Red Bluff Daily News-6/27/09
By Geoff Johnson

Fish will flow in time for the Fourth of July weekend in Battle Creek.

Normally, starting around the last Saturday in April and continuing through October, trucks from the Darrah Springs hatchery would plant around 20,000 rainbow trout, said Fish Hatchery Manager George Parker.

But this year's release was stalled by a court order until this week when the Department of Fish and Game concluded no frogs or fish threatened by release of trout were present in either the creek's northern or southern forks, DFG Environmental Scientist Steve Baumgartner said.

The return of rainbow trout to the creek is not official yet, Baumgartner said. The process still requires approval from DFG headquarters in Sacramento. So far, however, everything points to the return of the fish in time for the Fourth of July weekend.

DFG's troubles began when a group of Stanford Law students questioned whether stocking 1,000 bodies across the state with fish, which DFG has done since 1870, is in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

In 2006, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Pacific Rivers Council used the question as grounds for a lawsuit, alleging the stocking of non-native fish species threatened 25 native fish and amphibian species across the state, including the mountain-yellow-frog, a species whose numbers have reportedly dropped by 90 percent in the Sierra Nevada region.

It was enough that Sacramento Judge

Patrick Marlette required the temporary suspension of stocking of dozens of bodies of water across the state. The DFG has been allowed to continue stocking in the majority of its waters, including 10 out of 12 Tehama County lakes and creeks.

Paynes Creek is still listed on DFG's database of waterways not being stocked. The judge's order expires in January 2010 and, barring a new order stocking would resume.

Baumgartner said he knew of no time frame for stocking to resume in Paynes Creek.

The suspension has not been without its economic impact. At least one Mill Creek businessman, who declined to be named, said customers driving west from Chester normally would stop in and buy fishing licenses on their way to Battle Creek.

Though his business is by no means struggling, sales to that group have dropped dramatically, he said.#

Oakland Tribune-6/21/09
By Sean Maher

The plight of declining salmon populations and the commercial fishers they support up and down the West Coast drew hundreds of people to Jack London Square on Saturday and Sunday for the second annual SalmonAid Festival, organizers said.

The festival featured food, music and a message of conservation. Some salmon populations around the Central Valley are down 90 percent over the past eight years, SalmonAid Foundation President Jonathan Rosenfield said.

The issues facing wild salmon throughout California and as far north as Alaska involve many local interests represented by more than 2,000 small nonprofit organizations. The foundation first put together the event last year to unite their voices and help consumers, politicians and the media understand the enormity of the issue, Rosenfield said.

"One of the major issues we're asking the state and federal governments to tackle is water management in the state of California," Rosenfield said. "We have huge amounts of water being diverted from the greater Bay Area into the Central Valley for big agricultural corporations to grow crops out there that don't make sense.

"For example, you're seeing a lot of water used to grow grapes, which need a constant water supply to grow," he said. "We don't need to be growing grapes in the desert during a drought."

Salmon don't need a lot of tender care to survive, Rosenfield said — they are "a hearty, tenacious, adaptable

species." They just need access to their spawning grounds and relatively clean water in the rivers they travel to get there. But as rivers dry up or are blocked by dams, or are even pushed into reversed flows by powerful pumps, that access gets cut off, and generations fail to reproduce.

"It's hard to predict extinctions to some degree, or sometimes to know if it's not already too late to stop them from happening," Rosenfield said. "But as a Ph.D. conservation biologist, I think that unless we seriously turn things around in the next four or five years, we'll begin to see extinctions occur on a grand scale, across an entire family of species. We're witnessing an ecosystem in collapse."

Meanwhile, the rise in farmed salmon has begun to threaten natural food supplies and an industry and tradition of outdoor, open-seas fishing, said restaurant owner Kenny Belov of the nonprofit Fish or Cut Bait.

The nonprofit began with four partner restaurants last year and has expanded to 26, including Baja Taqueria in Piedmont. All the eateries have committed to buying only wild salmon, he said.

"Salmon are carnivorous fish, so to feed them in farms, we're going out into the ocean and pulling out millions of anchovies, herring and smelt to feed the salmon. These are fish we could be using to feed the world — they're very healthy for you," Belov said. "But instead we're using them to feed farmed salmon, which either escape or end up on people's plates full of chemicals and hormones that aren't healthy."

Wild salmon is much more expensive than farmed salmon, and Belov conceded that may make choosing wild salmon a harder choice for restaurants and consumers in a troubled economy.

As a partial solution he suggested buying other locally caught wild fish as they come in season, such as halibut and albacore tuna. A full list of sustainable fish and the calendar for their seasons is available online at www.focb.org. The SalmonAid Foundation's Web site is www.salmonaid.org.#

Sacramento Bee-6/22/09
By Matt Weiser

The American River once hosted thousands of steelhead migrating upstream from the ocean in three separate runs. Today it's down to just two runs of a few hundred fish.

The Sacramento was the only river in western North America with four salmon runs. They numbered in the millions – so numerous that American Indians and settlers could catch a salmon dinner with their bare hands. Now one run is gone, and two are endangered. The fourth could join them soon.

Restoring a fragment of that spectacle to the Central Valley is the goal of rules proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The service wants, among other things, restoration of winter- and spring-run salmon above Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River, and steelhead above Folsom Dam on the American River.

Combined, the fish transit order is considered the biggest of its kind in U.S. history.

Making it happen presents huge financial and engineering challenges. Costs could exceed $1 billion at a minimum – more than 10 times the original construction cost of both dams.

"It's pretty substantial, the amount of work that's required," said Mike Chotkowski, regional environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dams. "We still haven't even determined whether it's feasible."

The fisheries service says that without restoring access upstream, it's likely the three fish species will go extinct. Climate change means it will be harder to maintain cold-water habitat below the dams, so they must have access to better habitat.

"The fish are at that jeopardy point where it's important for us to take immediate steps," said Howard Brown, Sacramento River basin chief for the fisheries service.

The rules proposed this month, called a biological opinion, were developed in response to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups. Federal Judge Oliver Wanger agreed with their claim that prior rules, which had no fish passage requirement, did not prevent extinction.

The ruling raised anxiety among California water managers. Thirty agencies sued last week, alleging that the fisheries service didn't follow procedure in adopting the rules.

Other experts argue there are cheaper ways to rescue the salmon populations.

Among them is the volunteer group Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead. It has worked quietly over the past year to remove small obstructions on Auburn Ravine, a little-known tributary of the Sacramento River.

The natural ravine flows with spring water and sewage treatment outflows starting in Auburn.

Accounts as recent as the 1960s show that the ravine once hosted robust fish runs, said John Rabe, a member of the group's board.

Four adult salmon were observed in the ravine last winter. The group expects hundreds next winter and plans a salmon festival in Lincoln to welcome them back.

Rabe said 600 small creeks between Modesto and Redding also could be restored – at far less cost than fixing the big dams.

"Don't waste time and money on the dams. Spend it on the creeks," he said. "That would open literally thousands of miles of spawning, which would make a huge, huge difference."

The federal rules don't specify how salmon and steelhead should be moved around the dams. Instead they require studies, starting in December, to find the best solution that can be in place by 2020.

By March 2012, water agencies must begin moving fish around the dams on a trial basis. This will probably be done by loading fish into trucks.

Experts say moving fish around Folsom and Shasta dams is a job as big as the dams themselves. Shasta, completed in 1945, stands 602 feet high. Folsom was finished in 1956 and soars to 340 feet tall.

They were built without any means to pass fish upstream, and each has a smaller dam downstream to regulate flows: Nimbus on the American, Keswick on the Sacramento.

Distance and elevation required to move fish upstream may eliminate the option of a traditional fish ladder at both dams, said Alex Haro, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey fish laboratory in Turners Falls, Mass.#

Siskiyou Daily News-6/15/09
By Brad Cain

The Oregon House approved a bill Friday to impose a surcharge on PacifiCorp customers to pay for removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help restore salmon runs.

The legislation supports a tentative agreement among farmers, fishermen, tribes and others to settle a lengthy water struggle in the Klamath Basin.

Under the measure, up to $200 million would be collected from customers of PacifiCorp, the utility that owns the dams. The company estimates the average residential customer would pay an extra $1.50 a month over 10 years.

The measure, which now returns to the Senate for action on House amendments, was approved 34-24 over the objections of some Republican lawmakers.

Under the legislation, the utility surcharge would raise $180 million from Oregon customers of PacifiCorp, while another $20 million would come from the utility’s California customers.

Further, the state of California is expected to ask voters to approve up to $250 million in bonds to cover the rest of the tab for dam removal.#

The gates at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam are set to be lowered at midnight Monday, filling Lake Red Bluff by later that afternoon.

The Bureau of Reclamation said the gates will be closed on the diversion dam for about two-anda- half months this year for agricultural purposes and will be raised to provide unimpeded fish passage for salmon, steelhead and sturgeon at the end of August.

The bureau announced the decision Tuesday following last week's release of a federal biological opinion, which allows the dam to lower its gates on an abbreviated schedule for the next three years.

The latest opinion comes after years of court battles over the diversion dam and other Central Valley water operations' affects on endangered and threatened species of migrating fish in the Sacramento River.

In July 2008, a federal judge ruled the Diversion Dam posed jeopardy to several species of fish and called for a new biological opinion to be made to address the problems.

Over the last several years the gates had typically been lowered in mid-May, which provided irrigation water by filling the Corning and Tehama-Colusa canal systems.

The uncertainty and delay of opening the gates this year prompted the Nitro Nationals Boat Drag races, held on Lake Red Bluff, to be canceled.

The recent biological opinion allows for the gates to be closed June 15 through Aug. 31 each year through 2011.

By 2012 water officials estimate

the Red Bluff Pumping Plant will be operational. It will divert water to the canals and utilize pumping screens to minimize impacts on fish.

The opinion allows for the bureau to request a one-year extension of the dam's operations should the pumping plant not be ready.#

The Karuk Tribe has joined fishermen and conservationists in a taxpayer lawsuit against the California Department of Fish and Game claiming tax money is being used illegally to fund suction dredge gold mining in California rivers.

It’s about fish and mercury. The mercury is leftover from Gold Rush days when it was used to collect gold from sluice boxes lining northern California’s rivers.

An estimated 26 million pounds of mercury were used, 13 million pounds of which were lost to the waters and soil of the Sierra Nevada and Trinity mountains.

Suction dredges powered by gasoline or diesel engines are mounted on floating platforms. Gravel and sand are sucked up from the river bottom and sifted for gold.

A Karuk tribal member says dredging, a virtual vacuuming of river bottoms, disturbs the deposited mercury and re-introduces it into the food chain.

“They call it ‘flowering’,” Karuk spokesman Craig Tucker said. “Mercury likes to coagulate in clumps. Run it through a dredge and it sprays the mercury in a fine mist back into the water. It’s picked up by fish that people might catch and eat. Swimmers, kayakers and rafters downstream from dredging could come in contact with it. Not only is dredging creating problems for fish, it’s creating problems for people.”

In the late 1990s mining clubs were formed made up of a group of mining claims. Membership gave miners access to a number of claims. “What we saw was a big proliferation in the amount of dredging going on,” Tucker said. “What had been something with a nominal impact became significant just through the volume of gold miners in the area.”

In 1997, coho salmon were listed as threatened on the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangered species list, and lamprey were listed as a species of special concern.

“That should have triggered a rewrite of California Department of Fish and Game mining rules and regulations – but it didn’t,” Tucker adds.

“We ended up suing Fish and Game in 2005 for failure to update their rules and regulations. We won and the court directed them to rewrite the rules by June of 2008. They didn’t. So we won, but we didn’t win, so what should we do now?”

At the beginning of the year, the Karuk Tribe filed a petition with the director of Fish and Game saying, in effect, “You have emergency powers to shut down fishing when fish populations are in an emergency state; you should also shut down dredge mining.

When fishermen can’t fish, other users who have a negative impact on fish populations should also have to restrict their activities,” Tucker said.

“They refused to entertain our petition.”

Now the tribe has brought a taxpayer lawsuit. Joining them in the action are Friends of the North Fork, a conservation group, and California Trout, an organization representing fishermen.

“In California it is illegal to use taxpayer money for illegal things, and what we are alleging is that according to their own rules and regulations Fish and Game can’t give out dredging permits unless they have proven that the activity does not create harm for fish,” Tucker said.

“In our original lawsuit, Fish and Game’s own biologist testified that dredging has harmful effects on fish. We think there should be a moratorium on all dredging permits until they’ve done the science.”

In a collateral move, Sen. Patricia Wiggins, D-Calif., has introduced SB 670, a bill that would impose a dredging moratorium. “It picked up Republican votes getting out of the first committee, the Senate’s Natural Resources Committee,” Tucker said. “I think we have a good opportunity with the legislature and a good opportunity with the court system. It’s a problem we’re intent on solving and we’re going to use every strategy at our disposal to solve it.” SB 670 recently passed the California Senate by a 31-8 vote.

“Changes mandated by the Karuk Tribe’s successful 2005 lawsuit are just now getting started,” Elizabeth “Izzy” Martin, CEO of the Sierra Fund, said. “They expect to be done in January of 2011.”

A proposed state Senate bill calls for a moratorium until those new regulations are in effect. Martin hopes the moratorium will be in place before the summertime suction dredging season begins.

“We are concerned that the well-documented impacts of suction dredging on water quality and endangered species will continue. ... despite evidence of the harm.” Last year the Sierra Fund published a ground-breaking report, “Mining’s Toxic Legacy,” on the effects of toxins, especially mercury, left behind in the rush for gold.

In April 2008, state and federal agencies closed California waters to recreational and commercial salmon fishing due to declining fish populations.

“Until major river restoration projects are done we’ll have a salmon population crisis in California,” Tucker concludes. “The suction dredgers are one of many factors contributing to the decline of salmon.

If we end suction dredge mining, it’s not going to be any kind of a silver bullet solution. But, it’s something we can do today to start putting our rivers back together.”#

With fingers crossed, state officials Thursday dumped about a half-million young salmon into Mare Island Strait as part of an ongoing effort to keep the fish from going extinct.

If all goes according to plan, the smolts will swim into the San Pablo Bay and the Pacific Ocean. There they will fend for themselves for three years before -- officials hope -- about 1 percent will return to spawn.

The release follows last year's record-low fall run of Central Valley chinook salmon. "We were at an all-time low of 66,000 fish returning last year," Department of Fish and Game spokesman Harry Morse said. "Hopefully we'll see an upswing."

To restore salmon populations, officials have released more than 30 million smolts into coastal waters during the past 10 years. This year, the Department of Fish and Game plans to release nearly 15 million tiny salmon.

Also, state officials have closed the salmon season for the second consecutive year. The lost seasons have cost the California economy $279 million and 2,690 jobs, according to the department.

Thursday's salmon release was one of several performed this year in different sites. For the second consecutive year, officials used Mare Island in Vallejo as a staging area, mainly because the piers are easily accessible by tanker trucks carrying fish.

Using giant hoses, workers poured the smolts into floating nets. Then boats pulled the cargo into open waters and released it with the tide.

Said Morse: "If they get food ... they will return."

Scientists say adverse ocean conditions and low levels of food have contributed to the decline of salmon.

Delta water deliveries to farms and cities is also considered a key factor in the salmon collapse.

Addressing the issue, federal regulators Thursday levied new rules on Delta water management aimed at ensuring more cold water is available for spawning fish.

The new regulations are expected to cut water supplies from the Delta by 5 percent to 7 percent, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"It's been death by a thousand cuts," Fish and Game official Neil Manji said. "And Mother Nature was a big issue last year."#

Redding Record Searchlight-6/05/09
By Dylan Darling

A federal plan to revive salmon in the Sacramento River could put the fish upstream of Shasta Dam for the first time in seven decades and would mean the end of Lake Red Bluff.

The National Marine Fisheries Service made the two recommendations in its 800-page biological opinion for the Central Valley Project released Thursday.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Shasta Dam and the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, has tentatively approved the federal court-ordered plan while it reviews the lengthy document.

The Keswick and Shasta dams have blocked spawning beds on the Upper Sacramento and McCloud rivers north of Shasta Dam since the bureau began construction on the dams in the 1930s.

Federal and state scientists will develop a pilot project to truck fish trapped in the lower Sacramento around the dam by 2011, said Maria Rea, supervisor of the fisheries service's Sacramento office. A permanent plan for moving the fish past the two dams should be created between 2012 and 2015, she said.

Shasta Dam consists of 6,270,000 cubic yards of concrete, making it the second most voluminous in the country. Just below it, Keswick Dam regulates the flows from Shasta into the Sacramento River.

Downriver, the agency recommends that the bureau block off the Red Bluff Diversion year-round after 2012, Rea said. The change would end the seasonal formation of Lake Red Bluff.

After the bureau built the dam in the 1960s, the agency kept the eleven 18-foot-tall gates down year-round, forming the shallow, six-mile-long lake. The dam kept salmon and other migrating fish from swimming up the Sacramento for more than two decades.

Starting in late 1986, the bureau opened the gates intermittently to help salmon. Since 1993, the gates have been up from mid-September to mid-May.

As the lake became a fixture for Red Bluff, so did drag boat races held each Memorial Day weekend on its flat water. But the fisheries service has advised the bureau to shorten the lake's season this year to June 15 to September 15.

Ali Abassi, whose company ran the Nitro Nationals Drag Boat Festival, canceled the event for the first time in more than 30 years this year.

He said he's still hoping to talk to federal officials about the possibility of temporarily lowering the gates to form the lake for the race.

"We'll have to see," he said.

But the fisheries service recommends that the bureau keep the gates up throughout the year.

Rea said May is a crucial time for salmon in the Sacramento River.

"Our analysis found that that is really at the height of the spring spawning season," she said.

The dam existed to supply water for farmers supplied by the Tehama-Colusa Canal, Rea said. By 2012, the canal should be filled with river water via a pumping station built using $110 million in economic stimulus funds.

Without Lake Red Bluff, the city will have to find a way to make up for the influx of visitors that had been drawn annually by the boat races, said Martin Nichols, Red Bluff's city manager.

The event brought about 30,000 spectators to town each year. This Memorial Day weekend was different, he said.

"It was quiet," he said.#

Endangered salmon and steelhead in Central Valley rivers must have access again to historic spawning grounds above major California dams, according to sweeping new federal rules that could boost water bills for millions statewide.

The National Marine Fisheries Service unveiled the complex set of rules, called a biological opinion, Thursday in response to a lawsuit by environmental groups. Affected species are winter- and spring-run salmon, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.

The rules require the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to restore access for fish to waters above Nimbus and Folsom dams on the American River, Shasta Dam on the Sacramento, and New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus.

Those dams were built decades ago without fish ladders and have blocked access to hundreds of miles of historic spawning grounds.

So dire is the situation that experts have concluded the rules are also necessary to save an endangered population of killer whales that range from British Columbia to California and primarily eat salmon. If California's salmon disappear, killer whales could be next.

"They've addressed the big issues," said Kate Poole, attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There's no question any more about the fact that the Bay-Delta ecosystem is in dire need of significant changes and fixes. This is one big step to do that."

The environmental group American Rivers, not a party to the lawsuit, said the new rules are unprecedented.

"This is the most significant single order for fish passage that we're aware of," said Steve Rothert, the group's California director.

Water agencies can appeal the rules. They argue that, over the long term, a state and federal habitat conservation plan they're now drafting will achieve the same goals, yet allow for more flexibility in managing water.

Under Thursday's new rules, water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta must be cut 5 percent to 7 percent under certain conditions, which may worsen water shortages in some areas.

The new federal rules mark the latest episode in the drama over a California aquatic environment spinning out of control. It comes on the heels of similar rules imposed in December to protect the threatened Delta smelt, which also reduced water availability for farms and cities.

Officials on Thursday said Californians may have simply pushed the limit of the state's available freshwater supplies.

"You're going to see less reliable water as it relates to farming in the Central Valley, and it will become more difficult to find replacement water for urban growth," said Donald Glaser, the Bureau of Reclamation's regional director. "We have to just find better ways to make efficient use of the water we have."

The rules also require changes at salmon hatcheries, including Nimbus Hatchery on the American River, to improve survival of wild salmon.

Reclamation also must adopt a new water flow standard for the American River, and find a way to flood the Yolo Bypass more often to improve salmon habitat.

But retrofitting the dams for fish passage is by far the most costly and significant measure. Building traditional fish ladders is likely to cost billions of dollars, though the rules don't require this. Instead, the fisheries service is ordering a multi-agency task force to recommend ways to restore fish above the dams by 2016, and then to carry out the best options by 2020.

The ruling also governs water operations of the California Department of Water Resources. DWR will share the cost of the new orders, agency spokesman Matt Notley said.

Glaser said costs will likely be passed down through water contractors to consumers throughout California. This could drive up water bills for millions of farmers and urban Californians from Red Bluff to San Diego.

"We are acutely aware of the significance of this opinion for the region's farmers and residents," said Maria Rea, manager of the fisheries service's Sacramento office, which prepared the rules. "What is at stake here is not just survival of the species but the health of the entire ecosystems that depend on them."

NRDC and other environmental and fishing groups sued the government to overturn prior federal rules protecting Central Valley salmon and steelhead. Subsequent investigations showed those rules, adopted during the Bush administration, were influenced by politics and lacked scientific rigor.

Thursday's new rules went through two independent reviews, but that didn't stop politicians and interest groups from pushing back.

"This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world's eighth largest economy," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.

Western Growers, a farm group, said the rules would cause "real and very serious harms to the human species."

Others, however, said restoring salmon could bring enormous benefits to the environment and the economy.

Will Templin, of the Upper American River Foundation, said there is still good habitat to welcome back migrating fish. A recent genetic study, Templin said, showed some rainbow trout on the upper American River are actually remnants of steelhead that once migrated from the ocean.

"For me, it'll feel like something long overdue," he said.#

DWR News Release-6/04/09

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today responded to the new biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) intended to protect salmon and several other species.

“Today’s Biological Opinion on salmon reaffirms the need for a comprehensive solution to the water and environmental conflicts in the Delta,” said DWR Director Lester A. Snow. “The new Opinion, which could reduce Delta export on average by about 300,000 to 500,000 acre feet, further chips away at our ability to provide a reliable water supply for California. A multi-species approach, as envisioned in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, is the best approach to achieve habitat and species conservation and a reliable water supply.”

NMFS (NOAA Fisheries) calculates that its biological opinion that addresses salmon, steelhead and green sturgeon will reduce by 5 to 7 percent combined the amount of water state and federal projects will be able to deliver from the Delta to the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California. DWR’s initial estimates show the average year impacts closer to 10 percent. That is in addition to current pumping restrictions imposed by biological opinions to protect Delta smelt and other species.

DWR will continue to work with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NMFS, California Fish and Game and others on the BDCP steering committee to develop a collaborative habitat conservation plan under the Endangered Species Act and the California Natural Community Conservation Planning Act, with the goal of creating a long-term strategy for Delta sustainability that complies with state and federal environmental laws.#

NOAA News Release-6/04/09

NOAA released its final biological opinion today that finds the water pumping operations in California’s Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of several threatened and endangered species under the jurisdiction of NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

The bureau has provisionally accepted NOAA’s recommended changes to its water pumping operations, and said it will begin to implement its near-term elements as it carefully evaluates the overall opinion.

Federal biologists and hydrologists concluded that current water pumping operations in the Federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project should be changed to ensure survival of winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, the southern population of North American green sturgeon and Southern Resident killer whales, which rely on Chinook salmon runs for food.

Two independent peer review panels were conducted to ensure the opinion is solidly grounded in the best available science. The package was peer reviewed by the CalFed Independent Science Board and the Center for Independent Experts.

“What is at stake here is not just the survival of species but the health of entire ecosystems and the economies that depend on them,” said Rod Mcinnis, southwest regional director for NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

“We are ready to work with our federal and state partners, farmers and residents to find solutions that benefit the economy, environment and Central Valley families.”

As part of the final opinion, NOAA’s Fisheries Service has provided a number of ways the bureau can operate the water system to benefit the species, including increasing the cold water storage and flow rates.

Such methods will enhance egg incubation and juvenile fish rearing, as well as improve the spawning habitat and the downstream migration of juvenile fish.

Changing water operations will impact an estimated five to seven percent of the available annual water on average moved by the federal and state pumps, or about 330,000 acre feet per year. Agricultural water use in California is roughly 30 million acre feet per year. Water operations will not be affected by the opinion immediately and will be tiered to water year type. The opinion includes exception procedures for drought and health and safety issues.

In addition, the opinion calls for the bureau to develop a genetics management plan and an acoustic tagging program to evaluate the effectiveness of the actions and pilot passage programs at Folsom and Shasta reservoirs to reintroduce fish to historic habitat.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will mitigate some costs resulting from the opinion’s recommended actions. The Department of the Interior identified $109 million to construct a Red Bluff Pumping Plant that will allow the old Red Bluff Diversion Dam to be operated in a "gates out" position to allow salmon and green sturgeon unimpeded passage. In addition, the Act contains $26 million to restore Battle Creek, a salmon tributary to the Sacramento River.

The water projects included in the opinion are Shasta Dam at the upper headwaters of the Sacramento River, Folsom and Nimbus dams on the American River, and New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus River. The opinion also covers the state and federal export facilities in the Delta, the Nimbus hatchery on the American River, and the operations of diversion structures, including the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the mainstem Sacramento and the Delta Cross Channel gates in the Delta.

The bureau initiated the formal phase of consultation in May 2008 and then cooperated with NOAA’s Fisheries Service throughout the development of the biological opinion and alternative actions in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Departments of Water Resources and Fish and Game.

A copy of the final biological opinion and alternative actions may be found at http://swr.nmfs.noaa.gov/ocap.htm.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.#

The Redding Record-Searchlight – 5/28/09
By Dylan Darling

If the fragile Delta smelt winds up going extinct, the species could be restored where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers merge using a population being bred in the north state.

Scientists at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery, a small operation nestled on the Sacramento River close to Shasta Dam, have reared the fish since last year. There are now 1,400 of the tiny fish at the hatchery, and the goal is to create a stock of thousands.

The project is expected to continue while the smelt remain in danger of sliding into extinction, said Scott Hamelberg, hatchery manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We are all, of course, keeping our fingers crossed, hoping that doesn't happen," Hamelberg said.

Although the hatchery's crew members have mostly worked with winter-run chinook salmon that can be more than 30 inches long and weigh more than 30 pounds, they've learned how to handle the smelt. The small fish usually grows only to 3 inches in length, weighs a couple of grams and usually lives for about a year or two.

"You just do everything smaller," said John Rueth, assistant manager at the hatchery. "They are actually very similar to salmon."

Spawning the smelt requires squeezing eggs out of the females and sperm out of the males. Although, unlike with salmon, Rueth said the work on the smelt requires tweezers.

Also unlike the salmon, the smelt accumulating in the tanks at the hatchery are not for release, he said. Instead, they and another population being bred by University of California at Davis researchers in Byron are being held in case the wild population completely disappears.

Having the smelt living about 200 miles from the Delta at Livingston Stone allows the population here to also serve as a backup for the Byron stock in case there is an earthquake, power failure or other problem that kills the fish, said Bob Clarke, fisheries program manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service's regional office in Sacramento.

"You don't want to put all your fish in one spot," Clarke said.

The agency has two hatcheries in the state, Livingston and Coleman National Fish Hatchery near Anderson. Because of the problems with the smelt, the green sturgeon and Sacramento perch, the agency is considering building a new hatchery in the Delta, Clarke said.

He said a new hatchery could cost as much as $20 million, but it could be years before it's built.

In the meantime, the smelt safety net will stay in the north state.

"For years, they'll be breeding (the Delta smelt) at Livingston Stone," Clarke said.#

The Associated Press – 5/1/09

Washington -- The Commerce Department released $53 million to Oregon and California on Thursday to help West Coast salmon fishermen after the third fishery failure in four years.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke declared the latest disaster in a letter to the governors of the two states. He cited a continued low number of fish returning to the Sacramento River in California. The river is the second-largest producer of salmon on the West Coast.

Locke released $53.1 million in unspent money from a fishery disaster declared last year. A total of $46.4 million will go to California and $6.7 million to Oregon.

Locke's decision opens the way for Congress to allocate more money for salmon fishermen. Congress appropriated $170 million in disaster aid in 2008 and $60 million in 2006.

Fishing for chinook salmon, also known as king salmon, has been closed for months off California and most of Oregon because dangerously low numbers of fish are returning to spawn in the Sacramento.#

Associated Press – 4/29/09
By H. Josef Hebert, AP

(04-29) 04:00 PDT Washington - --

Federal agencies again will have to consult with government wildlife experts before taking actions that could have an impact on threatened or endangered species.

Crude rises despite large inventory build up 04.29.09

The Obama administration said Tuesday it was overturning a rule change made in the final weeks of the Bush presidency.

Officials at the Interior and Commerce departments said they have reimposed the consultation requirement that assured the government's top biologists involved in species protection will have a say in federal action that could harm plants, animals and fish that are at risk of extinction.

Such consultation had been required for more than two decades until the Bush administration made it optional in rules issued in December, just before the change in administrations. Environmentalists argued that the change severely reduced the protection afforded under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"By rolling back this eleventh-hour regulation, we are ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to receive the full protection of the law" and that top science will be the foundation of the decision making, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke added: "Our decision affirms the administration's commitment to using sound science to promote conservation and protect the environment."

Agencies in the two department's share responsibility for managing and enforcing the Endangered Species Act and employ the government's top scientists in species protection.

In March, President Obama issued an executive order putting the Bush rule change on hold. Congress followed by giving specific authorization for the Interior and Commerce departments to revoke the action, avoiding a long and complicated regulatory process.

The end of the requirement - dating to 1986 - of interagency consultation with the Interior and Commerce agencies on endangered species protection produced a firestorm in Congress and within the environmental and conservation communities.

For years, agencies involved in thousands of federal activities - from issuing clean air rules to approving highway or dam construction- have had to consult not only their own experts but also biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ensure the activities did not harm plants, animals or fish that are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Developers and business groups argued that the consultation caused unneeded delays and increased the cost of projects. The Bush administration made the independent consultation optional, arguing that it was a minor shift in policy.

In California, as a result of the rule's reinstatement, federal agencies will have to get approval from government scientists for logging, cross-country motorcycle trips, grazing and other activities that could impinge on imperiled species.

"Any time federal agencies are going to permit development around Palm Springs in desert tortoise territory or livestock grazing in the Sierra Nevada near the big horn sheep, they would need Fish and Wildlife Service approval," said Noah Greenwald, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, a national wildlife advocacy group.

One impetus for the rule change was the Bush administration's concern that the species act might be used as a back door to regulate greenhouse gases to combat climate change. The Interior Department earlier had declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice, a change attributed to global warming.

Under the reinstated rule, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must consult with federal scientists over the effects of climate change on the habitat of chinook salmon and delta smelt when allocating water to California cities and farms, Greenwald said. #

SAN ANDREAS - Millions of dollars in federal money will begin flowing into high Sierra meadows this year in hopes that those meadows can be restored so they will store more water until late summer, when thirsty farms and cities downstream need it most.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation - a quasi-private foundation created by Congress that channels both federal and private dollars to habitat work - recently decided to make restoration of eroded meadows in California's Sierra Nevada mountains one of its priorities.

Although various species of birds, fish and animals would benefit, that isn't the biggest news. The big news is that such work may be a less expensive way to expand water storage in some cases than building new dams and reservoirs.

According to a Sierra Nevada Meadow Restoration draft business plan completed by the foundation in March, repairing all of the degraded Sierra meadows in California could increase late-summer water storage by the equivalent of 50,000 to 500,000 acre-feet per year.

At the high end, that's the equivalent of building a medium-large reservoir larger than Camanche Reservoir on the Mokelumne River. And the foundation said that based on recent restoration projects, the additional water would cost $100 to $250 per acre-foot over the first 10 years, significantly less than the $330 to $685 per acre-foot cost of water from a reservoir proposed in Colusa County.

An acre-foot is enough water to cover one acre one foot deep, and is generally considered about enough water to supply two typical California homes for a year.

The Foundation plans to spend $10 million to $15 million in the next decade on such projects, and has set a goal of improving water storage in Sierra Nevada meadows by at least 20,000 acre-feet by 2014.

"I am going to do all that I can to get even more federal dollars directed toward this," said Timothy Male, director of wildlife and habitat conservation for the foundation.

Ultimately, the foundation hopes to leverage $200 million for meadow restoration. That's because a variety of other interests, including ranchers whose cattle graze in the meadows and water agencies downstream, also would benefit from healthier meadows. Meadow restoration is called for by California's State Water Plan, for example.

And that, in turn, could mean jobs as heavy equipment operators and work crews move soil and repair vegetation and stream beds.

"Certainly up in the Stanislaus National forest and surrounding areas there are a large number of meadows that would be eligible for that kind of funding," said Barry Hill, regional hydrologist for the Forest Service's regional office in Vallejo.

"The idea would be to store more water in the meadows so it doesn't run off right away in the winter and the springtime," Hill said. Hill added that his office has a grant right now to pay for a detailed study to calculate more precisely how much additional water could be stored statewide through such work.

One likely project here is known as Leland Gully, which runs through a meadow area near Leland Creek and Herring Creek northeast of Strawberry in the Stanislaus National Forest. Leland Gully is on a short list of 27 sites that the foundation's draft plan deems "ready-to-proceed meadow restoration projects."

"We are going to be completing the design this summer," said Tracy Weddle, hydrologist for the Summit Ranger District of the Stanislaus National Forest.

Weddle said Leland Gully is 1,700 feet long and averages 10 feet in depth and 35 feet in width. She said restoration techniques could include transporting massive amounts of soil and wood to fill the gully, or creating a series of "plugs" in the gully that would form ponds behind them.

Either way, the water table in the meadow would rise to its old level, invasive weeds would be discouraged, and the area would stay wet until late in the summer. Weddle said she is applying for a variety of grants to fund the roughly $150,000 project and hopes to do the restoration work in 2010.

Wildlife also benefits from meadow restoration. In the past, groups such as the California Deer Association and the Mule Deer Foundation have provided both money and volunteers for meadow restoration work in the Stanislaus National Forest, Weddle said.

And research done recently on Stanislaus confirms other benefits, Weddle said. "That research showed that functioning meadows stored more water and stored more organic carbon than nonfunctioning meadows."#

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the funding at Sacramento's Mather Field, after an aerial tour of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. He was joined by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leading state and federal legislators.

Funding will be directed at projects overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It includes $31 million for safety projects at Folsom Dam, mainly to assist ongoing construction of a new flood-control spillway.

Another $4 million will pay for planning related to a habitat conservation plan in the Delta, where a controversial diversion canal is proposed to address water supply and habitat concerns.

The biggest allocation is $110 million to build new pumps and fish screens at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the Sacramento River. The facility diverts water into the Tehama-Colusa Canal to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland, mostly on the west side of the Sacramento Valley.

The archaic facility is the largest unscreened water diversion left on the Sacramento River and is blamed for killing endangered salmon and sturgeon. Improvements were authorized in the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act but never funded.

The Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority is ready to start construction this spring, said General Manager Jeffrey Sutton.

"It's been a big problem for salmon and steelhead and sturgeon, which try to migrate past the dam, for a long time," said Kate Poole, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is the big sum of money they needed to actually fully construct the project."

Perhaps more important was Salazar's promise on Wednesday that the federal government will again assume a large role in helping solve California's water problems.

Reclamation's California projects are some of its biggest, irrigating nearly half the produce sold in the United States.

Yet the federal government has largely stood on the sidelines for nearly a decade while California struggled with its water infrastructure problems.

Salazar announced the funding after touring the Delta by helicopter with Schwarzenegger. The Delta is the locus of the state's water and environmental problems, where declining fish species and drought have reduced water deliveries.

Reclamation and the state operate separate Delta pump systems that provide water to 23 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland.

"The Delta is a stark reminder that California's water supply has reached its limits," Salazar said. "It is time to make hard choices, and it is time for the federal government to re-engage in full partnership."

That was music to the ears of state officials, including Lester Snow, California's Water Resources boss.

Snow was in charge of the CalFed Bay Delta Authority in the 1990s, when the federal government made big promises about helping California solve the Delta's problems. In subsequent years, however, it largely failed to meet funding agreements.

"It's a sea change in the way we're going to deal with Delta issues," Snow said Wednesday. "We have a secretary of Interior showing a personal interest in these very difficult resource issues we have in California."

Other funding as part of Wednesday's announcement includes:

• $40 million for drought relief projects such as drilling new wells and assisting with water transfers, especially in the beleaguered San Joaquin Valley, where Delta water cutbacks have caused mass crop fallowing and unemployment.

• Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, will get $26 million for salmon and steelhead habitat restoration.

The state is also now eligible for another $135 million in federal grants for water recycling projects. This brings California's potential stimulus water grants to about $400 million.

Jay Lund, a UC Davis professor of civil and environmental engineering, said stimulus money will help generate jobs in construction, among the hardest-hit sectors in California's downturn.

But he said Californians should not fool themselves into thinking this money will solve their water woes; the problems are too big.

"There will never be enough federal money to cover all of California's water problems," he said. "Local interests will find it's ultimately in their interest to pay either higher local water rates or higher local taxes, because there's just a lot to be done." #

The Los Angeles Times - 4/9/09
By Maria L. La Ganga

Reporting from Millbrae, Calif. — Federal fishery managers voted unanimously Wednesday to ban commercial salmon fishing off the coast of California for the second year in a row, a move some fishermen fear could imperil the industry's future in the name of saving it.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council also severely limited commercial fishing off the coast of Oregon for the second year and took a deep bite out of recreational salmon fishing in California, restricting that popular pastime to a 10-day window and a 130-mile stretch from the Oregon border south.

Canceling the commercial season was the only tack to take "when your bread-and-butter stock is not producing," said David Bitts, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns.

"But if we don't go fishing next year," warned Bitts, a fisherman from Eureka, Calif., "we have to start thinking that salmon fishing in California is over."

Only about 122,000 of the prized Chinook -- also known as wild king salmon -- are expected to journey up the Sacramento River to spawn this fall. Although that's nearly twice as many as in last year's dismal season, it is barely enough to sustain the salmon population.

"It's terrible, to say the least," said David Goldenberg, chief executive of the California Salmon Council. "But we're going to have to deal with it, if the numbers of returning salmon are so low fishermen don't want to fish it."

But "dealing with it" could be easier said than done, and fishermen are not the only ones affected by the shutdown. The whole salmon infrastructure will take yet another hit, from gear stores and ice houses to fuel docks and processing plants. State officials estimated that the 2008 fishing ban resulted in a loss of $255 million and 2,263 jobs.

"Things are very fragile as far as the infrastructure is concerned," said Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay, Calif., commercial fisherman and salmon advisor to the management council. "There's a lot of support businesses that will either relocate or go under."

The salmon industry received a miniature federal bailout after the 2008 season was canceled -- $170 million in emergency aid, of which about $120 million was disbursed to everyone from fishermen to charter boat owners.

"It's been a godsend for the entire industry," said MacLean, who traveled with others in the industry to Washington last year to lobby Congress for assistance. "We wouldn't be considering ourselves still fishermen right now if it wasn't for that."

It is unclear whether more aid will be available to help assuage a second year of pain. At the very least, the industry hopes last year's leftovers will be distributed to keep fishermen and others afloat.

There is no single reason for California and Oregon's flagging Chinook fishery, but rather a plethora of unfortunate circumstances.

Recent ocean conditions have been too warm and there has not been enough food for so-called juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon, according to a National Marine Fisheries Service report.

MacLean also points to record water deliveries to Southern California, habitat destruction caused by urbanization, pollution from agricultural chemicals and mismanagement of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

"There's no one smoking gun," MacLean said, "but there are a lot of spent shell casings all over the place."

Washington's fisheries are healthy enough this season for commercial and recreational fishing of both Chinook and coho salmon, although there are quotas in place.

The big question is whether the salmon population will rebound enough in 2010 for salmon fishing to resume in California and Oregon.

Peter Moyle, a professor of fish biology at UC Davis, is dubious. "Ocean conditions are pretty good right now, and salmon numbers are creeping up again," he wrote in an e-mail, "but there is no guarantee such trends will lead to fishable populations in the next 2-3 years, or beyond."

Just before the unanimous vote, the council's California representative said she hoped 2010 would be a better year.

"It's very unfortunate we have no real ocean fisheries in California," said Marija Vojkovich of the California Department of Fish and Game, ruing what she called the state's "commercial nonseason."

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is not what we deal with next year."#

SACRAMENTO — Using water in sprinklers is the most effective way to protect the multimillion dollar grape crops in Sonoma and Mendocino counties from frost. But growers turning on their pumps can also cause a rapid drop in the Russian River that can strand and kill endangered and threatened salmon, state water regulators were told Tuesday.

The state Water Resources Control Board held a workshop to discuss the use of water for frost protection, acting on a request from National Marine Fisheries Services following the frequent and deadly frosts that occurred a year ago.

The fisheries service is asking the water board to enact an immediate ban on all diversions from the Russian River for frost protection.

“Coho population has collapsed and they are practically extinct,” said David Hines, of the national service. “Chinook and steelhead are doing better, but they are low and at risk for extinction.

Growers and North Bay water officials, however, said that frost protection was necessary.

“You have to frost protect or you lose your crop, or a substantial part of it,” said Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Grape Commission.

They asked instead for the chance to work together to better forecast when frost is expected to help with releases from Lake Mendocino, while looking ahead to putting more gauges in the river to better monitor levels. Also, to put telemetry on growers pumps to tell when and how much is pumped and eventually build off-stream reservoirs.

“We don’t need a prohibition, we don’t need a water master, we need better tools, we need more information,” said Sean White, general manager of the Mendocino County Flood Control and Irrigation District.

There were two kills of fish on the Russian River caused by rapid drops in river level last April because of water being pumped out for frost protection, spurring the need to come up with different ways to handle frost protection, said Derek Roy, a special agent for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know the total number, but due to the life cycle of fish, we know that the numbers were large and significant,” Roy said.

He acknowledged that frost protection is an integral part of grape growing, but “it’s our job to protect the fish,” Roy said.

One of the kills was on the Russian River in Mendocino and involved coho salmon, which are listed as endangered. The second was in Sonoma County and involved Chinook, which are listed as threatened.

Whatever action the water board takes would affect the Russian River watershed, which covers 40,000 acres of grapes in the Alexander, Dry Creek, Knights and Russian River valleys, which is two-thirds of Sonoma County’s grape-growing area.

In Mendocino County, if would affect an industry that has a $70 million crop, employs 1,000 people and generates $220 million for the economy, said Glenn McGourty of the UC Cooperative Extension.

McGourty said the April 20, 2008 frost that caused so much damage saw temperatures drop to 23 degrees, for which there is no protection that would have been effective in preventing damage.

He also said that in Mendocino County, there are now grape crops planted in areas that are susceptible to frost, areas which would not have been planted 50 years ago.

Using sprinklers for frost protection can take 400 acre-feet of water, but that one was so severe it took 800 acre-feet.

McGourty also said that forecasting is so accurate now they can predict a frost two to three days ahead of time, allowing time for the Sonoma County Water Agency to release extra water from Lake Mendocino.

“We knew a freeze was coming in. We didn’t know how bad it would be,” McGourty said.

McGourty also said it is apparent that Lake Mendocino is critically low and water is a scarce commodity.

“We would have a really tough time if we can’t frost protect, the game would be over before it begins,” McGourty said. “We’d rather struggle later in the year with irrigation.”#

The Associated Press – 4/7/09
By Garance Burke

California's two longest rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, were named the nation's most endangered waterways by an environmental group that considers them threatened by outdated water management and poor flood planning.

American Rivers, a conservation group that compiles the annual list, chose the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system because its collapse could threaten the water supply of 25 million Californians, flood the state's capital and damage the delicate freshwater delta where the two rivers twine.

"The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is on the verge of losing important fish species, and the communities that surround it already don't have adequate protection from their levees," said Steve Rothert, California director of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

State water officials did not immediately comment on the new report.

The Sacramento and the San Joaquin meet in the delta, a freshwater estuary surrounded by an aging network of fragile levees. That system has harmed the rivers' floodplains, a crucial habitat for fish and other species that use that area to feed and reproduce, Rothert said.

The delta also forms the heart of the state's water-delivery system, where snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada is rerouted through canals and pumps to reach millions of Californians and thousands of acres of croplands.

President Barack Obama signed a wilderness bill last week that implements a 2006 legal settlement to bring water and Chinook salmon back to a portion of the state's second-longest river, the San Joaquin. It provides about $390 million in federal and state funds in the next decade.#

RED BLUFF — The Red Bluff City Council agreed Wednesday to drop its lawsuit against the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, as the two sides reached an agreement to work together to mitigate impacts caused by federally mandated operational changes at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

The canal authority will pay the city $30,000 and offer other resources to be used in exploring ways to offset the loss of recreational activities at Lake Red Bluff.

The seasonal lake is formed when the dam gates are lowered. The raised water level allows water to flow into the canal.

However the dam's impact on migratory fish have limited its operation, and a pending court case might not allow the gates to be lowered at all this year.

The city agreed not only to drop its lawsuit, but support the canal authority's efforts to secure funding for a water pumping and fish screen project.

That $200 million project would replace the dam's role in getting water into the canal that irrigates 150,000 acres of farmland.

Both sides also praised Assemblyman Jim Nielsen and especially Congressman Wally Herger for helping reach the compromise.

Councilman Forrest Flynn said Herger's commitment to look after the interests of the city and not just the canal authority was a deciding factor in his vote.

The council approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the authority by a 3-2 vote.

Councilman James Byrne, who voted no, said the lawsuit was aimed at the wrong people to begin with and ended up costing the city more than it was worth.

"Basically all that's happened is the canal authority gave us $30,000 to go away," Byrne said.

"The city was looking to lose Lake Red Bluff without any compensation or mitigation at all," City Manager Martin Nichols said. "The lawsuit got our needs on the front burner. I really believe it was part of getting the necessary attention of our congressman and our assemblyman."

Herger sent a letter to Nichols on March 18 stating his intentions in helping mitigate the situation.

"I cannot make any financial guarantees to the city, just as I cannot make any financial guarantees to area farmers," the letter said. "What I can guarantee you is my commitment to seek workable solutions for both the city of Red Bluff and the farm community."

Flynn said, while the pumps were not the city's first choice, it would have been selfish to continue blocking a project that will help irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.

As it was before the lawsuit, both sides began shifting their blame toward environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act after the MOU was signed.

Herger on Tuesday testified to the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee much to that point, telling his colleagues about the negative impacts the ESA was having in Red Bluff. #

Two fish traps using large rotating drums to funnel fish into holding tanks have been lowered into the Russian River near Forestville for the annual chinook salmon survey that began Wednesday.

The decadelong survey is the only count of chinook smolt in a California coastal stream, and it has uncovered a healthy population in the Russian River that no one believed existed, said Sonoma County Water Agency biologists.

“We really wouldn’t have known about the chinook presence in the Russian River. The original intent was to collect information on steelhead and coho,” said Dave Manning, a biologist and senior environmental specialist for the Water Agency.

Chinook, as well as coho salmon, are on the federal endangered list.

“We found that there is this self-sustaining population of chinook, they are the largest component of the fishery in the Russian River — and that came as a surprise to many people,” Manning said.

The fish traps are mounted on pontoons and were lifted into the Russian River just downstream of Wohler Bridge on Tuesday.

The drums turn slowly in the river’s current, churning the dark green water and drawing the small fish into holding tanks.

Each day, biologists will empty the tanks to measure and identify the fish. Some will have a fin clipped and then be released upstream to see if they are caught again.

The fish that are scooped up are usually two to three inches and migrating to the ocean, providing an indication of the number of adults that had traveled up the river months earlier to spawn.

Biologists, who said the migration season is just getting started, found a half dozen chinook, two small coho and a few hatchery-raised steelhead in the traps on Wednesday.

The smolt run will last until June, with the peak between mid-April and mid-May.

The traps will catch about 5 to 10 percent of the smolt migrating downstream, along with some 2-year-old steelhead that can be larger, up to 8 inches long.

From the number caught last year, it is estimated about 50,000 were headed to the ocean, compared with 225,000 in 2002, the highest count, and 125,000 in an average year.

“It is the lowest we had, but not that far off of the average for the last 10 years,” said Shawn Chase, a Water Agency biologist and senior environmental specialist.

Using underwater cameras and fish ladders, the Water Agency also counts the number of salmon and steelhead going upstream in the fall. Last year’s total of 1,125 was the lowest ever recorded.

Chase said the problem is that a decade of data is not enough to determine what is average.

“We have a nine-year look at how many chinook, but there is no way to put it into historical context of what it means,” Chase said.#

In one of the first major environmental acts of his presidency, President Barack Obama on Monday signed a far-reaching measure to provide wilderness protection to 2.1 million acres of federal land and restore salmon to California's second-longest river, the San Joaquin.

The law will put billions of gallons of fresh water back into the river, potentially improving drinking water quality for large sections of the Bay Area, including Silicon Valley.

"This legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas for granted," Obama said at a White House ceremony. "But rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share."

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, co-written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, is the largest wilderness preservation bill since President Clinton signed the Desert Protection Act in 1994.

With Obama's signature, wilderness designation was extended to roughly 750,000 acres of federally owned land in California, including Mineral King Valley in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, where Walt Disney attempted to build a massive ski resort in the 1960s; bristlecone pine forests in the Eastern Sierra, and vast expanses of desert, including portions of Joshua Tree National Park.

In wilderness areas, people are allowed to hike, ride horses, camp, hunt and fish. But logging, mining, building roads and riding mountain bikes is banned in such areas. Roughly 109 million acres — or 5 percent of the United States — is federally protected wilderness.

All of the wilderness areas in Monday's 1,200-page bill are already located in national parks, national forests or land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Across many national forests and BLM property, logging, mining and road building is commonplace.

The lands are located in nine states. Outside California, the areas slated for new protections include large swaths of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, wildflower meadows and old growth forests on the flanks of Mt. Hood in Oregon, and maple and oak forests along Appalachian Trail in Virginia's Jefferson National Forest.

More than 1,000 miles of rivers in nearly a dozen states also were designated as "wild and scenic," meaning no dams can be built on them.

The bill cleared the Senate 77-20, and 285-140 in the House. Some Republicans opposed it, saying it placed too many restrictions, particularly oil drilling, on rural landscapes. Portions of the bill had been blocked in recent years under the Bush administration.

Of particular interest Monday in California was the provision about the San Joaquin River.

The river runs 350 miles from the Sierra south of Yosemite National Park, past Fresno to empty into the delta near Stockton. The river was so wide and deep that steamboats plied it in the 1870s and salmon flourished.

But in 1944 the federal government built Friant Dam, near Fresno, to help drought-stricken farmers. The government removed 95 percent of the water from the river, killing all the salmon. Orange and lemon groves now cover 1 million acres from Bakersfield to Fresno. But so much water is still taken out of the river that it runs completely dry in most years for roughly 60 miles.

In 1988, environmentalists sued, arguing the diversions violated endangered species laws. The case dragged on for 18 years.

Faced with a federal judge deciding how much water the farmers would be forced to return to the river, farm groups, environmentalists and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation agreed in 2006 that farmers will take about 18 percent less water. That will return roughly 200,000 acre feet to the river, starting in 2014.

The new law authorizes $400 million from farm water fees and state bond money to restore levees and remove fish barriers in the river, and to provide farmers cheaper water in wet years that they can bank underground to help make up the difference.

"Some of the farmers are opposed to the settlement, but other than going back to court there has been no alternative, so most of them support it," said Ron Jacobsma, general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority, a group of 20 irrigation districts representing 15,000 farmers who depend on the river's water.

Environmentalists see it as a rare chance at rebirth.

"This is taking what many have said is a dead river, and bringing it back to life for over 150 miles," said Monty Schmitt, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco.

Within a decade, some salmon should start to slowly return, said Peter Moyle, a biologist at the University of California-Davis. "Nature is amazingly resilient. This is a huge challenge, but I wouldn't be working on it if I didn't think it was possible," he said.

Although nobody knows the exact impacts yet, Silicon Valley draws half its drinking water from the delta, and putting billions of gallons of freshwater back each year will help dilute pesticides, fertilizer, salt and other impurities there, potentially reducing treatment costs in Santa Clara, Contra Costa and other counties that rely on delta water.

"The better the water quality in the delta, that translates to improved water quality here," said Susan Siravo, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.#