submit reorganization proposals for several other parts of state government in time for the Legislature to consider them before adjourning in August, but he would not name which ones.

"It takes a terrific amount of work for people to do this right," Tamminen said. "It's a tremendous amount of work to take what [the California Performance Review] gave us last year, which was a year's worth of work, and then to get stakeholder input" and forge a proposal.

Democratic lawmakers said they may move forward with some agency reorganization on their own. Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), who heads a panel examining government efficiency, said Schwarzenegger has been spending too much time on planning a special election this fall.

"I'm really disappointed that the governor seems so preoccupied with these ballot initiatives and has pretty much dropped the ball on reformulating the way government operates," she said. "He started this discussion."

Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who heads the Senate's Natural Resources and Water Committee, said she is considering ideas such as combining some of the separate boards within Cal/EPA, and making other "targeted" changes. She said Schwarzenegger had overstepped by trying to do such a comprehensive overhaul, given the incredible complexity of many of the bureaucracies.

"It seems like all the other things he bit off, it seemed to be chock-full of everybody's ideas of what should be done," Kuehl said. "I think it was good of the governor to abandon this kind of wholesale, across-the-board, unfocused approach." #

Marysville Appeal-Democrat – 5/3/05
By Harold Kruger, staff writer

A Sacramento County judge has upheld most of the conditional waiver program adopted in 2003 for irrigation dischargers.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board "reasonably exercised its discretion" by establishing a program that tries to meet water quality objectives and collects "critical monitoring and management data" on discharges from irrigated lands, Judge Judy Hersher wrote in her 40-page decision.

Hersher's decision last week came in response to lawsuits filed last year by environmentalists and the agricultural community.

Rejecting most of the challenges to the Regional Board's program, Hersher ordered the matter returned to the board to remove language that "appears to conflict with fundamental privacy protections provided by the Water Code."

In her opinion, she acknowledged that the case was the "first of its kind" because the Regional Board and the State Water Resources Control Board "have, for the first time in the history of California, adopted programs to regulate agricultural wastewater discharges to the waters of the Central Valley."

The board's order covers more than 7 million acres of agricultural land and more than 25,000 agricultural dischargers.

To comply with the order, farmers have formed water quality coalitions by watershed so they can meet new monitoring rules for agricultural discharges.

The Northern California Water Association, which intervened in the litigation, said Hersher's ruling may "serve as an admonition to growers to move forward with a best-faith effort because a court may find differently in three to five years if agriculture doesn't show substantial progress."

The Regional Board issued its first waiver for agricultural dischargers in 1982. In 2000, 67 California public interest and environmental groups asked the board to terminate the 1982 waiver and develop an agricultural waste water permitting program that would protect water quality.

In 2003, the board responded with the conditional waiver program that beefed up monitoring and reporting requirements for dischargers.

"The waiver, with its accompanying monitoring requirements, represented a 'sea change' in the manner in which discharges from irrigated agriculture are being regulated," Hersher wrote. "The purpose of the waiver is to improve and protect water quality through a program to manage discharges from irrigated lands that cause or contribute to conditions of pollution or nuisance or that cause or contribute to exceedances of water quality standards."

The judge, however, said the Regional Board erred in including language in the waiver that requires farmers to allow board staff on their property "to determine compliance with conditions of this waiver."

The waiver also violated farmers' right to privacy by requiring them to provide "data on waste discharges, water quality, geology, and hydrology, (that) might disclose trade secrets or secret processes," Hersher wrote. #

Ventura County-Star – 5/3/05
By Ron Bottoff, chairman of the Friends of the Santa Clara River

The Planning and Conservation League, a statewide environmental group, recently published a report in celebration of 35 years of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The report takes a look at some of the policy changes that have occurred in our communities as a result of this venerable environmental law. It is titled, appropriately, "Everyday Heroes Protect the Air We Breathe, the Water We Drink and the Natural Areas We Prize."

Why is such a title appropriate? Because over the past 35 years, CEQA has given concerned residents a way of making their voice heard in the planning process. With the help of this law, many people throughout the state stepped up to the plate and worked hard to make their community a better place to live and raise their kids. Now the governor is proposing some significant changes to CEQA, so perhaps it is time to take another look at what this law does and how it has benefited the public.

The California Environmental Quality Act, signed into law by former Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, requires review of projects that will affect the environment. If the project is small and will have very few impacts (for instance, the renovation of an existing building), the review is very minimal and mainly just involves saying there are no impacts.

But if it is a large project, CEQA requires an environmental impact report to be written. This document is made available to the public in the local libraries and city planning departments so that the public and the decision-makers are aware of any negative aspects of the proposed project.

Correct disclosure of impacts is important because CEQA then requires that planning agencies and developers "mitigate" these impacts to the greatest extent possible. Development projects will be required to address stormwater runoff; projects that require grading may have to make sure that sites are watered to reduce dust; native plants may be required in landscaping plans to reduce water usage. Without proper disclosure of the impacts, these mitigations may not be required, so that is why the first step is adequate disclosure.

Developers complain that complying with CEQA unduly increases the cost of housing. In certain cases involving infill, some CEQA revisions may be in order. However, as regards litigation costs, only the most egregious violations of CEQA are brought to the courts for the simple reason that community groups don't have a lot of money, and it is expensive to hire lawyers.

A proposal must be really bad before neighborhood folks can be talked into spending their Sunday afternoons on garage sales or walking neighborhoods to try to raise money to hire an attorney.

That is where the "hero" part comes in. The Planning and Conservation League report is all about folks who got upset and decided they wouldn't take it anymore -- and how the California Environmental Quality Act helped them to protect their neighborhoods and keep their quality of life. (You can view this report at http://www.pcl.org.)

In many cases, the issues brought under CEQA exposed statewide problems and brought sweeping changes that benefited communities throughout the state. These individuals and neighborhood groups not only saved their communities, but they helped many others as well.

So, as the governor moves forward with his proposal to "streamline and reform" CEQA, it is important that we all stand up for the basic tools that have helped us to keep our air and water clean and our communities safe and healthy. If CEQA is weakened, all of us will be the losers. #

The adjective "pristine" is as tightly linked to Trinity County's mountains as "sunny" is to "California" and "United" to "States," but looks aren't everything.

As happened everywhere the 49ers hunted for gold, miners left behind a hidden residue of mercury, which they used to separate precious metal from worthless rock. Quicksilver leaked from sluice boxes, but even more from mines such as the Altoona on the East Fork of the Trinity. The crud flows downstream until something stops it, in this case Trinity Dam.

In a sad process scientists call "biomagnification," mercury concentrates as it goes up the food chain, with a 10-fold increase at each step from lake-bottom bacteria to plankton to bugs to little fish to big fish. At the top of that ladder stands the angler on the lakeshore.

There's no need for paranoia about mercury in fish -- as officials from the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment will explain at a Tuesday workshop in Weaverville -- but lovers of trout, salmon and bass should be cautious, especially pregnant women and children.

At worst, mercury poisoning mars babies' growing brains. The Environmental Protection Agency says exposure in the womb can hurt children's memory, language and motor skills. That's no way to get a start in life.

The state guidelines advise that women who could become pregnant and children eat bass and Trinity Lake chinook salmon no more than once a month, and most other fish in the watershed no more than once a week. For older women and men, the limits are looser -- once a week for the big fish, three times a week for the others.

Frankly, anyone who pulls his supper fresh from the water more often than that probably feels lucky enough to take his chances, but it's worth knowing what the experts say.

It's also worth keeping things in perspective: Fish is among the healthiest foods, and government scientists with human health in mind err on the side of caution. Enjoy your day at the lake.

A welcome flood on a parched river

Speaking of the Trinity, the river is in the midst of a remarkable transformation as the Bureau of Reclamation re-creates -- as far as possible in a thoroughly plumbed and tamed waterway -- a natural spring surge that should scour the river channel and rush young salmon on their way to the ocean.

The artificial flood is huge, taking the river from a few hundred cubic feet per second up to a peak of 7,000 cfs on May 10. That is about the difference between Cottonwood Creek and the entire Sacramento River.

To some, the reservoir is always half-empty, and water diverted from agriculture and power back to nature is simply a squandered resource. Certainly, we must take human needs into account, but if the Trinity restoration project succeeds in building healthier fisheries, there will be a substantial economic as well as ecological payoff.

And -- who knows? -- maybe the flood will wash away some leftover mercury. #

News Release, California Watershed Network – 5/2/05

The month of May is being celebrated as Watershed Awareness Month to encourage Californians to learn more about their local watersheds and participate in environmental activities to enhance their natural surroundings and communities. This celebration is sponsored by the California Watershed Network and supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Throughout the month of May, volunteer community organizations, educators, and other groups are encouraged to promote the importance of watersheds at the grassroots and community levels by organizing and conducting watershed awareness activities. To celebrate Watershed Awareness Month, participants can take part in watershed walks, water quality monitoring, streamside cleanups, and other activities already taking place in their watersheds, or they can organize an event of their own.

To find out what activities are planned in your community the California Watershed Network has compiled an event calendar available on their website: www.watershednetwork.org. For more information, please contact Mary Lee Knecht with California Watershed Network: email: mlknecht@comcast.net, telephone: 916-446-6440. #
www.watershednetwork.org

SALMON FISHING SEASON:
Economic castaways; Salmon fishery protections unnerve commercial fishermen

Santa Cruz -- Sunday was the opening day of California's commercial salmon season, and a few boats had returned to the docks by late afternoon -- very few.

Worse, the number of fish they carried in their holds would barely make enough lox to stock the buffet at a country club Sunday brunch.

The fishermen were blunt in their assessment of both the season's start and their likely future.

"What can I say? It's really lousy," said Gary Salter, as he disconsolately ate a turkey sandwich on the deck of his boat, the Pompano.

"I caught one fish, and then I broke something, so I came in," said Salter, who looks like the archetype of the grizzled man of the sea. "Nobody's doing very well out there."

Jim Marston and Ron Graves, partners on the troller Gypsy King, also had grim reports on the day's fishing.

"We fished for an hour and a half and caught three fish, which isn't exactly red hot," Graves said. "Then we sprung a leak on a hydraulic line when all our gear was out. Took us three hours to haul it all in by hand."

With diesel fuel hitting $3 a gallon, said Graves, "a lot of guys probably won't even go out for salmon. They'll wait for the albacore season."

The commercial salmon season's bleak beginning is all the harder for fishermen -- and salmon-loving gourmands -- to stomach because hopes were high for a banner year.

The ocean is teeming with chinook salmon bound for the Sacramento River system -- perhaps the biggest run on record. But those fish are mingling with schools of salmon from the Klamath River system. And the Klamath fish are on the ropes, due in significant part to a massive fish kill in 2002 that wiped out about 33,000 mature salmon and steelhead "spawners."

So to protect the Klamath stocks, the Pacific Marine Fishery Council announced that it was slashing the commercial season roughly by half. That makes it the most restrictive season since 1992.

Usually, fishermen can fish the entire Pacific Coast of the continental U. S. from May through September. This year, fishermen will only be able to troll from Pigeon Point to Point Sur in May; from June, fishing will only be allowed from Point Sur south to Mexico. The waters south of Point Arena will be open for fishing from July 4 through September.

That means the salmon-rich waters north of Point Arena will be off limits completely.

And because salmon typically venture south of Monterey Bay only one to three years out of 10, said Zeke Grader, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the first half of the season could be an utter bust.

"If we're lucky enough to see southerly cold-water currents, folks may be able to survive," Grader said. "But in any event, I think we'll be looking at a $100 million loss for California alone. That doesn't count Oregon's fleet, which fishes a lot of the same water."

Seafood lovers also will take a hit. Wild salmon is increasingly popular with consumers because it is widely perceived as healthier and tastier. In the last few years, prices for wild fish have been steadily climbing. Now, said Grader, they could well go stratospheric.

"Retail prices for local wild salmon could hit $15 or $16 a pound (for steaks or fillets) or more," Grader said. "And that's when you can find it."

A few consumers were on the docks Sunday, hoping to buy directly from the fishermen.

Santa Cruz local Steven Call was one of them. He went from boat to boat with his companion, Amy Martin, looking for fish. The action was slow.

Martin said Call enjoys considerable renown in Santa Cruz for his salmon barbecues. The couple finally scored, paying $5 a pound for a whole fish.

Call said he was unaware of the restrictions on the current season.

"But if the fishermen catch any salmon, I'm going to get them," he said. "I'm down here every weekend. I buy a fish, go home and invite a bunch of people over."

The truncated season is the latest development in a long-running conflict over the Klamath River, one that pits the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and farmers against fishermen and conservationists. The fishermen and environmentalists say agricultural water diversions are obliterating the salmon runs. The farmers and the bureau say the scientific data isn't strong enough to support such conclusions, and are resisting any changes to the current downstream flow schedules.

Graves said he understood the necessity of the restrictions.

"Nobody wants to see these stocks collapse," he said. "Maybe we can live through this, the fish will recover and things will get back to normal."

But Salter wasn't sure how much longer he can hold on.

"They've already made it illegal to trawl for rock cod and gillnet halibut," he said. "Now they hit us with this short salmon season. I've been fishing for 40 years, but I'm ready to put a 'For Sale' sign on my boat." #

Herald and News (Oregon) – 4/21/05
By Dylan Darling, freelance writer

A federal judge in Medford says a $1 billion lawsuit brought by members of the Klamath Tribes against PacifiCorp for the loss of salmon should be thrown out.

Judge John P. Cooney, a magistrate, said the lawsuit was decades too late. The statue of limitations ran out on the case in 1971, he said in a decision Thursday.

"This action was not filed until May 2004," he wrote. "Therefore, it is barred by the statute of limitations."

In the suit, members of the Tribes claim construction of power dams on the Klamath River destroyed the Tribes' federal treaty rights to fish for salmon in the river's headwaters. As compensation, they are asking for $1 billion.

The treaty was made in 1864. Dam construction on the Klamath River started in 1908 with Copco 1 and ended in 1967 with Keno Dam. Salmon migration stops at Iron Gate Dam, the lowest on the Klamath River, in Siskiyou County.

"We argued that it was untimely, and the judge agreed," said Jon Coney, PacifiCorp spokesman.

Cooney recommended that the case be dismissed. A magistrate judge works in federal District Court, but isn't appointed to a lifetime term, nor does he have all the powers of a district judge.

Now the case moves to Eugene where a district judge will decide whether the case should go on or be dismissed.

Plaintiffs in the suit are Klamath Tribes and the 10-member Klamath Claims Committee, which represents tribal members, and their heirs, who were on the roll of the Klamath Tribe when it was terminated by the federal government in 1954.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tribal members still hold hunting and fishing rights even though they no longer had a reservation. The Tribes were reinstated in 1986 and are seeking a reservation.

PacifiCorp has a 151-megawatt hydroelectric project on the Klamath River made up of four dams - Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, J.C. Boyle and Iron Gate - and other small projects. The company also owns the Keno Dam, which doesn't produce power, but regulates flows down the river.

Dan Israel, a lawyer for the members of the Tribes, said the case is complex and he will present findings in supreme court cases involving terminated tribes in arguing in Eugene why it needs to go on.

"Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit (Court of Appeals) or some appellate court will have to decide this issue," he said. #

Chico Enterprise-Record – 4/20/05
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

Water transfers and what they mean to the Sacramento Valley was discussed during a conference on water issues presented Friday at Chico State University. Ellen Hanak is a research fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. In 2003 her study on water markets was published titled "Who Should Be Allowed to Sell Water in California."

After publication, Hanak has continued her study of water sales, tracking the transactions and looking into what happens when they occur.

Hanak said the state has been looking at water marketing since the 1970s. As water supplies continue to fluctuate, sale of water from one area of the state to another has become more prevalent. Currently, the state must cut back on its use of Colorado River water. Depletion of groundwater is prevalent in some areas of the state. Demand for water from growing urban areas and environmental needs is increasing. Building new surface water storage is less feasible than in past decades, Hanak said.

The current trend is to view the water in the state similar to that of a stock portfolio. While investors might choose to have some money in bonds, some in stocks, some in real estate, it's better for water users to diversify.

Currently water managers are looking at surface and groundwater, but also at things such as conservation, desalination, recycling and groundwater banking.

Water marketing, Hanak said, is a way of reallocating resources while still recognizing existing water rights.

Northern California is water rich compared to the rest of the state, but the greatest number of people is in the south where water is less plentiful.

"The premise is that senior water rights holders, mostly farmers, will benefit by selling to cities and farmers with junior water rights," she said.

Instead of involuntarily moving water south, farmers are paid, she said.

"The water market really did not take off until the major droughts of the late 1980s and mid-1990s," she said.

However, even though the second half of the 1990s was relatively wet, water transactions increased.

Yet, Hanak said, with increased water sales, it's important to keep in perspective that water transfers amount to only about 3 percent of all water used and a majority of water sales are within local or regional markets.

One sector of water sales that has increased is for environmental purchases, she said.

She said given the high water resources in the Sacramento Valley, its surprising this area isn't more of a player in water transfers, she said, given 25 percent on average of the water originates in the Sacramento Valley. In dry years that percentage increases at a time when it is also easier to move water through the Bay Area Delta.

In the future, she said the state will likely start seeing demand from the Sacramento metropolitan region.

Some early resistance has sprung up in Northern California and issues have been raised about the economic effects of selling water rather than growing crops. In many cases, local governments have stepped in and put restrictions on exports, including 22 counties.

"County restrictions have chilled the market in some places," she said. "They are a useful stop-gap method," she said, but not overall a good water management tool, in her opinion.

In the future groundwater management will be a larger tool in the state's portfolio of water sources. Places like Glenn County, which has a groundwater basin management plan are the trend of the future, she said. #

Oroville Mercury-Register – 4/20/05
By Heather Hacking, NewsMedia Group

As the state moves to deal with future growth and the need for more water, work continues on five separate ideas for increasing water storage.

Steve Roberts has been studying the different proposals for the Department of Water Resources and shared his progress Friday at a conference titled "Water Use Conflicts and the Future of North State Water Resources," held at Chico State University.

Planning for new surface water is drastically different than it was when other large projects were planned in the 1950s, Roberts said.

For generations Californians have relied on dams on rivers that paid for themselves through water and electricity. But dams do environmental damage, he explained.

Currently Roberts is studying five possible projects through the California Bay Delta Authority (formerly called CalFed), projects that would contribute to solving California's water needs.

At this point the possible projects are being looked at broadly and include consideration of how the storage would open up flexibility in conveying water through the Delta, Roberts explained.

"Our job is not just to supply water but to see how we can get the most benefit from each drop," Roberts said. Any future water projects would be developed as part of an overall management system.

The five projects being considered include raising Shasta Dam, a north-of-delta reservoir (including Sites Reservoir in Maxwell), storing water in the Delta, expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir and storing water in San Joaquin Valley.

He noted that all on-stream storage that would have involved dams on waterways, have been ruled out.

When originally planned, Shasta Dam was designed to be 200 feet taller than it is now. But nobody thinks that is going to happen, Roberts said. The current proposals look at raising the dam anywhere from 6 1/2 to 18 1/2 feet. Complications include issues with American Indian tribes who don't want to lose more of their cultural resources, as well as the fact that the McCloud River has been designated wild and scenic, Roberts said.

The project could cost $280-$480 million depending on which height was chosen.

The north-of-the-delta Off-stream Storage Investigation has focused on four potential projects on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, including the Red Bank Project, Newville Reservoir, Colusa Reservoir, and Sites Reservoir.

Sites Reservoir, being considered for the Antelope Valley near Maxwell, could add up to 1.8 million acre-feet of storage. The project has promise because it could complement operation of water from Lake Shasta and give some flexibility with releases, Roberts said.

Rough estimates are that it would cost abut $1 billion.

Delta storage would include flooding wetland areas that are now Delta islands. Roberts said this project likely won't go much further because the cost originally estimated did not take into consideration extensive work that is needed on levees in the Delta. There are four islands that are being looked at. The original idea was to flood two of them to reserve water and make two islands for habitat.

That project could cost $700-$800 million.

Los Vaqueros Reservoir has also been discussed for possible expansion. However, it is owned by Contra Costa County and the benefits from that reservoir are only directed to Bay Area residents. That won't fly as a statewide project, Roberts said.

Storing water in the San Joaquin basin includes seven alternatives being discussed. One would be to raise Friant Reservoir and/or coordinate groundwater storage.

Roberts said he doesn't believe the state will take on all five of the projects he is currently investigating.

The decisions will be made with careful consideration to fish populations he said. The projects that will move forward will be those that have a regional and statewide benefit.

Besides the preliminary studies, work will need to be done to find out who pays for any future projects. Roberts explained that those who benefit from new storage will need to help pay for them, but at this point beneficiaries have not been identified.

Roberts likened it to building a new mall and needing an "anchor tenant," a big store that will make the mall a destination spot. Then smaller stores could be incorporated. The water projects need an "anchor tenant" who steps forward and says they'll help pay for the project, he said. #

Stockton Record – 4/20/05
By Hank Shaw, Capitol Bureau Chief

SACRAMENTO — A coalition of state and federal agencies gathered to restore the health and security of the Delta has failed, lawmakers said at a hearing Tuesday.

The coalition, called CALFED, was supposed to act as a sort of conductor, orchestrating the various state, federal and local groups working in the Delta into a symphony of coordination and progress. Now that symphony has degenerated into cacophony, and lawmakers are threatening to close the show.

Years of bickering and billions in taxpayer dollars have produced few improvements to the Delta, essentially the heart of California’s water supply.

On the contrary, environmental conditions continue to worsen and the levees that hold back the salty San Francisco Bay continue to fall.

So the Legislature will almost certainly strip funding for the coalition and leave it on life support for a year to work out its problems. If CALFED fails that, lawmakers could junk it altogether.

State Sens. Mike Machado of Linden and Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica – two of the Legislature’s most powerful members on water issues – blasted CALFED’s director Tuesday for failing to devise both a realistic budget and concrete goals for restoring the environment and improving the security of the Delta, upon which 22 million Californians rely for their drinking water.

"I am increasingly intolerant of what I perceive as a lack of fiscal discipline" by the coalition, Kuehl said.

CALFED’s budget hinges on what critics say are hallucinogenic estimates of state and federal funding, and a system of water-user fees that has yet to extend beyond the theoretical.

Congress already has authorized $389 million for the coalition’s activities, but the road between authorizing money and actually appropriating it is often perilous. U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said recently that the lean federal budget will probably claim much of the promised money.

On the state side, lawmakers say CALFED will not receive any new money and note that it will be only one of many competitors for the remaining money in a pot of bond funds that voters approved recently. Machado is another competitor; bond money would fund his proposal to restore water flows in the San Joaquin River.

That leaves the user fees.

Machado said developing a system of realistic fees to help fund Delta water projects – whoever benefits from the projects would pay some of the tab – was critical to developing that budget. He called CALFED Director Patrick Wright a "spokesman for indecision" and said his lack of leadership has led to that failure.

"Do you ever take a stand on anything?" Machado asked.

Wright said broaching the topic of user fees certainly qualified as a stand. "This was a big leap. Yeah, we took a stand. Half the water community was violently opposed to this."

Ultimately, those proposed fees would mean homeowners and businesses would pay more for their water.

One idea floated would have added $12 to $24 a year to a homeowner’s water bill. Others would have levied fees on the water agencies themselves — such as the Stockton East Water District or Central San Joaquin Water Conservation District — and those agencies would likely charge consumers more to offset the extra costs.

But support for a "Delta tax," whatever form it might take, would wither unless taxpayers had a clear understanding about what they’d get for their money, said Brent Walthall of the Kern County Water Agency.

Walthall said CALFED has spent more than $1 billion to restore the Delta’s environment, yet the endangered Delta smelt are at their lowest numbers in 35 years. He asked why would his agency want to throw good money after bad?

Kuehl said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must also play a role. She said she’s seen no real direction from the administration, and without that direction any fee imposed on water users would also fail – and CALFED along with it.

"This administration has to take a more serious interest and a more muscular tone on this," she said. "It shouldn’t be too difficult."

A spokesman for the governor said the administration is taking the issue seriously. As for CALFED, Wright suggested that a more developed fee proposal will appear as part of Schwarzenegger’s scheduled May revision of the state budget.

Machado and Kuehl say that’s not good enough. Doing so wouldn’t give lawmakers enough time to analyze the proposal, which is expected to be complex. They said even if a proposal shows up in the revised budget, they will still strip funding from the coalition until all parties can accept a fee schedule.

"CALFED is doomed to a pretty thin gruel for funding this year," Kuehl said. #

Chico Enterprise-Record – 4/7/05
By staff writers

GLENN- A meeting today will focus on the planning necessary to protect a five-year-old $11 million fish screen and agricultural pumping station on the Sacramento River.

Princeton, Codora, Glenn and Provident irrigation districts consolidated their pumping facilities, while protecting fish from getting caught in their irrigation canals, at the site near Glenn County Road 44 and Highway 45, about 2.5 miles north of Glenn.

But time changes all things, including the Sacramento River.

The future of the pumping plant is threatened by erosion further upstream that affect the flow and speed of water past the screens. If the water begins to flow into the screens, rather than sweeping past them, fish could be trapped against the screens.

A planning effort is under way, funded by CalFed, to figure out what alternatives are feasible, including options such as building dikes that jut out into the river, adding riprap, installing flexible, moving intakes for the pumps or moving the facility.

The planning process will be the focus of a meeting to be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. today at the Glenn Pheasant Hunting Center, 1522 Highway 45 in Glenn. The meeting is hosted by River Partners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the irrigation districts.

The report can be viewed at www.riverpartners.org/riparian/riparian_documents.html.#

San Mateo County Times – 4/7/05
By Amelia Hansen, staff writer

HALF MOON BAY — A federal fishing agency today is expected to vote to cut California's commercial salmon season in half.

At its meeting in Tacoma, Wash., this week, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council has considered what measures to take to address low salmon stocks in the Klamath River system along the Oregon-California border.

While fish stocks from the Sacramento River system are reportedly healthy, even abundant this year, chinook salmon from the two systems mingle in Northern California ocean waters.

Efforts to conserve the Klamath fish likely will hit local fishing fleets hard.

The California commercial salmon industry is likely to lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and salmon retail prices are expected to shoot up. Local fishermen expect their profits will be cut by at least one third.

"It's not at all a pretty picture," said Duncan MacLean, president of the Half Moon Bay Fishermen's Association, during a telephone interview Wednesday from Tacoma. "The fishing community is going to suffer, the coastal communities are going to suffer. It's going to cost individuals, it's going to cost the state."

Approximately 35 commercial fishermen operate out of Pillar Point Harbor.

Chuck Tracy, the council's staff officer who works on salmon issues, confirmed that the council is expected to approve the strict regulations but said that as of Wednesday afternoon it was not a "final deal."

"It's what the council is considering for final action," said Tracy, who heads the agency's special team on salmon issues.

While fishermen are clearly upset about the restrictions, their anger, for once, is not targeted at the council but at the Department of the Interior.

In 2002, the tension between fishermen and farmers vying for limited Klamath Basin water came to an unfortunate climax when more than 33,000 adult salmon and steelhead trout died in the lower Klamath River.

It was the one of the worst fish kills in Northern Californian history.

The kill was blamed not on fisheries regulators but on the Bush administration, which earmarked more water for Klamath Reclamation Project farmers. #

Stockton Record – 4/5/05
By Dana Nichols, staff writer

STOCKTON -- The CALFED Bay Delta Authority just issued an annual report hailing the agency for being a "national model of collaborative resource management."

The 2004 report details the billions of dollars that have been spent in the past four years on a wide array of programs seeking to protect the drinking-water supply for millions of Californians and reverse environmental degradation of the Delta.

But elected officials, local water agencies and environmentalists have a much less upbeat picture. Despite CALFED's efforts, the past year has seen sharp declines in populations of fish including the native Delta smelt, the failure of a Delta levee that flooded 12,000 acres on Jones Tract and a growing unwillingness on the part of state legislators to write the agency a blank check over the next decade. And farmers, water agencies and environmentalists all say that water quality in the Delta continues to get worse.

"The CALFED report is very rosy. But when you take off your sunglasses, you see from the glare of the sun the inadequacies of the program and the difficulty it is having right now in getting the support to continue to go forward," said State Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden.

CALFED is actually a coalition of a number of state and federal agencies. It was created with the intention to stop the endless water wars that prevented anyone from actually doing any work to improve water supplies or restore the environment.

Despite the criticisms, CALFED Director Patrick Wright said the agency is still fulfilling its mission and getting a lot more done than would be possible otherwise.

"There's no shortage of conflict and there always will be as long as water supplies are limited," Wright said. "Despite that, I think our accomplishments are significant."

He said the approximately $3 billion spent so far on a variety of projects is a sign of progress. In particular, deals struck in the past year for improving the Delta include safeguards to prevent increased water exports to Southern California anticipated in the future from hurting the environment.

He also said CALFED offers "significantly increased oversight and accountability" over water-policy decisions than existed before CALFED.

But from the land Bill Salmon farms on Union Island, it doesn't look that way.

Salmon every summer struggles to irrigate his crops as the waters of Middle River turn salty and the enormous pumps near Tracy take water south.

"They've gone through all this money and I don't see any improvements in the South Delta, whatsoever."

Scientists who watch the Delta's fish populations have similar complaints.

"I think the last couple of years in some way has been a wake-up call to CALFED," said Tina Swanson, a senior scientist at the Bay Institute. In particular, Swanson said it may not be possible to meet all the conflicting goals of those who want to send more water to Southern California and those who want to preserve the Delta as a source of water for irrigation and wildlife.

"I think the past four years may be some indication that we are at the limit of the system and we can't go much further."

Machado agreed. He said the key to many of the problems is that CALFED has satisfied other demands but failed to deal with the poor quality of water in the Delta, largely due to the fact that the San Joaquin River has no natural flow below Friant Dam.

"That means you have to have more flows in the river, the San Joaquin River and through the Delta."

Paying for CALFED is another problem. Machado and other state senators, unhappy with the budget CALFED set for the next 10 years, have refused to budget anything for the agency until it sets clear priorities.

Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, has stepped in to lead an emergency effort to write a more-pragmatic budget.

Joe Grindstaff, deputy director at DWR, said his agency is happy to help, especially since CALFED's need to protect water quality in the Delta aligns to some extent with DWR's obligation to maintain levees.

"This is a very difficult thing. There are incredible interests. There are biological challenges that nobody understands. But I think it is what we have to do," Grindstaff said of the effort to keep CALFED afloat. #

Monterey Herald – 4/5/05
By Virginia Hennessey, staff writer

If this year was supposed to produce one of the best salmon runs in recent history as experts predicted, someone forgot to tell the salmon.

The recreational salmon season, which opened Saturday, has been a major disappointment.

"We held a party and the salmon didn't come," said Linda McIntyre, Moss Landing harbormaster.

Scientists with the Pacific Fishery Management Council estimated that close to 2 million chinook salmon from the Sacramento and Klamath rivers awaited recreational fishers, more than twice last year's prediction and the highest since the council began making annual forecasts in 1985.

If they're there, local charter boat skippers said, they've either gone deep or they aren't biting. And they aren't biting anywhere else, either.

Todd Arcoleo, manager of Chris' Fishing Trips in Monterey, said the fishermen up and down the coast, from Bodega Bay to Morro Bay, have reported the same dearth of salmon. In fact, Monterey Bay has been more generous than most.

In Bodega Bay, he said, the entire charter fleet brought in three salmon on opening day. In Half Moon Bay, 65 anglers on charters brought in six fish, he said, and Morro Bay charters reportedly had one catch.

Arcoleo said Chris' fleet brought in about 25 salmon that day. Bill Williamson, a charter skipper for Randy's Fishing, said that fleet brought in 45 opening day, but the numbers have dropped since.

Theories abound
There are a number of theories explaining the slow start to the season: the water's too warm; the number of bait fish, like anchovies, too few; and the barometric pressure too low. Fish don't eat when the pressure's low, some say.

And it may just be that the hundreds of fishing boats on the bay over the weekend spooked the fish to deeper depths.

But things may be looking up. The weekend anglers from Fresno are gone and Williamson and Arcoleo said Monday afternoon the barometric pressure was moving up and the bait fish were moving back into Monterey Bay.

None of that will help commercial fishers, who are waiting for the hammer to fall when the Pacific Fishery Management Council decides this week whether it will abbreviate the commercial salmon season, which begins May 1. The council is meeting in Tacoma, Wash., today and is expected to announce by Thursday when the season will end.

At issue is the number of chinook that spawn on the Klamath River. The river experienced a massive die-off of fish in 2002 after the federal Bureau of Reclamation gave a full allocation of Klamath water to local farmers despite an ongoing drought.

If the population that is left is overfished, authorities fear, the fishery could be permanently devastated. Because Klamath salmon and Sacramento river salmon intermingle, the council is considering halving the commercial season, even though the Sacramento salmon population is burgeoning.

The Bureau of Reclamation blames the die-off that led to the crisis on a number of natural causes. The commercial fishing industry blames it on mismanagement by the bureau.

"They took all the water and gave it to the farmers. It heated the water and killed thousands and thousands of salmon," said Roger Whitney, owner of Bay Fresh Seafoods in Moss Landing. "That's all thanks to our federal government."

If the season is shortened, he predicted, it means a record number of Sacramento chinooks will be returning up the river to spawn, overtaxing the river's oxygen supply and causing another die-off. And there's no guarantee the bureau won't repeat its allocation to Klamath farmers.

"It's just a mess," Whitney said. "We're supposed to protect (the salmon) and then they kill them when they go back up the river."

Fishing enthusiasts aren't the only ones who were unhappy with the weekend's opener. Friends of the Sea Otter put out an emergency call for volunteer observers to report to Moss Landing Harbor on Sunday after members reported seeing boaters speeding in the harbor and aiming their vessels at rafts of otters.

No manpower
William Brooke, of Friends of the Sea Otter, said Monday that he put out the call for volunteers after witnessing otters having to dive to avoid being hit by boats in the harbor.

McIntyre, the harbormaster, said she wasn't aware of any such incident, but did receive a report of an otter that had beached itself and died. She said no speeding citations were issued over the weekend, but conceded that she did not have enough staff to handle basic management of the harbor on opening day, let alone patrol for speeders.

"If I knew that was the case, I would be really upset with any fisherman doing that," she said. "They're not doing themselves any favors at all. It's almost like self-fulfilling prophecy." #

Anticipation is mixed with concern as Bodega Bay anglers and party boat operators gear up for Saturday's opening of the salmon fishing season.

They say they are looking forward to catching and eating the delicious wild salmon, but worried because federal regulators haven't said how long the season will last.

That decision comes next week, and is sure to mean fewer salmon caught and higher prices for consumers during the year.

The majority of salmon caught by fishermen this year will have entered the ocean from rivers in 2002. But tens of thousands of salmon died that year without reaching the ocean when Klamath River flows became too shallow and too warm for them to survive.

The federal Pacific Fisheries Management Council now must decide how that massive die-off will affect recreational and commercial fishing seasons this year.

"At the moment, we're thinking our season won't be touched, but we're keeping our fingers crossed," said Bonnie Bourn, a Bodega Bay party boat owner.

Bourn and her sister, Judy Kendall, are launching their business this year with three boats, each carrying six fishermen. The sisters mortgaged the family home last fall to buy Will's Bait and Tackle after the owner died.

"We took out a huge loan to make it through the winter," Bourn said. "We're just praying it's going to go all right and they'll let us fish."

The past few months have been anxious for both sport and commercial fishermen as federal and state regulators assessed the damage from the Klamath fish kill and projected scenarios for a sustainable harvest.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council now seems poised to spare sport fishing while making drastic cuts in the commercial season.

In 2004, recreational fishermen caught 200,000 salmon and commercial fishermen landed 500,000 during a six-month season, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.

Proposals currently on the table would leave the sport-fishing season almost unchanged from last year, or at worst would close the season for two weeks in July, the busiest time of the year.

"It's not going to affect us that much," said Jim Martin, a Fort Bragg fisherman and West Coast regional director of the nonprofit Recreational Fishing Alliance. "It's because we don't have those high contacts with Klamath fish. We just don't catch that many fish compared to the commercial fishery."

It's a different story for commercial fisherman. Both options being discussed by the fisheries council would essentially cut the season in half for Bodega Bay fishermen. Fort Bragg fishermen, who draw a greater proportion of Klamath River salmon than do Bodega Bay fishermen, could see their season closed entirely, or open for only one month.

"It's a disaster for us and there is no real solution except that we're not going to make a living this year," said Dave Yarger, president of the Bodega Bay Fishermen's Marketing Association. "It's going to drive the price of salmon up, and we don't want to drive it up over the consumer's price range."

Salmon fillets sold in retail stores last year for about $12 a pound and could reach $16 a pound this year, said Angelo Patania, a meat cutter at Fiesta Market in Sebastopol.

"There's going to be a smaller season and it seems like the price is going to be higher," Patania said.

Salmon from the Klamath, Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are caught off the Sonoma Coast. This year, the Klamath run is about one-third normal, while the Central Valley run is expected to reach a near-record high of 1.7 million.

Because Klamath and Central Valley salmon swim together in the ocean, regulators will restrict the season to assure a sustainable number of Klamath River salmon survive to spawn. #