FISHERIES
Comment: Shred the Roadmap to Salmon Extinction

Bruce Babbitt was secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001. He is a former governor and attorney general of Arizona.

Wild salmon are drifting toward extinction in the northern Rocky Mountains. Last month, the Bush administration delivered a decision that will be the death blow, if it stands: four obsolete dams on the Snake River in eastern Washington state will not be dismantled.

The Snake River dams were conceived on a field of industrial dreams. The idea took root in the 1960s, when local boosters persuaded Congress to authorize a huge project to transform Lewiston, Idaho, 400 miles from the Pacific, into a seaport.

The Army Corps of Engineers then proceeded to subdue 140 miles of the wild Snake, remaking it into a slack-water barge channel.

The dream soon turned into a nightmare for people and towns that depend on wild salmon. The fish began disappearing from the lakes and rivers upstream from the dams.

In one year, only a single sockeye managed to find its way up to Redfish Lake, in the Sawtooth Mountains, to spawn.

Prized Chinook runs vanished throughout central Idaho. Fisheries and fishing jobs in the Northwest and as far away as Alaska, tribal fisheries included, declined with them.

Meanwhile, the promised inland seaport boom did not arrive.

The volume of barge shipments never reached expectations, in part because many farmers in the region still found it cheaper to ship by rail to the deep-water port at Tacoma.

That didn't deter the corps, which continues to spend $36 million a year to operate and maintain the four Snake River dams, their locks and the navigation channel.

Yet even at this late date, there is still a chance to save the salmon. The corps, the farmers and the fishermen could cooperate to get the wheat off the river and onto railroads where it belongs.

The track is in place. The mainlines of the Burlington Northern and the Union Pacific run right through this wheat country and then west to ports at Pasco, Vancouver, Tacoma and Portland.

The state of Washington just purchased the short lines that feed the mainlines. This system already ships a lot of local wheat, and with modest further investment, the Burlington Northern says it will be ready and willing to handle what is now shipped by river.

Farmers near the river who use the channel to transport grain are the main voice for keeping the dams, because they save 3 to 7 cents per bushel compared with shipping by rail. What stands between waters alive with salmon and the silent expanses of extinction is that 3 to 7 cents per bushel.

All of this cries out for a common-sense solution that takes all sides into account. There is one that has yet to be considered: Simply shut down the barge traffic, take out the dams and then dedicate a small part of the annual $36 million that would be saved to making up the shipping differential with the farmers.

In contrast, the administration's plan to keep the dams and "save" the salmon has an estimated total cost of $6 billion over the next 10 years. Much of that would go to various schemes to barge, truck, pipe and steer migrating salmon around the dams.

Scientists have repeatedly concluded that these proposals offer little hope of restoring the wild salmon to fishable abundance.

Neither science nor logic - nor economic theory - supports the administration's plan. The dams could be dismantled, the farmers who ship on the river compensated and the relatively small amount of electricity the dams generate replaced, for about one-third of the $6 billion. A restored fishery would be worth at least $1 billion a year to Pacific Northwest states.

The administration's plan is a very expensive roadmap to salmon extinction. It's time to admit a mistake and set about fixing it for the sake of fishermen, farmers, Native Americans, the salmon, the inland Pacific Northwest ecosystem - and the taxpayers.#

U.S. Forest Service officials said the changes, contained in an administrative rewrite of national forest rules expected to take effect next week, would free them from wasteful and time-consuming paperwork and give them the latitude to more quickly respond to evolving forest conditions and scientific research.

"The new rule will improve the way we work with the public by making forest planning more open, understandable and timely," said Forest Service Associate Chief Sally Collins. "It will enable Forest Service experts to respond more rapidly to changing conditions, such as wildfires, and emerging threats, such as invasive species."

But environmentalists and former Clinton administration officials said the new rules in effect diminish public participation in the management of public lands and give forest managers more leeway to open them to increased logging and gas and oil development.

"This is the most dramatic change in national forest management policy since passage of the [1976] National Forest Management Act," said Jim Lyons, who oversaw the Forest Service as Agriculture undersecretary during the Clinton administration. "It is really a clandestine effort in my mind to subvert much of what the national forests stand for."

The 160-page document outlining the new rules contains two major revisions to forest planning regulations. The first drops the 25-year-old requirement that managers prepare environmental impact statements — a cornerstone of public involvement in environmental decisions — when they develop or revise management plans for individual national forests.

The new rule directs forest managers to involve the public in the planning process but leaves the "methods and timing of public involvement opportunities" up to forest officials.

Management plans are a forest's basic zoning document, outlining which activities are allowed on every acre of the land — from recreation to oil and gas drilling, road building and logging.

The second change drops a mandate, adopted during the Reagan administration in 1982, that fish and wildlife habitat in national forests be managed to maintain "viable populations of existing native and desired nonnative vertebrate species." Instead, managers will be directed to provide "ecological conditions to support diversity of native plant and animal species."

The viability clause is widely considered the Forest Service's most important wildlife protection — and has been a key point of contention with logging interests. It was cited in environmental lawsuits that forced drastic reductions in timber harvests to protect the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

"I'm very fearful that we've just lost the foundation for the protection of old-growth forests and wildlife that has protected the national forests for the last 20 years," said Mike Anderson, senior resources analyst for the Wilderness Society.

Forest Service officials denied that the new approach would weaken wildlife protections.

"We tried to bring the best, newest scientific thinking as to how to protect species, and we think we've got that in the rule," Collins said. "We're going to be able to protect species better with this approach. The accountability that people have been clamoring for so long has never been stronger."

The new rules also mandate that all forests adopt an "environmental management system" — used more commonly to manage private-sector land — and conduct periodic independent audits of whether they are meeting their management goals.

By eliminating the requirement for environmental impact statements — bulky documents that outline the environmental consequences of proposed actions and call for extensive public comment — Forest Service officials said they will shave years off the preparation of new forest plans.

"The problem with [the current system is that] it's a lot of wasted motion that takes a lot of time," said Fred Norbury, associate deputy chief of the national forest system.

"The [environmental impact statement] model is based on a 1950s model of how you relate to the public. It creates documents that don't get used or don't get read and are rapidly obsolete," he said.

Environmental impact statements would still be required for individual projects, such as large logging operations or oil and gas drilling.

But environmentalists pointed out that previous rule changes and legislation under the Bush administration have exempted more and more projects from environmental review.

"Their justification is that the public can comment on individual projects, but they've already issued policies that cut out public comment on many projects. All the pieces fit together," said Amy Mall, forest policy specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Representatives of the timber industry and several Western politicians applauded the rule changes, saying they were overdue.

Michael Goergen, executive vice president of the Society of American Foresters, said the "rules could be the difference in getting managers out from behind their desks and into the forest." Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) called the new regulations "a great Christmas present for our national forests and the people who depend on them."

"This new rule involves the public from start to finish, but no one has to worry about dying of old age in the interim. In too many Western states, forest planning became so convoluted under the old rule that the process was taking 10 to 15 years to complete. That's an absurd tangle of pointless red tape," Domenici said.

But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco called the new regulations "an insult to every American who cares about our national forests" and maintained they would "increase the exploitation of our natural resources by private companies without ensuring the survival of the forests for future generations."

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, is a former lobbyist for the timber industry, which threw its political support overwhelmingly toward Republicans in the last election cycle, donating more than $1.7 million to GOP candidates and party committees and just $380,000 to Democrats, according to data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Virginia firm that tracks campaign contributions.

Contributors identifying themselves as working for the timber industry gave $268,552 to the Republican National Committee and another $163,321 to President Bush, records show.

Three of Bush's elite fundraisers were also top timber executives: W. Henson Moore, chief of the American Forest and Paper Assn., the industry's trade group; Otis B. Ingram III, president of a Georgia lumber company; and Peter Secchia, chairman of Universal Forest Products.

Among the first donors to Bush's 2005 inaugural committee was International Paper Co., which donated $100,000 to help pay for the festivities.#

But just as critics rev up for a major rewrite of the act in Congress next year, environmentalists see in a new plan for West Coast salmon and steelhead trout sure signs from the Bush administration that it wants out of the recovery business.

NOAA Fisheries, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, insists that its proposal is the result of better information, not a radical policy shift.

It says that scientists now know more about where the endangered fish hang out in the rivers and streams, and that there is no need to designate critical habitat where the fish aren't.

But under a draft proposal released earlier this month, 80 percent to 90 percent of the riverbanks and watersheds once considered critical for the recovery of the endangered fish will be freed from any constraints under the controversial law.

In some cases, entire watersheds will become exempt from critical habitat designations. The areas are vast. For instance, most of the Russian River, and many of its tributaries, no longer will be treated as critical habitat for salmon and steelhead, according to Trout Unlimited.

Further reductions in critical habitat could result from the agency's decision to exempt fish habitat on streams or rivers otherwise covered by state or federal management plans.

To environmentalists, it adds up to a larger strategy by the administration and on Capitol Hill to weaken the act's focus on helping endangered species get healthy.

"This is part of an all-out assault to remove the recovery standard from the Endangered Species Act," said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity in San Diego.

Federal officials and congressional leaders see it differently.

They say the designation of critical habitat, rather than bringing fish and wildlife species back from the brink of extinction, is burdening agencies with crippling lawsuits and landowners with restrictions that don't work.

"Critical habitat is one of the most perverse shortcomings of the act," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, a Tracy Republican whose mission since coming to Congress in 1992 has been to rewrite the law. "It has been interpreted to mean that if an animal is determined to be in trouble, there is only one viable option - to designate critical habitat and let nature take its course."

The problems are legion, Pombo and others say. The act requires decisions under strict schedules that, if not met, land the government in court. And even when deadlines are met, they say, decisions often are made before scientists determine where species live and habitat gets designated as critical when it's not.

Such is the case with the salmon and steelhead proposal. To meet deadlines when the fish were first listed, the fisheries agency proposed critical habitat four years ago that basically included all the waters where the fish swim.

That decision was undone by a lawsuit from the National Association of Homebuilders that claimed economic considerations were ignored. The agency then was sued for not meeting its habitat deadline, resulting in a settlement requiring a new proposal no later than Nov. 30.

But what the agency proposed on Nov. 30 is certain to bring another round of lawsuits because it trims dramatically the amount of habitat the agency now regards as critical.

In announcing their decision, federal fisheries managers said salmon and steelhead are not found on most of the habitat once considered critical, and the stocks themselves are improving.

"Since 2000, 13 of the 16 listed runs of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and three of the four Northern and Central California runs for which NOAA Fisheries has recent data, have experienced significant improvements," the agency said.

Certainly there have been improvements, said David Katz, California director for Trout Unlimited. But the improvements are largely the result of increased cooperation, much of it voluntary, with county governments, road builders and foresters because of critical habitat designations, he said.

"We have a very innovative partnership with timber companies, for instance, who are not normally friendly to fish," he said. "They're voluntarily working closely with us to do a better job. They have accepted the fact that we are going to bring these fish back and that there's a regulatory process in place.

"To undermine this after we've done all this work to build partnerships would be really unfortunate."

But in the Pacific Northwest, said Earthjustice lawyer Michael Mayer, the Bush administration proposal not only reduces critical habitat by 90 percent, it also writes off entirely those stocks where there is too little critical habitat left for them to regenerate.

"Snake River steelhead, upper Columbia River spring chinook, middle Columbia River steelhead, Oregon coast coho - all these are likely not to receive any critical habitat," he said. "These are pretty broad-brush efforts to take critical habitat off the table."

Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, equated the administration's deferral to state or federal conservation plans already in force to "death by a circular firing squad," because those plans are largely regarded as ineffective for fish protection.

"This is a status quo plan - keep the fish at the extinction level and leave it at that," Spain said. "It's as if they just threw up their hands and said, 'This just costs too much.' "

Hogan, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration's view that critical habitat exists only where fish are currently found virtually eliminates any possibility of restricting development elsewhere so that recovering stocks can move into those areas as well.

"What that does is to throw out the window the entire purpose of the critical habitat designation - that is, to identify areas that are necessary to ensure the survival of the species and provide for recovery," he said.

The retrenchment on critical habitat proposed by the administration is echoed by work already under way on Capitol Hill to rewrite the Endangered Species Act.

In October, Pombo's House Resources Committee voted 28-14 to approve legislation sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, revising the process the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses to determine critical habitat.

Among the provisions of that bill, which died with the adjournment of Congress but which committee aides say is likely to be revived next year, is an exemption for lands already covered by state or federal conservation plans, the same approach now proposed by federal fish managers for salmon and steelhead.

"We see this a lot in this government," Hogan said. "A conservative administration will work closely with lawmakers to identify their gripes and begin to respond in their policies, and then the lawmakers will turn that policy into new law."

But what troubles Spain, of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, is that the administration is moving ahead independently from Congress.

According to court records, Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald tried to change scientific recommendations related to protecting wetland species and endangered fish.

In the first instance, the correspondence was between MacDonald, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managers and the California Farm Bureau Federation in April. A month later, the federation used the information to back a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the service's decision continuing protection for the delta smelt.

MacDonald sent an e-mail to regional officials in California that disputed that they could reasonably estimate the remaining population of the tiny fish, which federal biologists had determined is in danger of extinction.

She then telephoned the farm bureau's chief lawyer and read her the e-mail, providing the farm bureau with a printout of the e-mail the same day.

Environmental groups say such contacts suggest top-level administrators at the nation's land management agencies care more about business interests than the wildlife they're assigned to protect.

MacDonald, whose office is in Washington, D.C., confirmed the e-mail and the telephone calls in an interview with The Associated Press but said they do not indicate bias against the Endangered Species Act.

"This was part of an ongoing series of calls in which they were unhappy with a decision that had been made. This was a case where I had to agree with them," MacDonald said.

During dry periods, the delta smelt clusters around the gigantic intake pipes that draw water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta before sending it south to Central Valley farms and Southern California. The endangered species designation forces water managers to slow the pumps just when farmers need the water most.

"This has real consequences for our members. It's not hypothetical," said Brenda Southwick, the farm bureau lead attorney MacDonald called that day. "We can't grow crops without water."

MacDonald said the Interior Department supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to continue protections for the smelt, although that isn't evident in her e-mail. The e-mail challenges the science behind the ruling, particularly its reliance on population estimates and other "flawed assumptions and data."

MacDonald also intervened at the last minute to exclude five California counties from wetlands protections in a separate decision that aided farmers and land developers. She now acknowledges that decision was based on a flawed analysis.

In that case, MacDonald substituted her own cost-benefit analysis for that done by the Fish and Wildlife Service. She made the changes the night before a court-ordered decision was due on establishing critical habitat for 15 plants and animals that survive only in shallow seasonal pools across much of California.

MacDonald wrote Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Craig Manson in a July 2003 e-mail, saying the costs of establishing critical habitat outweighed the economic benefits in five counties – Butte, Madera, Merced, Sacramento and Solano.

Wildlife managers later discovered her analysis was flawed. For example, it underestimated each county's annual taxable sales a thousandfold, which affected her cost analysis.

"This is like the stupidest mistake in the world. It's humiliating to have made it," MacDonald told the AP.

Nonetheless, Manson excluded the five counties, with some of MacDonald's reasoning showing up word-for-word in the final decision. She said the correct numbers wouldn't have altered her recommendation to eliminate the five counties with the highest unemployment rates.

In that case, the exchange worked in the favor of the environmental groups, as the service agreed to reconsider. Its new decision is expected in July.#

December 16, 2004
The Bureau of Reclamation announces the availability of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed long-term renewal of Central Valley Project water service contracts between Reclamation and up to 145 Sacramento River Settlement Contractors. The proposed contract renewals allow for the continued diversion of up to 1.8 million acre-feet of Base Supply water per year and 380,000 acre-feet of Project Water per year for agricultural and municipal and industrial uses for a period of 40 years.

The written comment period on the Draft EIS ended on November 15, 2004. A separate 60-day public review and comment period for the associated Sacramento River Settlement contracts ended September 7, 2004. The Final EIS contains comments received on the Draft EIS and responses to those comments. Reclamation will make a decision on the proposed action no earlier than 30 days after the date of publication of the Final EIS. The Record of Decision will state the action that will be implemented and discuss the factors leading to the decision.

The Final EIS can be reviewed at the following Reclamation offices: Northern California Area Office, 16349 Shasta Dam Boulevard, Shasta Lake, California; Red Bluff Division Office, 22500 Altube Road, Red Bluff, California; Willows Office, 1140 West Wood Street, Willows, California; and Regional Office, Public Affairs Office, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, California.

In the Bush world of nature, no right of a fish or animal species is apparently enough to cause discomfort to any citizen holding a deed to land anywhere in America. This must be what they mean by achieving an ''ownership society.'' The more the land is owned by individuals, the more privatized, the less there is in commons, the less we have the right to even care what happens to any of the natural wonders of Indian country's remarkable landscape.

This season the pressure is again on the Pacific salmon. The ''dry-out'' of the salmon has begun in earnest, as the Bush administration has opted to drop protection from four-fifths of protected rivers, judged crucial to the recovery of salmon and steelhead, from Southern California to the Canadian border.

Declaring that these are no longer critical for salmon and steelhead recovery, tens of thousands of miles of river have been set loose for change and exploitation in the broadest environmental policy reversal in recent history. Down to only 27,000 miles of river, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, the federal agency assigned to handle salmon recovery. ''A flip-flop on Salmon,'' the Idaho Statesman calls it.

The controversy dates back to the extended California drought in the early 1990s, when the federal government held back water from two San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts to protect the Chinook salmon and delta smelt populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

A private law firm, Marzulla & Marzulla, sued the federal government on behalf of the irrigation districts -- which in turn represent 285 growers in the area. The suit claimed that withholding the water represented an illegal ''taking'' of property, prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

In 2001, John Wiese, a judge in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., ruled in the grower's favor. The ruling effectively overturned decades of California law. For years, it had been accepted that our water is owned by the people of California, and not by those who have signed contracts to use it. ''You can acquire rights to use water, but you can never acquire ownership of water in the same way you can a piece of land, or an automobile,'' said Joseph Sax, a UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law professor who helped prepare a brief against the water districts' claims. Wiese in effect ruled that the users of the water, through their local water districts, owned the water. He ordered the federal government to pay the growers $14 million in damages, which, with interest and attorneys' fees, has grown to $26 million. ''This could have a devastating impact on regulating water in the public interest in California,'' Sax told us.

But instead of appealing the case to a higher court -- which the federal government typically does when it has to pay out large sums of money - - the Bush administration is reportedly on the verge of reaching a settlement with the growers, to the alarm of state officials.

On Dec. 1, California's Water Resources Control Board, representing the Schwarzenegger administration, urged the Bush administration to appeal Wiese's decision and to consider having the case transferred to the California Supreme Court. In a letter to three Bush cabinet secretaries, water board chairman Arthur Baggett Jr. wrote that Wiese's ruling could ''fundamentally change the way water resources are managed in California.''

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer has made a similar request. Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, charged with managing the nation's fisheries, has urged the administration to appeal the ruling, arguing that ''liability was wrongly decided.''

All Californians should be concerned about the Justice Department's apparent eagerness to go along with a flawed ruling in a single court that could have a disastrous impact on the environment, as well as determine who controls water in California for decades to come..

Urge Attorney General John Ashcroft to stand up for taxpayers and the environment by appealing this ruling. E-mail him at askdoj@usdoj.gov. #

What will it take to fill streams again with these silvery fish, symbols of nature and a clean, thriving environment? There are lots of answers, but don't expect any good ones from the Bush administration.

Step by step, it is rolling back policies and changing rules to undercut a revival of these fish. The latest is a plan to cut protections for rivers, which are the vital nurseries of the fish to spawn and grow before heading out to sea.

The proposal wipes out 80 percent of the habitat controls that prevent timber cuts and roads that muddy the clear-flowing water needed by the fish. The shift also helps developers who want to build near streams, another activity that can lead to lower water quality.

It's a giveaway to business and a loss for the environment. Coming a month after the presidential vote, the move seems timed to minimize fallout for President Bush.

The cuts in river protections aren't the only dismaying setback for salmon. Earlier, the administration tried to count hatchery-raised fish along with slim numbers of wild fish to show that populations weren't endangered.

Also, this week Bush officials formally buried talk of taking down federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers that obstruct migrating fish. Removing the eight major dams -- a radical step, to be sure -- had at least stayed on the table in a long-running argument in the Northwest about salmon losses.

Salmon and steelhead are no match for the White House's political calculations. #

A coalition of 22 environmental groups said Wednesday the plan would shift some of the federal water burden - and potentially more than $20 million in expenses in some years - onto the state-controlled water supply. In some years, hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water might not be available for wildlife, the groups said.

Federal spokesmen said the plan would protect the environmental water allotment while balancing the needs of farmers and urban residents.

At issue are agreements, federal law and a federal court decision that requires the government to guarantee 800,000 acre-feet of federally controlled water goes to Delta fisheries each year. That's roughly enough water to supply 800,000 households for a year.

"This is a big, thorny issue of water in California," said Diana Jacobs, deputy director of the state Department of Fish and Game.

Twenty populations of West Coast salmon and steelhead are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which requires that the government identify "critical habitat areas" -- the places where a listed species can recover. The plan put forth by the National Marine Fisheries Service designates habitat for the endangered fish in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California.

But the habitat proposed Tuesday is 80 percent less than the habitat identified by the service from 1999 to 2002, when it announced it would suspend the process pending further study. The proposal resumes the habitat- designation program.

"We've reduced the area under designation to one-fifth as large as it was, " said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the agency.

Critical habitat areas can be subject to restrictions on activities such as development, logging and grazing -- and Tuesday's proposal also emphasized that potential impacts on such economic activities would be weighed in the consideration of critical habitat.

A 60-day public comment period follows the announcement. The agency is expected to make a final decision on the matter by June 2005.

Gorman said the move was essentially procedural and wouldn't have a major impact on salmon and steelhead protection.

"The real teeth of the ESA (Endangered Species Act) comes from the listing itself, not the critical habitat," Gorman said. "(Critical habitat) is basically a red flag to other agencies that they have to be careful, to adjust their activities accordingly."

Gorman said that original critical habitat proposals for Pacific salmon and steelhead were more extensive than has turned out to be necessary because the agency had not completed its research -- and wanted to err, if at all, on the side of caution.

"We now have scientific tools and maps that allow much more refined determinations, that show which streams have viable populations (of fish), which should be critical habitat," Gorman said.

But Bill Kier, a Sausalito-based fisheries consultant who specializes in salmon and steelhead, said the announcement marked "a sea change" in federal policy, one that could prove disastrous for the fish.

"It's a default shredding of the ESA," Kier said. "Salmon and steelhead have essential freshwater stages, and they need precisely those areas NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) plans to abandon. If 80 percent of the critical habitat is to be cut, I don't see how these fish can sustain their recovery."

Kier said that much progress has been made in resuscitating populations of steelhead and coho and chinook salmon, particularly in California.

"This, however, could pull the rug out from lots of landowner groups, community groups and local agencies that have been working to bring these fish back," he said.

The revised plan, which was prompted by a lawsuit from the National Assn. of Homebuilders, could exclude 80% to 90% of the "critical habitat" that the National Marine Fisheries Service designated four years ago as necessary to keep West Coast salmon and steelhead populations from going extinct and to allow their depleted populations to recover.

Streams and rivers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County would be withdrawn as protected habitat because the military argued that the protections would delay training exercises and space launches and diminish military readiness.

In addition, streams that run through millions of acres of national forests stretching from northwestern California through western Oregon and Washington would be excluded as critical habitat for the fish. Federal officials said they did not want to impose another layer of restrictions on areas already subject to protections for the northern spotted owl.

The new plan also drops protections on private land where developers have struck conservation deals with government officials.

By removing all of these areas, "We would get down to excluding around 90% of the critical habitat that had been [previously] identified," said Jim Lecky, an assistant regional administrator for the Fisheries Service.

The new plan, released late Tuesday, was immediately applauded as "a very large improvement" by Christopher Galik, an environmental policy analyst for the National Assn. of Homebuilders.

But environmentalists and fishermen said it failed to meet the agency's own scientific criteria for what is needed for the once-abundant fish to return to healthy population levels.

"None of this is defensible," said Chris Frissell, a fisheries biologist with the Pacific Rivers Council. "There is no way it would come anywhere close to helping these fish recover."

All sides in the battle are predicting more lawsuits over designating critical habitat, arguably the most powerful tool under the federal Endangered Species Act to control development, timber harvesting and farming practices that can degrade healthy streams and rivers.

"That is the one certainty," Lecky said. "More litigation."

The legal battle began in the 1990s after the federal government began a 15-year effort to bring back salmon, as well as steelhead, which are prized by fishermen and seafood lovers.

The Fisheries Service in 2000 designated large areas of the Pacific Coast from Malibu Creek in Los Angeles County to the tip of Washington state as critical habitat for the ever-declining salmon and steelhead. It extended into the northern reaches of California's Central Valley and included vast areas of the Columbia and Snake river valleys that stretch into Idaho.

Homebuilders feared the habitat restrictions would stall, change or cancel streamside projects. Timber companies worried that the restrictions would curb plans for logging roads and harvesting practices that can muddy streams. Farmers were concerned that they would be prohibited from siphoning water from rivers and streams used by the fish.

The National Assn. of Homebuilders led a list of groups that sued, arguing that the designations were excessive, unduly vague and lacked a required analysis of economic impact.

The federal government withdrew the critical habitat designation for 19 types of salmon and steelhead.

On Tuesday, it reissued substantially modified designations after taking into account the economic costs of its first plan, which federal officials said could run about $220 million a year in the Pacific Northwest and $100 million to $200 million a year in California.

"Clearly, there were some areas where the economic costs of the critical habitat clearly outweighed the biological benefit," Lecky said. Other areas were eliminated, he said, because better mapping and more accurate data allowed federal officials to more precisely pinpoint which streams were used by the fish.

Nicole Cordan, policy and legal director of Save Our Wild Salmon, called the plan "ridiculous" on its face, predicting that eliminating 90% of protected habitat would fail to meet the biological needs of salmon and the legal tests of the Endangered Species Act.

The proposal, she said, falls in line with other administration positions, including one announced Tuesday stating that federal dams do not jeopardize salmon by blocking their migration to and from the ocean.

Salmon, which live as juveniles in rivers and streams, spend most of their adult lives in the ocean and then return to fresh water to spawn.

The Fisheries Service ruled out demolishing eight dams on the lower reaches of the Columbia and Snake rivers, even as a last resort. Instead, it said the endangered fish could be protected by continuing to truck fish around the dams and building a new type of weir that works like a water slide to allow juvenile fish to slide around the obstructions on their way to the ocean.

The administration's plan, which must be approved by a federal judge, is estimated to cost about $600 million a year.

Earlier this year, the administration proposed counting millions of hatchery-raised fish that are released into the wild as wild fish, undercutting the need to keep fish born in the wild on the list of endangered species.

Federal officials next year will review the status of 26 species of wild salmon that are supplemented with hatchery fish to determine if they should remain protected as endangered or threatened species.

All these actions, Cordan said, "are typical of this administration — ignore science, ignore sound economics and ignore the law."

Glen H. Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns., said the administration is making a critical error in its economic analysis by failing to consider the benefits of restored salmon populations — such as helping the struggling salmon fishing industry.

The Arundo donax species is an aggressive Mediterranean plant that looks like bamboo, but can grow four inches a day and reach heights of 30 feet. It also consumes about 80 percent more water than other plants.

Arundo was introduced in Southern California by Spanish missionaries and used for roofing material. It is still used today in reeds for musical instruments.

Officials once thought it could be used as a tool to stabilize stream banks, and ranchers and farmers around the state planted it. But during storms, the roots break loose and release silt into the water, harming fish. Stalks have become lodged beneath bridges, building up pressure and wiping out roads.

The plant does not produce enough shade for salmon and trout, which need cold water. And its also highly flammable and does not provide much food or habitat for other wildlife.

The Western Shasta Resource Conservation District is applying for grants to pay for eradication efforts, said biologist Valerie Shaffer.

"The money and effort spent now is a drop in the bucket compared to what we will have to spend later if we allow the further spread of invasives" like Arundo, she said.

The Redding Rotary Club, fly fishing and trails enthusiasts, Boy Scouts, and other clean-stream advocates will work with the state Department of Fish and Game to clean up several local creeks on Dec. 4.#

Sacramento Bee - 11/27/04
By Ed Fletcher, staff writer
Two young girls bounce between the shin-high concrete tanks, tossing rice-sized pellets of fish food at the thousands of weeks-old salmon waiting to test their fins and instincts on the open waters. One girl, a quick-minded 9-year-old, knows plenty about salmon, their life cycle and the Nimbus Fish Hatchery in Rancho Cordova, to which her mother and another home-school mom took their children on a recent Friday afternoon.

"We like feeding the fish," said Beata Mackenroth. "I also like to see the fish ladder." One question she couldn't answer was: How different are hatchery-born fish and fish that spawn naturally? That's no elementary school question. Heck, grown-ups are fighting over the answer.

Whether hatchery salmon should be counted with salmon born in the wild when making Endangered Species Act determinations is the latest battleground in the long-standing war between environmentalists, who are pushing habitat protection, and landowners, represented by a Sacramento-based legal group that wants less stringent land-use rules.

The Endangered Species Act, enacted by Congress in 1973, protects a wide array of wildlife, but landowner rights advocates say it is overused and hurts property owners.

Prompted by a 2001 court decision, NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for salmon recovery, is rewriting the rules on how it determines whether a species qualifies as "threatened" or "endangered" under the act.

The finalized rule isn't due out until June, but because the comment period ended recently, the draft of the proposed rule was being attacked from both sides.

Environmentalists and land-rights advocates each had problems with the new rule, which seeks to take factors other than population into account when determining the viability of salmon and steelhead populations.

Under the rule change, genetic diversity, survival rates and population distribution would all be considered in addition to a raw population count.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, who requested the report, said consumers and policy-makers should be concerned, but he didn't recommend specific legislation. The San Francisco Democrat has reached his term limit and will leave office next month.

Burton pushed a bill through the Legislature this year to ban foie gras - a liver pâté derived by force-feeding geese - beginning in 2012 unless its makers adopt more humane feeding practices.

The suit is part of Butte Environmental Council's larger effort to preserve wetlands throughout the state, said Barbara Vlamis, BEC's director.

Filed last week, the suit challenges plans for more than 8,400 homes on 3,162 acres, which the city of Roseville would annex on its west side.

Vlamis isn't so concerned about the houses as she is the vernal pools dotting the land and the principle that land designated critical habitat ought to remain undeveloped.

Vernal pools, found in certain areas up and down California, are low spots in the land that fill with water in the spring. They are home to various plants and animals that appear with the water. Some of these organisms, such as meadowfoam, are on the Endangered Species List.

Because of BEC's pushing, the federal government in 2003 designated as critical habitat nearly 1.7 million acres of vernal pools in 36 California counties, Vlamis said. But last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cut that back to 740,000 acres in 30 California counties and one Oregon county.

BEC sued the wildlife service , demanding that the full 1.7 million acres receive the critical-habitat designation. The case is continuing. Butte is one of the five counties where wetlands lost the critical-habitat designation. BEC wants the designation restored to wetlands in all five counties.

Another issue is whether land designated as critical habitat will receive protection or not.

Vlamis said the project west of Roseville would destroy 2,100 acres of vernal-pool grasslands. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers approved the project. Yet, just last week, she said, the service identified this land as vital in a draft Vernal Pool Recovery Plan for the state.

If the land is so important to achieving recovery for these endangered species, she asked, how can it be approved for elimination?

A spokesman for Fish and Wildlife in Sacramento said he couldn't comment on the matter because it was being litigated.

Vlamis said last summer a federal court ruled in two cases that land designated critical habitat could not be changed in ways that jeopardized endangered species. Those two cases involved the habitat for the spotted owl and the Mojave desert tortoise.

Another conservation group, Defenders of Wildlife, joined BEC as a plaintiff the suit filed Friday.#

"We got a great crop," he says.

After a few years, the refuge will flood the land again. The ducks and marsh plants will return. Then the refuge will drain it once again, and the farmers will return. So the cycle goes.

Refuge managers see the rotation between wetland and cropland as a chance to improve the outlook for both wildlife and agriculture -- not only in this wildlife refuge but also in the rest of the Klamath Basin and possibly elsewhere in the country.

"I like to think that what we are doing here is sound stewardship, one that will carry this basin and maybe some other basins to a much longer life," says Ron Cole, Tule Lake refuge manager.

Cole wants to expand the "walking wetland" program from a few experimental plots to cover much of the 39,000 acres in the refuge.

The practice is a rare bright spot in the Klamath Basin, where conflict is as regular as the turning of the seasons. Agriculture and development have taken about 75 percent of the basin's wetlands, leaving farmers, tribes and endangered fish to compete for limited water.

Audubon Oregon and Waterwatch, an environmental group that advocates phasing out farming altogether on Tule Lake, support the rotation. "The walking wetland program is a good program, and it shows how productive reconstructed wetlands can be," says Bob Hunter, staff attorney with Waterwatch in Medford.

Founded in 1928, the Tule Lake refuge sits in a semi-arid punch bowl just south of the Oregon-California border. It's one of the six refuges in the Klamath Basin that lie in a geographic bottleneck along the Pacific Flyway. Every fall, 80 percent of the birds heading south from Alaska to warmer climates pass through the river basin.

At Tule Lake, the water surface is thick with battalions of black American coots. Mallard and pintail ducks seek cover in the reed beds. Seen from a migratory bird's-eye view, the refuge looks like a checkerboard of brown and green cropland.

Almost half of the refuge's acreage is dedicated to commercial agriculture, while only 8 percent is marsh. Uplands and open water make up the rest.

The refuge here -- as does the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge -- leases acreage to private farmers under a 1964 law that sought to balance the demands of farming and wildlife in the basin. "It was a law that said, 'You're going to have agriculture, and you're going to have wildlife. Now get along,' " Cole says. "And for a long time, they didn't."

When the law was passed, several million ducks and geese visited Tule Lake. In recent years, those figures have declined to about 400,000, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service figures show.

The Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington, D.C.-based group, recently listed the entire complex of Klamath Basin marshes as among the nation's most endangered. At the same time, agricultural land on the refuge has declined in quality. Decades of planting and harvesting depleted organic matter in the soil, requiring more fertilizer. Pests such as nematodes, which cover potato skins with tiny pimples, became endemic.

In the early 1990s, refuge managers began experimenting with flooding agricultural lands and discovered that long-dormant marsh plants recovered within one year, Cole says. Then in 1999, the refuge drained an experimental wetland and leased the field to private farmers. The plot was known as Lot 5. Farmers had joked the site would drop 6 inches if you took all the bugs out of the soil. It had been under water for two years when Marshall Staunton and his two brothers entered the winning bid to farm its 90 acres. What they found surprised nearly everyone: After it was drained, Lot 5 held black, sweet-smelling soil relatively free of pests and pathogens.

Basin potato crops average about 24 tons an acre. But that fall, Staunton harvested 29 tons per acre of worm-free potatoes from the plot. Plus, because the pests were gone, he saved about $200 an acre on fumigants and other chemicals, he says.

Eventually, word of the Stauntons' success got around. Minor bidding wars erupted to win the leases of other newly drained wetland plots. This year, farmers bid an average of 75 percent more, or a total of $160 an acre, for formerly flooded land compared with non-wetland acres.

At the same time, ducks and geese have begun taking advantage of the temporary wetlands. Pintail ducks have increased more than threefold since 1997 and green-winged teals more than fivefold in the same period, in part because of the wetland-rotation program, refuge managers say.

"For some species of waterfowl, we're seeing numbers we haven't seen in a quarter of a century," Cole says.

Now about 3,000 acres of refuge land are in different stages of wetland/cropland rotation, but eventually Cole hopes to have 18,000 acres in the mix.

The program is part of a massive plan to re-engineer the refuge by draining some portions of the lake and flooding other long-dry areas to better mimic the historic range of habitats at Tule Lake, he says.

Though still somewhat experimental, it's showing good results for farmers and the refuge, Cole says. "If this isn't a good way to manage an ecosystem, we'll find out soon enough," he says. "But one thing I do know: It's better than what we were doing."

Cole and others at the refuge hope to see farmers eventually adopt a wetland rotation on their own land just as they might a cropland rotation. The process could be adapted to other areas -- the Willamette Valley, for example, or even the Mississippi Delta.

"It's one of these tools where everyone can come out better than they went into it, and that's what you're looking for. You're not looking for winners and losers," says Steve Kandra, a Tulelake farmer and president of the Klamath Water Users Association.

But the ecological benefits of the walking wetlands are less certain.

For instance, a system of temporary wetlands probably won't have near the biological diversity of established wetlands, says Mary Santelmann, a research scientist at Oregon State University who focuses on wetlands and ecosystem ecology.

Put simply, when the wetlands "walk," many species such as amphibians can't follow. Other species, such as sandhill cranes, return to their same nesting spots year after year and may not react well to a shifting mosaic of habitats.

Once the fields are drained again, "you could create ecological traps for some species that aren't particularly mobile," Santelmann says.

She also says the program may not work in other places, such as Iowa, where farming is more established and marsh germination slower.

But in the Klamath Basin, the walking wetlands may ease some of the strains on the basin's water, soil and people. Staunton is one of the farmers looking for ways to export the program to private lands.

Out of his pickup and standing in the neat potato rows, Staunton sniffs the damp soil and inspects some pest-free russets in the back of a harvester.

"This basin seems to get more than its share of crisis, confusion and conflict," he says. But "these are good potatoes, a good crop."#

The Cache Creek Conservancy, Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, and the Yolo Resource Conservation District, are working with USDA Agricultural Research Service and NASA to explore the feasibility of satellite monitoring of invasive plant infestations on Cache Creek.

Scientists from USDA-ARS and NASA's Ames Research Center recently met with participating Yolo County agencies to discuss the feasibility of satellite monitoring. NASA researchers, led by Dr. David Bubenheim, are interested in conducting research on the reach along Cache Creek from Clear Lake to Woodland's Settling Basin.

"This is an opportunity to apply cutting edge technology to on the ground work being done along Cache Creek," Dr. Bubenheim said. "We are touring Yolo County to get a better idea of what problems are encountered by land managers and the restoration community," he added.

"The Cache Creek Conservancy has worked closely with USDA-ARS for the past five years on eradication efforts aimed at tamarisk and Arundo," said Jan Lowrey, the Conservancy's Executive Director. "We welcome NASA's interest and believe they could be invaluable in the battle to eradicate invasive plant species from the creek."

During the meeting, NASA researcher Lee Johnson displayed a preliminary website that will show the extent and location of invasive plant species including yellow star thistle, tamarisk, and Arundo and the extent of infestation. Hyperspectral imaging is used to document the presence of invasives, to identify the species, and the size and location of the infestation.

Invasive plant species often crowd out native species, provide poor habitat for wildlife, use disproportionate amounts of water, and frequently lodge in streambeds where their presence may facilitate flooding and erosion. Tamarisk and Arundo are two types of invasive species commonly found throughout Yolo County.

In addition to invasive species, the satellite imagery also could be used to display the presence of native plants stands as well. "This is a tremendous opportunity to fine-tune and integrate an update of the Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District's water management plan update with other restoration work proceeding in the area," General Manager Tim O'Halloran noted. "Furthermore, by increasing our knowledge of the location and density of existing, beneficial wildlife habitat we can better practice our role as stewards of the environment."

NID directors last month decided to send out a special mailing to about 5,400 irrigation water users with information about the Placer-Nevada-South Sutter-North Sacramento Subwatershed Group.

Individual growers are banding together into watershed groups so they can apply for a discharge waiver and more easily share the costs of water quality monitoring programs.

The Sacramento Valley is divided into 10 groups to comply with agricultural discharge waiver rules approved by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Yuba, Sutter and Butte counties are in their own watershed group. The Colusa Basin includes Glenn, Colusa and northern Yolo counties.

The Nevada Irrigation District sent a five-page letter to its customers in early November that was written by the local subwatershed group.

According to NID, many of its water users objected to having to join the watershed group and to pay its acreage fee. A few customers thought NID was seeking the money.

"This is something we were not really involved in," NID General Manager Ron Nelson said in a statement. "We were simply trying to support our local agricultural groups. We're sorry for any confusion or misunderstanding this letter may have caused."

Lane Therrell, assistant director of the Placer County Farm Bureau, acknowledged that "our message wasn't delivered very clearly."

This fall, the returns of chinook salmon to Bogus Creek and the Shasta, Scott and Salmon rivers -- Northern California tributaries to the Klamath River -- have been disappointing. Estimates based on fish and carcass counts are showing less than 25 percent of last year's returns and less than 10 percent of the strong returns of 2000.

The reasons are difficult to nail down, but the more researchers look, the more disease they are finding in young chinook migrating down the Klamath River. The fish that survive to reach the ocean are finding less food than they did a few years ago.

Meanwhile, an El Niño building in the South Pacific could reduce the mountain snowpack that feeds the Klamath River and make food even more scarce for salmon in the ocean.

The disease and ocean conditions come on top of the continuing struggle to balance scarce water between threatened coho salmon and farms on a federal irrigation projected along the Oregon-California border. A drought in 2001 prompted the federal government to shut off water to most farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project.

The health of the Klamath's chinook salmon also has widespread effects because when runs are down, harvests in the ocean off Southern Oregon and Northern California are cut back to allow more to return to the river to spawn.

Declines blamed on habitat loss, poor water quality and overfishing prompted Congress to initiate a rebuilding effort in 1986, which led to increased research that has uncovered an alarming rate of disease.

Understanding the role that diseases play in salmon returns is becoming increasingly important in the rebuilding effort, said Nick Hetrick, fisheries program leader for Fish and Wildlife in Arcata, Calif.

That's where Scott Foott comes in. He is a fish pathologist at the agency's California-Nevada Fish Health Center who has been studying fish diseases in the Klamath Basin.

Samples taken from traps and seining indicate that as many as 80 percent of young Klamath chinook are infested with the parasite parvicapsula minibicornis by the time they reach the ocean. It doesn't appear to be fatal, but it weakens fish by making their kidneys less efficient at filtering their blood, Foott said.

Another parasite, Ceratomyxa shasta, infests the intestines. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of young chinook swimming down the Klamath get infested with it, and nearly all of them die.

Biologists don't know how many salmon are spawned in the wild in the Klamath Basin, so they cannot estimate how many are being killed by disease. Overall, though, the chances of salmon surviving from egg to spawning adult generally are tiny.

The numbers of chinook smolts released from Iron Gate Hatchery on the Klamath River that survived to return to the hatchery averaged less than 1 percent from 1979 to 1999, said Hampton, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

"This disease problem hits much harder in some years than other years," he said. "We're just now finding out what it's doing."

The fish do not appear to become infested with C shasta in their home tributaries, Foott said. It all appears to happen after they enter the Klamath. The rate of infestation appears to be related to the prevalence of a tiny worm, found in fine sand at the bottom of river pools and in algae that grows on rocks, that serves as an intermediate host for the parasite.

"The general thought is, if you have high concentrations of (the worm) in the upper river ... you are creating this condition of a higher rate of infection than you normally have," Foott said. "It could be a cyclic phenomenon. It could be due to a lack of flushing flows in winter. These are just open questions right now.

"A river is a very dynamic creature. When you turn it into a drainage canal, it doesn't operate like it used to."

Diseases could become another issue in the debate about water allocations in the basin. Right now, the timing and amount of flows down the Klamath River are dictated by the needs of coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act.

That could change if the Yurok Tribe wins a lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation demanding more water for chinook and other fish to fulfill tribal trust responsibilities. Also, PacifiCorp is seeking a new license to operate dams in the basin.

Beyond anyone's control are changing conditions in the ocean based on climate drivers such as El Niño in the South Pacific and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in the North Pacific.

"PG&E has clearly heard the community's request," said Lisa Randle, a company spokeswoman. "We do not anticipate recommending a floating thermal curtain in Lake Almanor."

The tentative decision brought cheers from Almanor residents who have fought construction of the device as big as 14 football fields, which they feared would ruin the fishery of the popular recreation reservoir and Butt Valley Reservoir, which is slated for two smaller underwater curtains.

"It's a wonderful thing!" said George Prostman, chairman of the Save Lake Almanor committee. "We're super-excited the company reached this decision."

The head of the U.S. Forest Service approved the plan Thursday. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey has 15 days to decide whether to review the decision before it becomes final.

Should Rey not act, Lockyer said he will sue in federal court contending the plan violates federal environmental protection laws, and will increase logging, endanger wildlife habitat, harm water quality and weaken grazing restrictions. Environmental groups said they plan to sue as well, raising similar objections.

''We will not let stand this betrayal of treasured forests and the public trust,'' the Democratic attorney general and likely 2006 gubernatorial candidate said in a statement.

It is a valley about 9 miles long and 1 mile wide, ringed by granite walls and spires towering 2,000 feet. Before the dam, the Tuolumne River tracked through the valley floor, past verdant meadows and copses of black oak and ponderosa pine.

When the valley was inundated in 1923 to provide water to San Francisco, it was assumed it would remain submerged forever. But two months after a Bay Area environmental organization announced a study supporting the restoration of long-drowned Hetch Hetchy Valley, the idea has gained a degree of momentum.

A recent study by the group Environmental Defense indicates the valley could be resurrected, with water needs met by transferring water to Don Pedro Reservoir and building additional infrastructure. The study, which estimated it would cost between $500 million to $1.6 billion to expand water storage facilities below Hetch Hetchy, augments earlier analyses by UC Davis and the U. S. Department of Interior, both concluding that restoration was possible without threatening state water supplies. Earlier this month, the Schwarzenegger administration announced it was authorizing a state study to evaluate restoration scenarios.

The settlement, which now goes to President Bush for his signature, would cede to Indian tribes nearly half the Colorado River water originally set aside for Phoenix and Tucson and allow those tribes to lease it back to growing cities for a profit.

The cities would be able to claim a small amount of new water to add to their existing shares of the river. But more importantly, they would now know for certain the size of their long-term water supply, allowing them to plan better for future growth. Left unsettled, the tribal claims could have dragged through the courts for years and cost the state significantly more in money and water.

Arizona's debt to the federal government for building the Central Arizona Project Canal, which moves water from the Colorado, also would be reduced by the water measure. The measure would end a long-standing feud over repayment costs and clear the way for the CAP board to reduce property taxes in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties.

Some central Arizona farmers would eventually lose water to satisfy the tribal claims, but it would be a gradual loss. The deal wouldn't take any water from cities or private water companies and wouldn't raise water rates unless cities signed huge tribal leases in the future.

"The word would be 'eureka,' " said Herb Guenther, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. "It's knowing where you are and what you have without trying to guess what a court might do. It's a monumental day in Arizona water history."

The settlement designates for Indian tribes more than 650,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water, 47 percent of the CAP Canal's annual flow. The rest of the water would remain for cities and non-Indian farmers and would easily satisfy existing allocations, leaving some for future growth.

Two tribes won specific allocations in the measure. The Tohono O'odham Nation south of Tucson is set to receive 37,800 acre-feet and the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix would receive 155,700 acre-feet. An acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons, enough to serve one or two average households for one year.

The measure completes a much broader water settlement for the Gila River community, which is poised to control more than 650,000 acre-feet of water drawn from the CAP and the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers. That represents the largest tribal water settlement in U.S. history.

"We've been in this struggle to regain our water rights for almost a century now," said Gila River Gov. Richard Narcia, who was in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "Our traditional name translated is 'River People,' and to regain that water is not only something we've been working toward but also a cultural issue for our people."

The community plans to put most of the water to work, restoring farmland left fallow for generations. Narcia said the community plans to lease "a small amount" to Valley cities.

Some of those cities have already begun negotiating the leases, and others have been working with tribal water projects. But the settlement's true value was the certainty it gave the region's water supply.

"This brings certainty to the whole Gila basin, and that is a really important thing in water resources to have certainty," said Kathryn Sorensen, water resources coordinator for Mesa. "It is a way of getting out of horrible, protracted 100-year legal battles over water."

The battles won't end entirely. The Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe in northern Arizona still want their claims to the Colorado River settled, and those discussions have barely begun. The San Carlos Apache Tribe also has claims remaining.

Not everyone was celebrating Wednesday. Water historian and retired journalist Earl Zarbin has voiced strong opposition to the tribal deal, calling it "a gift to them at the expense of everybody else."

"Why 1 percent of our population should be able to control that much water is beyond reason or comprehension," Zarbin said. "It sets up a mechanism for these reservations to control the future for Arizona's population growth. These Indian tribes are under no compulsion to lease water to the non-Indians. They can either lease or not lease."

The measure encompasses three settlements: two with Indian communities and a third between Arizona and the federal government. The tribal claims date back nearly two decades and languished for years as scores of interested parties joined in the talks.

Under a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Indian tribes can claim ancestral water rights and seek enough water to meet demands on their current reservation.

Negotiations over the final deal still took several years and failed several times to make it out of Congress. The U.S. Senate finally approved the package Oct 10. On Wednesday, the measure was adopted by the House, sending it to Bush, who has announced support.

"This legislation offers most everyone something, but not everything to anyone. It represents hard-fought compromise that deserves passage," said Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., the House sponsor of the bill, in urging its passage on the House floor.

All seven of Arizona's other House members were co-sponsors.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., was praised repeatedly Wednesday for his work in shepherding the bill and keeping negotiations alive despite frequent setbacks.

In a statement, Kyl said that virtually every major water user and provider in central Arizona worked for passage of the measure.

"Looking ahead, this could ultimately be nearly as important to Arizona's future as was the authorization of the Central Arizona Project itself," he said.

The measure actually brings closure to the CAP, authorized more than three decades ago as a way of bringing Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. The federal government spent more than $3.6 billion to build the 336-mile canal, which was finished in 1993, and then demanded that Arizona repay $2.3 billion of the cost.

The CAP board argued that Arizona owed much less and refused to pay the bill. The federal government sued, but Arizona forced a settlement and agreed to pay $1.65 billion, an amount written into law with Wednesday's vote.

CAP General Manager Sid Wilson said settling the dispute will help give a property-tax break to homeowners in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties and will also help the CAP plan its future.

"It provides surety for everyone in terms of who has what water and who pays how much," he said. "That's something we need in Arizona."

In all, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of the legislation's various components would total $445 million through 2014, according to Hayworth's office. Delegate Donna Christensen, D-Virgin Islands, who like Hayworth sits on the House Resources Committee, said from the House floor that although the measure would be expensive, "I am satisfied the benefits will significantly outweigh the costs to taxpayers."

The bill sets aside money to help tribes build needed water infrastructure, with help specifically for the San Carlos Irrigation Project. That project was initiated in the 1930s but never completed.

The measure also would amend the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act enacted in 1982 to resolve water claims by the Tohono O'odham Nation. The measure would establish water-delivery requirements and construction obligations with regard to the San Xavier Indian Reservation and the Schuk Toak District.

The final provision relates to funding to help complete other negotiations on water issues involving the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said the measure "makes it far more likely remaining water disputes can be resolved."

That has been the one thing missing from California's water shuffle groundwater hasn't been part of the equation locally.

There's far more water in the deep aquifers beneath the Sacramento Valley than could be stored in all the reservoirs in California. There's no doubt it's coveted by water buyers, but they haven't been able to get to it.

That's the reason the aquifers are the subject of such intense study right now. Researchers are trying to figure out how much water flows into the ground and whether that rate could be increased. This all is aimed at using the tremendous resource beneath us.

And that's all water that hasn't been spoken for. Most of the surface water in the state belongs to someone because of the complicated system of water rights that has developed over the years.

But if you own land over an aquifer and you can drill a deep enough well, you can get water. You might be able to get enough to solve Southern California's perennial water problems.

The reason that hasn't happened is that getting the groundwater to Southern California would be more problematic. It would have to use the system of rivers and canals that are regulated by the state and federal governments. Once the water's flowing on the surface, it gets tangled in the whole water rights web and may not get where it was planned to go.

But if an irrigation system sells its surface water and replaces it with groundwater, that problem is avoided. The groundwater doesn't get into the river. The transaction is simplified.

There may be a way to use the water beneath us without damaging us, but that hasn't been determined yet. Western's plan would take three years to complete, and hopefully by the time they're done, we'll know.

The agency said Friday it averted a potential environmental crisis by holding back water in Lake Mendocino this summer and then releasing it into the Russian River during the fall chinook salmon spawning run.

But when agency officials presented their case to the state this week, they were cut short and were slammed for not having an adequate water conservation program.

At issue is whether the county agency is doing enough to ensure that reservoir levels remain high.

State officials said they wanted to send a message to the agency that it can't rely on river flow reductions - in the name of protecting fish - to keep the Mendocino County lake full during the summer and increase water supply for a growing population.

"We're pretty happy with what they're doing to protect the fish," said Liz Kanter, spokeswoman for the state water board. "We're not happy with what they're doing to conserve water."

County officials said that message indicates the state water board does not understand the use of the Russian River as a water delivery system. The county agency has rights to water stored in Lake Mendocino, but does not use it to serve its 570,000 customers in Sonoma and Marin counties. Instead, it uses water from a different reservoir downstream: Lake Sonoma.

The agency said a reduction in water use would not have prevented low Lake Mendocino water levels or the need to reduce reservoir releases this summer to help fish.

"I think there's a lot of confusion," said Miles Ferris, the Santa Rosa public utilities director who was part of the county water conservation presentation. "We're not trying to find a way to increase our water supply. We're trying to deal with a very sensitive question about supporting endangered species fish runs."

As California looks for new ways to increase water supplies in the face of mounting shortages, this monstrous 602-foot facade holding back the Sacramento River seems destined to grow even taller.

It's a perfect spot for expansion, although it's not the only site under intense scrutiny in this scramble for new water storage.

Shasta Dam was designed to be 800 feet tall, so adding concrete to its top presents no significant engineering obstacles.

"This is like adding a room on a house, rather than building a new house," said Michael J. Ryan, the Bureau of Reclamation's Northern California area manager, whose small office overlooks the dam, the lake and, on a clear day, Mount Shasta looming large in the distance.

But most importantly, the clean, cold water it would add to the state's supply is exactly what water managers are looking for. A taller dam means additional downstream protection against floods, more downstream supply for farms and cities and, because Shasta Lake would be deeper, more cold water to send downriver when the salmon are looking for a place to spawn.

A recently enacted federal water bill governing the state-federal San Francisco Bay-Delta restoration and water program commonly known as Cal-Fed revs up studies to add as much as 18.5 feet of concrete to the top of the dam. That would boost the size of the lake behind by some 15 percent, or 636,000 acre-feet - enough water for 1.2 million households.

At an estimated cost of nearly $500 million, the project would be relatively cheap. Under the Bureau of Reclamation's current timetable, construction could be under way in five years and completed in 10.

All that looks promising for Northern and Central California, where water shortages in a normal year are expected to be 1.4 million acre-feet by 2020 - and three times that in a drought year.

But for some whose lives and businesses are on the upstream side of Shasta Dam, adding 18.5 feet of concrete to Shasta Dam is a disaster in the making.

"It's dubious at best," said Steve Barry, owner of Holiday Harbor Resort and Marina and president of the Shasta Lake Business Owners Association.

"And the proposal doesn't even take into consideration the impact on recreation," he said, estimating annual revenues from shore-side businesses on the plus side of $80 million. "This is going to put some guys out of business."

When the lake is at full crest, an 18.5-foot raise would mean that houseboats popular with tourists will be stranded on one side or the other of the Pit River Bridge, which carries Interstate 5 and the Union Pacific Railroad over the lake.

Layton Hills, heir to the Hills Bros. Coffee fortune, oversees from his Mill Valley office the Bolli Bokka Fishing Club, which brothers Austin and Reuben Hills started on the McCloud River in 1904. The club's historic houses are among those that would go underwater, he said.

"It's too bad," Hills said. "One is a log cabin dating from the 1860s, and another is the so-called rock house made out of river cobble from about 1915. The regular clubhouse dates from around 1924."

Nearby, on the club's 4,000-acre property, is an old Wintu Indian village site and burial ground that would be inundated.

Environmentalists also are organizing to fight any raise to the dam.

"I have a lot of problems with raising the dam," said Steve Evans, conservation director at Friends of the River in Sacramento. "For one thing, it violates state law that protects the McCloud River from any more dams or reservoirs."

But more than that, said Evans and others, state and federal water planners seem stuck in the old mold of looking for new dams and reservoirs to find water that can be benignly obtained from better operations of facilities they've already got.

"I don't think there is anyone in the environmental community who believes there is any general benefit from this kind of stuff," he said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chief author of the Cal-Fed bill, is irritated by this sudden surge in opposition to the Shasta raise.

"I believe it is a God-given right as Californians to be able to water gardens and lawns," the California Democrat said. "The state is growing by 700,000 to 1 million people a year. It is going to need new water storage."

Not until she was contacted by Hills' lobbyist had anyone complained about raising Shasta, she said, adding that raising the dam was considered the "most benign" of the water storage projects in the bill.

"This is one family with a private facility there," she said. "And that's all I am going to say about this."

Raising Shasta Dam has been under on-again, off-again consideration for at least two decades. Some of the most detailed studies date back to the 1980s, when Don Hodel, who served as energy secretary and then Interior secretary under President Reagan, proposed the project as an alternative source of water for San Francisco if Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park were knocked down.

From an engineering standpoint, it's a piece of cake. The dam, built between 1938 and 1945, was originally planned to be 200 feet taller. At 800 feet, it would have been the highest and biggest in the world.

Sheri Harral, public affairs officer at the dam, said World War II and materials shortages associated with the war effort led to a decision to stop construction at 602 feet.

"The thinking was to come back and add on to it if ever there was a need to," Harral said. "They started looking at raising it in 1978."

If Shasta Dam had been built up to its engineering limit in 1945, it is arguable that Northern and Central California would not be facing a critical water shortage now.

According to a 1999 Bureau of Reclamation study, a dam 200 feet taller would be able to triple storage to 13.89 million acre-feet of water.

Still, tripling the size of Shasta Lake, on paper at least, would store nine times the projected 2020 water deficit for the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Tulare Lake basins during normal water years.

But the Bureau of Reclamation concluded in its 1999 report on Shasta Dam that raising it by 200 feet would be prohibitively expensive - $5.8 billion.

Given what's under discussion now in the Cal-Fed process, however, the cost of a maximum raise of Shasta is not that far out of line with other projects authorized for study by the recent California water bill.

One of the projects with growing political support is damming a small valley west of Maxwell and pumping it full of excess Sacramento River spring runoff. That project could cost as much as $2.4 billion to store 1.8 million acre-feet.

Other projects under intense investigation include quintupling the size of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County to add as much as 400,000 acre-feet of capacity for perhaps $1.3 billion, and 1.2 million acre-feet of storage on the Upper San Joaquin River for roughly $800 million. Two smaller projects also are being looked at.

Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, said a combination of projects is most likely, because where the additional storage is in relation to where the water is needed can be as important as total storage or cost.

Still, it's hard to see how raising Shasta Dam doesn't figure into the final mix. The sure signs of inevitability are what have Shasta Lake business owners concerned.

The Senate passed the measure on a 65-30 vote late Saturday after a 344-51 House vote.

Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, and Sacramento Democratic Rep. Robert Matsui applauded inclusion of the money in the year-end measure.

Matsui said the $24.7 million appropriated for area flood control projects would keep on schedule work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to add gates to the face of Folsom Dam, and eventually to add seven feet to its top to improve capacity.

"We're very happy with this level of spending, especially given the federal budget constraints," Matsui said. He said the money should be ample to meet the work schedule of the corps for 2005, though it was $3 million less than the House initially approved.

The measure includes $5 million for continued rush work to build a new bridge over the American River below the dam. A road over the dam, used by thousands of commuters, was closed last year because of national security concerns.

Authorization for the work came last year under a deal worked out by Matsui and Doolittle, a member of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

Under that deal, Doolittle was assured continued money for water projects in his district in exchange for backing off his insistence on an Auburn dam. Some of that money, largely for Placer County, shows up in the 2005 spending measure.

Among the money included in the bill:

* $8 million for work that will lead to the seven-foot raising of Folsom Dam.

* $6.7 million toward adding new and larger gates to the dam.

* $5 million for continuing work to strengthen American River levees.

* $5 million for continuing south Sacramento stream and riverbank improvements to reduce flooding threats.

* $8.5 million for the joint state-federal Cal-Fed water project, $4 million of which goes for studies for new water storage areas.

* $26.1 million for conservation work and other projects in the Klamath River Basin.

* Nearly $5 million for various conservation and fisheries improvements for Placer County, Roseville and the El Dorado Irrigation District.

* $4 million for continuing work on a pump station that will supply American River water to Placer County.

Truckee officials, who have already landed $525,000 in grants for the project, plan to request a chunk of the $4.5 million available through the state's urban streams restoration program. The program is part of the California Department of Water Resources and uses state Proposition 40 money to fund urban stream revitalization that often goes hand in hand with improvements to the surrounding urban area. The actual amount of the town's request will be known closer to the application deadline.

While the synchronization of the creek's restoration and the development of the railyard location east of downtown is a priority for the town, an even more practical concern drives the restoration - the threat of flooding.

The first piece of the puzzle will deal with the flooding problem, as the town builds a bridge just south of where the undersized box culvert currently routes Trout Creek under Donner Pass Road. The project will be completed before the end of next year.

"This phase of construction is not going to solve the flooding problem completely," said Pat Perkins, senior engineer with the Town of Truckee. "It is going to help."

But that is the easy part. The rest of the project looks at improvements for the creek from its intersection with Interstate 80 to where it pours into the Truckee River. In that stretch the creek runs through ninety-degree-angle concrete diversions, is pushed to the north of the railroad track by rusted, sheet metal sections, and rambles through concrete culverts.

"We think the federal government and NOAA Fisheries have screwed up again, so we are going to sue them again," said Russ Brooks, a lawyer for Pacific Legal Foundation. The Pacific Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento, has notified National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, that a policy set to go into effect in June violates the Endangered Species Act. Its lawyers also say the policy would go against a 2001 court victory by the foundation in the case of Alsea Valley Alliance v. Evans.

A federal court ruled that federal officials should count hatchery salmon along with native-run salmon when trying to figure population numbers.

As a result, federal officials agreed to develop a new hatchery policy for how salmon are listed and delisted from the Endangered Species list. The public comment period for the policy closed last week, and the foundation is ready to sue because its officials say the policy isn't going along with what the court ordered.

The potential lawsuit could lead to the delisting of all 27 federally protected strains of salmon, Brooks said. Some critics say Pacific Legal Foundation is jumping the gun. "Until an agency makes an action, they can't sue," said Glen Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

Brooks said the law is unclear when a group can sue over a federal policy and he thinks the 60-day notice filed by the foundation is legal. He said he plans to file a second 60-day notice once the policy is put into place in June.

The foundation should wait to see what the finalized policy looks like before it says it is going to sue, Spain said. The foundation is just trying to end federal protection of salmon, he added.

"They want delisting everywhere basically, but that is not when the science says, and that is not what NOAA Fisheries is suggesting," he said.

Federal wildlife regulators on Thursday proposed a $2 billion plan to rescue a score of the uniquely adapted species and other critters of concern: oddities like nearly invisible shrimp, toads that doze underground for months and colorful wildflowers that form concentric bull's-eye rings around the ponds.

Since the plan is voluntary, there is no cost or effect on property owners unless they choose to participate.

Years of toil by developers and farmers have blotted out three-quarters of the vernal pools that once dotted 22 million acres of the coastal states.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's designation last year of 740,000 acres as critical habitat for the ponds have prompted lawsuits and acrimonious hearings. Environmental groups want more safeguards, while builders fear protections would stall housing needed to keep up with growth.

Cattle graze near a vernal pool near Galt, Calif. Developers and farmers have over the years plowed under or over 75 percent of the vernal pools that once dotted 22 million acres of the coastal states

The recovery plan the service proposed for public review Thursday grew out of a settlement of the first in a continuing series of lawsuits over the designation, but is a separate and purely cooperative approach.

"Partnerships with private landowners are the key" to saving the species, Steve Thompson, manager of the service's California-Nevada office, said in announcing the proposal.

Property owners could continue "compatible activities" on their land, enter conservation agreements that stave off development, and qualify for federal funding to protect and restore the pools, Thompson said.

The plan sets protection of 683,000 acres as its first priority, saying those pools are vital to saving 20 threatened and endangered plants and animals from extinction or irreversible decline. That alone would cost an estimated $771.7 million.

The focus would shift to other areas as needed. Protecting all the 1.5 million acres included in the proposal would cost an estimated nearly $2.1 billion.

The proposal includes no funding itself, but once adopted would be used to seek and target money from federal, state, local and private sources, said service spokesman James Nickles.

If successful, the plan would resuscitate most of the species enough to remove them from federal listing in 58 years.

In addition to the 20 listed plants and animals, the plan proposes to help another 13 "species of concern" – 33 in all – that thrive and reproduce in weeks, leaving seeds and eggs behind in the fast-drying mud to survive until the next rain comes.

Private hydropower firms may get the right to a late-inning, closed-door session with political appointees in the Interior Department to appeal future requirements they don't like.

Additional fish ladders to preserve salmon runs? Steady water flows to preserve other wildlife or public use? Recreation access and water standards? Private dam operators want a chance to debate their obligations on such points in direct talks with a business-friendly administration. The public could be left out.

Scattered across the country, there are some 1,100 dams built 50 to 100 years ago, before the days of environmental rules. These structures need federal permits and about half are due for relicensing over the next 15 years. It should be an opportunity to study the effects of the dams and make fixes where appropriate.

That's not what dam lobbyists want. After hearings that typically include Indian tribes, outdoors groups and state agencies, dam operators want a special privilege: the right to a private appeal to the top decision-makers in the Interior Department.

The reasons are clear. Dam improvements can be costly. New duties that guarantee water flows and public access could eat into revenues. If these new requirements could be erased, dams would make more money.

There's plain political muscle at work, too. The conditions for a new dam license are set by mid-level Interior Department officials, who hold hearings, sift through the testimony and ship the final agreement to Washington. The new proposal dumps this ground-up approach in favor of a straight pitch at the deputy-secretary level, which is populated with Bush appointees.

Not every dam operator wants special treatment. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which holds 26 dam licenses from Bakersfield to Mount Shasta, has broken with the pack. It doesn't support the industry-only appeals. Instead, the process should be open to all sides, a PG&E spokesman said.

But a majority of power firms are pushing ahead. Dam lobbyists for the National Hydropower Association say the current process doesn't allow firms a chance to contest the final terms for a new license once it's reached. Allowing an appeal on the specific conditions would clarify the costs and impacts for federal decision-makers, lobbyists say.

Reservoirs that once supplied surplus water to Southern California are at the lowest point in nearly half a century. They’re so dry that some cities are paying homeowners to tear up their lawns. And now, some local environmentalists such as Barry Nelson think a water grab in the works.

He's concerned about a series of little known water contracts, now being pushed through by state regulators that could potentially suck nearly 30% more water out of the delta and send it south.

The Delta is already a fragile ecosystem that empties into San Francisco Bay. The fresh water flow keeps the salt water from backing up and threatening spectacular wetlands, migratory birds, endangered salmon, and farms.

Some believe pumping more water could also have effects far beyond in the Delta that could reach millions of households in the Bay Area

A few years back, the Delta water got so salty, Contra Costa County spent half-a-billion dollars to build the Los Vaqueros Reservoir. But experts warn that if the delta is drawn too low, and a levee breaks in the wrong place, it could send salt levels soaring and water levels plummeting.

"It could be a disaster, It could shut off the pumps to Southern California. You could have water quality so bad that you couldn't even irrigate with it," says Greg Gartrell of the Contra Costa Water Commission.

Several California lawmakers are asking regulators to slow the water contract negotiations down to give watchdogs a chance to review environmental impact reports. The contracts could be finalized as early as January.#

"That's a big change," said Kern County Water Agency manager Tom Clark.

The move delighted environmentalists and dismayed many farmers and water officials. The two groups have battled each other over water supplies for decades. However, Clark said it doesn't worry him. "We've worked well with Senator Kuehl in the past," Clark said. He noted that she is from Southern California, "which is with us on most of the water issues."

Perata's move is widely regarded as a slap at the California Farm Bureau Federation, which endorsed a Republican in a key Senate race in this month's elections.

The Farm Bureau supported the GOP's Gary Podesto over Democrat Mike Machado in a Stockton-area Senate race. Despite the endorsement, the Democrat eventually won a narrow victory.

Machado, himself a farmer, has chaired the Senate Agriculture and Water Committee for the past two years. The committee has been the key voice for agribusiness in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Perata announced late Monday that he is removing water issues from the jurisdiction of Machado's committee and placing it under the Natural Resources and Wildlife committee headed by Kuehl.

State Farm Bureau President Bill Pauli did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman said the only comment would come from another official, who is not available until next week.

Kuehl is a former law professor who in her youth played Zelda Gilroy in the television show "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."#

It seems that the majority of Plumas County, Calif., residents, especially those living near Lake Almanor, are not very happy with the mega-giant power company, Pacific Gas and Electric. That company has proposed a $30-50 million project to annually extract the colder layers of water in Almanor during July and August in an effort to reduce the temperature one to three degrees Fahrenheit in the North Fork, Feather River, some miles downstream. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Last month, my friend Dan Fox and I decided to go to Lake Almanor for our annual fall fishing trip. Both of us had been there in the past, but neither of us had fished it very much. Almanor is only about two hours north and west of Reno, or one-half hour west of Susanville. The lake is about 13 miles long by six miles wide, making it one of California’s largest man-made lakes, with 28,000 surface acres — or 52 square miles — when full at an elevation of 4,500 feet. With the completion of Big Meadows Dam in 1914, the lake was designed to supply water to hydroelectric facilities downstream on the Feather River by the Great Western Power Company, now known as PG&E.

Our fishing trip was cut short by a couple of days when an Oct. 16 storm hit us with very high winds, then rain and even some snow. Although it took us a little time to catch our first fish on the second day, we figured we would end up having some success early on the third day, since the fish were more active in the morning. But then the storm hit that morning with gale force winds and heavy rain.

However, the day before, we got off the lake early to seek out a commercial supply of white Needlefish Lures in Chester, Calif., a quaint little town at the north end of the lake. We found the lures, but also ran into a barrage of signs — large and small. Everywhere we looked, "Save Lake Almanor." Inside every store we visited there were piles of typed handouts explaining the anticipated negative effects of the proposed installation of a 770-foot by 900-foot heavy fabric curtain that would extend from the surface of the lake down some distance to prevent the warmer surface waters from entering a water intake tower on the west side of the lake. A continuous line of large metal floats, some say as large as water heaters, would be used to suspend the curtain.

According to some literature we collected, extensive dredging would also be required to facilitate the installation, with some fearing the extracted muck would be deposited along the shoreline, causing an ongoing pollution problem. In addition, the removal of cooler water during the hottest months of the summer, would force cold-water loving trout and salmon populations to seek deeper areas in the lake that may not have sufficient oxygen to keep them alive.

PG&E operates a number of dams and hydroelectric facilities on the NFFR from Almanor to Lake Oroville. When it came time to renew its operating license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission a few years ago, PG&E agreed to do what it could to keep the temperature below 68 degrees Fahrenheit on a portion of the river known as Rock Creek-Cresta Reach, below Almanor and the town of Belden. This temperature range, it was decided, would benefit the river’s trout population during the summer. But the cost of this, according to the opponents, far outreaches the proposed benefits, and it appears they are probably correct.

They point out that the drop of one or two (maybe three in a good water year) degrees could necessitate the removal of up to 50 percent of the cold water in Almanor during the summer, undoubtedly doing great harm to the trout fishery in the lake and probably little for the trout population in the river. This removal is also expected to do significant harm to the trophy trout population in Butt Lake, downstream from Almanor. Others are quick to point out that since the colder water would need to be moved a considerable distance to get it to the Rock Creek-Cresta Reach area, there is no firm evidence that the lower temperature could be maintained to its destination.

So, how bad is the downstream warm water problem now in terms of damage to the fish population? According to the http://savelakealmanor.org/ Web site, "Perhaps the best answer stems from a recent question posed to a PG&E specialist who was asked whether there were any significant fish kills due to warm water in the lower reaches of the NFFR. His answer was simply ‘No.’"

Then there are the costs associated with the project that opponents say will be paid by all PG&E customers. Estimates to install the curtain have changed over the years, with some estimating as much as $50 million currently. Aaron Seandel wrote in the August 2004, edition of the Lake Almanor Country Club newsletter, in discussing the costs associated with the project, "...for the possible net drop in temperature of three degrees."

Originally, PG&E said that final decisions on the project would be required in time for an October 2004 FERC decision on their re-licensing bid, however, the power giant has indicated recently that it may be one to two more years before the matter is settled.

There is much more to this story. Those interested in additional information should visit the above mentioned Web site or write to the Save Lake Almanor Committee, P.O. Box 1356, Chester, CA 96020.

Dave Rice retired in 2001 after 30 years with the Nevada Division of Wildlife, 25 years as chief conservation officer. He can be reached at thomascreek@worldnet.att.net.#

This grant program implements Chapter 7(g) of Proposition 50, the Water Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act of 2002, which authorizes DWR to administer a $120 million agricultural and urban water conservation program. The program provides grants for water use efficiency implementation projects as well as research and development, feasibility studies, pilot, and demonstration projects.

The PSP is posted on the DWR website: http://www.owue.water.ca.gov/finance/. Completed proposals are due by January 11, 2005. Interested parties need not attend the workshops to submit proposals.

Persons representing cities and counties, joint power authorities, public water districts, tribes, nonprofit organizations, universities, colleges, State and federal agencies, and other entities involved in water management are encouraged to attend the workshops (schedule below).

Sacramento, Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - 10:00 am - Noon - Department of Water Resources Hearing Room, 1st Floor, Bonderson Building, 901 P Street, Sacramento, California 95814

Modesto, Thursday, December 2, 2004 - 10:00 am – Noon - Modesto Irrigation District Multipurpose Room, 1231 11th Street, Modesto, California 95354

Associated Press - 11/17/04
By Don Thompson, staff writer
LEE VINING, Calif. - Mono Lake, the high desert fascination of humorist Mark Twain that's nearly three times as salty as the ocean, remains the home to trillions of brine shrimp where thousands of California Gulls nest each spring - all preserved because of ecological activism.

Twenty years ago, after tireless efforts by the public, Congress designated Mono Lake as the nation's first federal scenic area.

Now, some of those same concerned citizens, along with the U.S. Forest Service, fear those protections are imperiled by a plan to subdivide 120 acres for luxury homes on the lake's western shore.

"Everyone's lived with the scenic area regulations for 20 years, and I'm sure they've at times been frustrated by them, but they've worked," said Geoff McQuilkin, who helps lead the nonprofit Mono Lake Committee, which opposes the proposal. "This is kind of the cutting edge of bringing (development) to Mono Lake ... one of the last wild corners of California."

A meeting between Monterey-based New Cities Land Co. and Mono County planning officials is set for Thursday, as the company prepares a revised development proposal. Company officials did not return several telephone calls from The Associated Press.

For more than four years, the Forest Service has been trying to add the acres to Inyo National Forest, which includes Mono Lake. The land has aspen groves, springs and a stream that attract wildlife to the boundary where the Sierra Nevada range drops into the Great Basin that stretches through Nevada into Utah.

The agency, according to forest supervisor Jeff Bailey, wants to swap the property for some in the nearby resort community of Mammoth Lakes. The deal, though, has been derailed by a squabble over price. A Forest Service appraisal last year put the land's worth at about half the price sought by the property's owners.

"We are so far apart in value that I don't think we can even come close," Bailey said.

The original plan called for 24 to 30 homes scattered across a highway from the lake, and the county expects the revised proposal to also fit the homes into the hilly landscape to minimize the visual and environmental impact. But the Forest Service ruled last year that developing the property is "incompatible and detrimental to the integrity of the Scenic Area".

County planners for years had assumed the Forest Service's land restrictions precluded development, until a recent legal opinion held that the county should proceed under its less restrictive zoning regulations.

If the Forest Service doesn't like the result, it has its own options - including condemning the land under the 1984 law creating the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area. Bailey said he would recommend that step, but McQuilkin fears the Bush administration won't enforce the scenic area's ban on development if it comes to condemning private property.

"It quickly moves out of local hands and moves to Washington, where it becomes a political issue," McQuilkin said.

The lake sits on the sparsely inhabited border between California and Nevada, just east of Yosemite National Park. Besides its wildlife, it draws tourists to view tufa towers, oddly shaped limestone deposits created by underwater springs. Just to the south are the upheavals of the youngest volcanic chain in North America.

Among the first to widely report on the remote region was a young Samuel Clemens, who had come West in the 1860s to seek his fortune in the gold fields and later as a journalist and author. In his 1872 book, "Roughing It," Twain wonders at an isolated lake in which water flows in but never flows out, evaporating instead at a rate of about 45 inches a year.

The lake was on a path to destruction after Los Angeles diverted four tributary streams into the Los Angeles Aquaduct in 1941. The move followed the much more publicized diversion to the south that turned Owens Lake into a dusty plain; Mono Lake eventually lost half its volume and doubled its salinity.

The Pacific Legal Foundation notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday that it would file suit in 60 days, claiming the agencies failed to meet requirements of the Endangered Species Act when they set out to protect 16 animal and 32 plant species. Advance notice is required before filing endangered species lawsuits.

Based on a favorable ruling in U.S. District Court in Fresno that overturned habitat protection for the Alameda whipsnake last year, the foundation said the agencies underestimated the economic impact of protection and didn't properly follow the rules to protect habitat.

"They speculated instead of determining what areas are essential to the conservation of the species," said attorney Reed Hopper.

The legal foundation, representing business groups, farmers and developers in the case, said its lawsuit would ultimately bring back jeopardized plants and animals, a claim dismissed by environmentalists.

"Only the Pacific Legal Foundation is cynical enough to argue that taking away habitat protection will help endangered species," said Kieran Suckling, of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has appealed the whipsnake case. "This lawsuit is all about paving California and clearing the way for massive development."

Under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government is required to map out land that is essential to a plant or animal's survival and recovery.

The so-called critical habitat designation has been a hot topic for business interests, environmentalists and the federal government.

Environmentalists have sued to force the government to identify habitat to protect species while developers and farmers have sued to remove or alter the designation, which can crimp logging, mining and large-scale development projects.

The government, meanwhile, has said habitat designation pales in comparison to the protection afforded once a species is listed as endangered or threatened. The Fish and Wildlife Service has blamed litigation for creating a backlog of petitions to protect other species and for diverting funds that could be used for other protection efforts.

"We could put more resources into recovery if we didn't have to spend those resources on critical habitat," said spokesman Al Donner.

Donner said it was premature to respond to the lawsuit notice, but said it would soon unveil a 60-year plan to help restore more than 30 protected vernal pool species, including several on the list targeted in the lawsuit notice.

Only a quarter of protected species nationwide have critical habitat designated, Donner said. But the Center for Biological Diversity puts that figure closer to a third and said a study of government data shows that species in critical habitat areas are recovering twice as fast.

While most of the endangered species would sound foreign to the average nature lover - from the tidewater goby, a finger-long fish, to Hoover's spurge, a plant that blossoms in the remains of spring puddles - environmentalists argue that their survival bodes well for the health of the planet.

Hopper said he hopes the lawsuit will have ramifications beyond the Golden State, forcing the agency to change the way it designates habitat for the protection and recovery of species, but Suckling predicted it would fail.

The whipsnake case is currently before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled this summer in favor of environmentalists in a case involving critical habitat for northern spotted owls. They also won a case before a federal judge involving the desert tortoise.#

It's an idea that won't die.

Everyone involved with the water issues of California, including the majority of voters who overwhelmingly nixed the proposal in 1982, know the ecological shortcomings of creating a peripheral canal around the Delta. Ever since then, talk of such a canal was avoided like the plague. A peripheral canal or pipeline would divert water from the mountain rivers and streams before it reaches the Delta so it can be pumped to Southern California.

Now a study by a UC Davis water expert says that to protect the drinking water of almost two-thirds of Californians, the canal could act as a safeguard against future levee failures, such as the one that occurred at Upper Jones Tract in June. When that levee crumbled, it sucked so much salt water into the Delta contaminating the state's drinking water that the giant pumps were stopped from sending water to the south.

Now that the peripheral canal has been resuscitated, the best thing to come out of the discussion so far is the attention it has brought to the century-old levee system that protects the islands and water in the Delta.

Any discussion of the state's water problems should be an all-encompassing study that includes conservation, increased water storage facilities and the health of the Delta system that includes levee retrofitting among all the involved parties.

Providing water for the state's burgeoning population requires a wide variety of divergent interests to agree to a plan that protects the Delta's wildlife, flora and the water purity for millions of Californians who depend on the precious resource.#

CalFed officials are nearing final approval of a financing plan for the Bay-Delta program that relies on money from the state and federal governments, plus fees that may be imposed on California water users.

"This effort is, inevitably, a controversial undertaking," according to the draft plan released this month. "Though the concept of beneficiary pays is broadly supported, the task of putting such a principle in place is a difficult one."

A final vote is expected next month by the Bay-Delta Authority governing board. The financing plan then will be submitted to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the federal government.

The $8.1 billion is a 10-year estimate of CalFed's financial requirements, down from an initial estimate of $12 billion.

As it stands, CalFed officials said, their financing proposal still has a $300 million gap.

CalFed is a collaboration of 23 federal and state agencies. The program's primary goals are to restore the ecological health of the Bay-Delta estuary, improve water supply reliability to farms and cities, protect drinking water quality and protect Delta levees.

In all, the CalFed program includes 10 elements, such as ecosystem restoration, water use efficiency, watersheds, drinking water quality and storage.

In the last four years, the state has covered 60 percent of CalFed's costs, while the federal government provided 7 percent of funds and water users 6 percent.

In the next 10 years, CalFed wants to cut the state's share to 29 percent, while increasing the federal burden to 21 percent and requiring water users to pay 9 percent. The local match would be 37 percent.

Water users north and south of the Delta have voiced concern about CalFed's financing scheme, seeking more specifics about just how much water users will be asked to bear and how that will be determined.

Kate Hansel, CalFed's assistant director, admitted that if funding falls short, the program could wind up a "house of cards."

"If we can come up with a plan that we seem to believe is balanced, maybe the unified voice can help keep it standing," she said.

CalFed officials are banking on the state voters approving a bond issue in 2006, along with continued federal funding.

Critics suggested CalFed should prepare a plan that has a variety of options.

"To not have some scenarios that take in the worst case or some alternative scenario, it seems to me we're not serving either of those two important groups - the governor and the Legislature," said Frances Spivey-Weber of the Mono Lake Committee.

"If we don't discuss it, it will be discussed by the Legislature and the agency heads with the governor. We may get to a point where we'll just leave it to them. To not discuss it, we're just setting ourselves up for failure."

A coalition of environmentalists and urban water providers sent a letter to CalFed, criticizing the agency for proposing cost allocations that were "not supported by an analysis of who will benefit, and by how much, from a specific project."

The groups suggested that CalFed "significantly overestimates the likelihood of future federal and state funding .... over the next 10 years."

Relying on a future state bond issue is "highly speculative," the letter said.

Douglas Wallace, an environmental affairs officer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, warned that his agency could see a "very substantial possible impact" from CalFed fees, perhaps a $100 per acre-foot surcharge.

"Unless everything is out in the open, we could have a bunch of negotiated deals on a user-by-user basis," he said. "You used the term 'house of cards.' I didn't. There are some big gaps that remain here."

If not enough money is available, "The 10-year plan could become the de facto 30-year plan," Wallace said.

North of the Delta, water users also worried about the uncertainty of the CalFed and the potential for fees to support the Environmental Restoration Program, budgeted at $150 million per year.

Funding is proposed as 30 percent each from the federal and state governments, plus 30 percent from water users, along with a 10 percent local grant match.

The share from water users - $45 million per year - is estimated at $20 million in Central Valley Project Improvement Act restoration funds and $25 million from a new water fee on entities not linked to the Central Valley Project.

"The upstream water users strongly feel they are contributing," said Sutter County farmer Al Montna, a Bay-Delta Authority board member. "They already made their investment."

North state farmers "started out embracing" CalFed when it was proposed in the 1990s, but now "the ball has moved," Montna said.

CalFed acknowledged that "upstream water users strongly oppose contributing to the ERP fee."#

People with irrigated lands in Sutter, Butte and Yuba counties are being asked to pay a $50 flat fee for the program plus 50 cents for each acre owned. The money will pay for the monitoring, which is estimated at $35,000 per location, with six locations spread through the three counties.

Steve Danna, president of the Butte-Yuba-Sutter Watershed Coalition said only about 50 percent of the growers on the list have signed up, so there is a push to get the word out. Between the three counties there are about 429,000 acres that will be covered under new rules by the Central Valley Water Quality Control Board.

Any business that discharges into the waterways is required to have a permit, but for two decades agriculture was exempt.

That has now changed. But rather than require a permit, the water quality board agreed that if coalitions were created to monitor waterways, the permits could be avoided.

Those who choose not to joint an approved coalition can apply for an individual discharge waiver at considerable expense or submit a complete report of waste discharge with a filing fee to the water board.

Danna said his group is getting serious about getting the word out. Those who don't sign up by Nov. 30 will be charged double if they sign up later on and lists of names of landowners who haven't signed up will be given to the water control board, he said.

He said he thinks there might be a lot of growers who are confused. Previously, it was thought that a larger coalition would be formed to cover most of the northern Sacramento Valley. However, the sub-basins have been established. Danna said it could be that growers who voiced interest in the Sacramento Valley Coalition think they have already signed up.

The fees being charged are based on the assumption that the majority of growers will pay for the monitoring program. If significant numbers of growers don't sign up, fees for those in the program will need to be adjusted.

For more information, call 538-7381 in Butte County, 822-7500 in Sutter County or 749-5400 in Yuba County.

Information:
BACKGROUND: A change in rules governing water runoff from agricultural land will require farmers to either obtain their own permits or join a group monitoring the discharges.
DEADLINE: Landowners with irrigated land have until Nov. 30 to sign up for a watershed coalition that will monitor water quality. The program includes a new fee charged to growers.

INFORMATION ON THE WEB: www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb5/programs/irrigated_lands.#

Placer County officials bought a 26-acre parcel off Sierra College Boulevard in Miners Ravine last year with the idea of building the water basin capable of holding 160 acre feet of water that would reduce the threat of flooding downstream.

State officials said the height and storage capacity exceed that of a detention basin and may instead need to be classified as a dam , which would require more safety requirements. But county officials argue, the facility cannot be considered a dam because it will not be built over a creek bed.

No final determination has been made on the status of the project, but Placer County Supervisor Bill Santucci said if the state rules against the county, the higher costs may force supervisors to reconsider the project.#

Collectively, it will be a multimillion-dollar moment. If all eligible property owners choose to drop their flood insurance, together they would save more than $20 million in yearly premiums.

They also would be taking a huge gamble.

Even with recent improvements, levees around the region could fail, say flood engineers, and cause several billion dollars in damage. Those without insurance could face a total loss - a disaster experienced by hundreds of Central Valley homeowners in 1955, 1986, 1995 and 1997.

"I can't believe that people in Sacramento would consider dropping their insurance," said Erwin Hayer, a 68-year-old Rio Linda resident who has been through four floods in 50 years. "This whole area has flooded forever."

The region is poised to reach a major milestone in January or February. After nearly two decades of flood-control upgrades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to release new maps removing much of Sacramento from the regulated 100-year floodplain, where federal insurance is required.

Stein Buer, director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, says he is 90 percent sure FEMA will issue the redesignation, which would affect about 50,000 parcels in downtown, midtown, east Sacramento, Oak Park and other neighborhoods.

In 2006, the Pocket, Meadowview and other areas are expected to get relief.

Given that SAFCA has spent 16 years pursuing this milestone, one might think agency officials would be celebrating. They aren't.

Buer and others fear that the remapping could prompt some property owners to cancel their flood insurance, even though they easily could convert to cheaper policies.

Once their property is taken out of the regulated flood zone, homeowners will be eligible for what's known as "preferred risk" flood policies.

Premiums for preferred-risk policies are less than half those for standard flood insurance, said George Deukmejian Jr., son of the former governor and a consultant to SAFCA.

For example, a capital homeowner who now pays $896 a year for $250,000 in home coverage and $100,000 in contents insurance would pay $317 under a preferred-risk policy, he said.

Time is ticking, according to Steve Danna, a Yuba-Sutter farmer who has been organizing a water monitoring coalition for Yuba, Sutter and Butte counties. By banding together, he said, farmers and dischargers can share monitoring costs and responsibilities.

Monitoring programs by local groups will officially begin Jan. 1, but the Butte-Yuba-Sutter Water Quality Coalition has already started, Danna said. So far, he has only accounted for about 50 percent of the three counties' relevant acreage, which together total 429,000 acres. "We figure there are a lot of growers out there who aren't participating," said Danna. "I'm sure there are ones out there who are holding out."

Those who do not join the coalition have two other options: Apply for an individual discharge waiver or submit a report of waste discharge to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board for a permit. These two options are more costly because growers are essentially going it alone. Growers in the Yuba, Sutter and Butte watershed who choose to join the coalition have until Nov. 30 to sign up, after which membership fees and dues will be doubled, said Danna.

Stacey said the reduction was likely due to a combination of factors. Low water during the spring and summer migration down the river to the ocean killed 100,000 to 300,000 juvenile chinook in 2000, and tens of thousands in 2001. The bulk of this year's returning fish are from those year classes. Stacey said chinook salmon are paying the price for scarce water supplies being managed for coho salmon, which are on the threatened species list. Extra water put down the Klamath River for coho helps some chinook migrate to the Pacific. But the young chinook that wait until summer are left to struggle.

"The combination of low flows when the juveniles are migrating out, warm temperatures, and the interaction with these naturally occurring disease organisms — they are all adding to the problem," said Stacey. "The flows that we are getting are focused entirely on coho, and they are not large enough to provide optimal conditions for fall chinook. "The losses of juvenile fish don't fully explain the declines, indicating that ocean conditions that have produced plentiful runs in recent years may be reversing as a mild to moderate El Nino is forming, Stacey said. The climatic cycle known as El Nino produces warmer waters in the Pacific, leading to less food for salmon. Returns are also down, though not so much, in the Sacramento River to the south and the Rogue River to the north.

Salmon fishermen say this is the first of at least three years in a row of declining Klamath chinook returns that will force reduced ocean harvests up and down the West Coast. The juvenile salmon losses were followed in 2002 by the loss of 36,000 to 70,000 adult chinook to diseases related to low and warm water. Fewer Klamath salmon forces cutbacks in harvests from the central Oregon coast to San Francisco because the fish mix in the ocean.

"It all comes down to too little water at a time fish need it in the river system," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents California commercial salmon fishermen. "That I lay to the doorstep of the Bureau of Reclamation for cutting off flows in the river and producing what was an artificial drought for several years running."

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been struggling to share scarce water among farms in the Klamath Reclamation Project straddling the Oregon-California border, threatened sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake, and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River and its tributaries.

"We are continuing to operate the Klamath project according to a biological opinion from NOAA Fisheries," said Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken. "They have determined the long-term flows. And these flows have been supported by a water bank that next year is calling for 100,000 acre feet from willing sellers in the basin."

The 3,013 adults that have returned to Bogus Creek and the 950 returned to the Shasta River amount to 23 percent of last year's run at this time, said Stacey. Compared to the good returns of 2001, this year's returns to the Shasta are 9 percent. The 10,500 chinook that have returned to the hatchery at Irongate Dam on the mainstem of the Klamath River are 33 percent of last year's run at this time.

Farms in the Klamath Project got their full deliveries in 2000, though water was scarce enough to delay deliveries to nearby wildlife refuges. In 2001, drought was so bad that the bureau cut off water to most of the Klamath Project to meet Endangered Species Act demands for coho and suckers.

Since then the bureau has been buying water from farmers to give to fish to meet the growing demands set under a biological opinion outlining what the coho need to survive.#

A mini-version of Mount's scenario came without warning or discernible cause in June, when a levee breach west of Stockton tipped the state's fragile water balance. Water managers flushed the Delta with reservoir water from as far north as Redding to keep the ocean at bay, water they otherwise would have saved to help struggling fish this fall. Wind and water pressure threatened to collapse other levees, which would have triggered worse disruption.

Other water experts attending a two-day flood management conference Wednesday downplayed Mount's disaster sequence - not because it couldn't come true, but because it isn't new.

The state has faced the possibility for years, since farmers walled off wetlands with makeshift levees a century ago and 130,000 acres of the Delta's 700,000 acres began subsiding, increasing water pressure as the land sank below sea level. Rising sea levels from global warming, highlighted Monday with a report on the melting arctic ice cap, are a new threat but an incremental development.

Mike Chrisman's decision came at the request of Assembly members Lois Wolk (D-Davis) and Joe Canciamilla (D-Pittsburg), and less than two months after the nonprofit group Environmental Defense released a study detailing possible alternatives to the Bay Area's sources of drinking water and hydroelectric power.

In a written response this week to the two legislators, Chrisman said he has asked the Department of Water Resources to review 20 years' worth of restoration proposals.

He added, "California, its governor and its citizens are committed to economically feasible restoration of ecosystems and preservation of open space. This commitment translates into an interest in reasonable proposals for expanding our trust resources."

The Hetch Hetchy system supplies water to 2.4 million Bay Area customers. Key to that system is the O'Shaughnessy Dam, which submerged the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which many consider Yosemite Valley's once equally beautiful twin, under 300 feet of water in 1923.

Previous proposals to tear down the dam and restore the valley have gone nowhere, and the latest one, by Environmental Defense, was criticized as irresponsible by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former mayor of San Francisco, whose support in changing federal law would be critical.

"In a state that has faced repeated droughts and is desperate for water sources, I believe this would be a terrible mistake," she said.

Agencies that own and operate the water system and represent Bay Area consumers also expressed skepticism, stressing that a safe and reliable water source is the region's top priority. The director of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Assn., which represents numerous water agencies in the region, said the group would not support the idea until alternate facilities were operating.

Any solution also would have to involve the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts, which own the Don Pedro Reservoir downstream on the Tuolumne River.

Still, Tom Graff, Environmental Defense's California regional director, said support from the Schwarzenegger administration for further study is a start.

"This is but one step on a long road, but I think it's a significant step," he said. "The state administration has basically said this is worthy of study. We applaud them for agreeing to that and for trying to now herd the other stakeholders and people involved."

In his letter to the two legislators, Chrisman said he also asked the Department of Water Resources to work with the National Park Service to place an economic value on a restored Hetchy Hetchy Valley, which could relieve pressures of heavy visitation on Yosemite Valley.

But the letter struck a cautious note, stressing the state's need for a net increase in water storage. "Any plan to remove or modify existing water storage systems would need to be balanced by a viable plan to, at a minimum, replace the water supply now provided by the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir," Chrisman wrote. And he warned that the state's study would be of "limited value" unless affected local agencies and federal officials participated.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which runs the Hetch Hetchy system, is beginning a $3.6-billion overhaul. Restoration backers want environmental studies that must precede the overhaul to examine the possibility of razing the dam.

In its study, Environmental Defense concluded that San Francisco could continue to receive most of its drinking water and hydropower from the Tuolumne River by using the Eleanor, Cherry and Don Pedro reservoirs, also located on the Tuolumne. A pipe connecting Don Pedro to the city's water delivery system would be required.

A recent engineering study by researchers at UC Davis also concluded that Hetch Hetchy was no longer critical to the state's water storage, and that downstream reservoirs, including Don Pedro, could store the same amount of water.

Wolk and Canciamilla, chairman of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, asked Schwarzenegger in September to pursue a state-sponsored study.

"We urged him … that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and could be a true legacy," Wolk said, and "that the magnitude of it really required that the state and the governor take the leadership role and do a study to see if this really did make sense."

Wolk said plans for a state-sponsored study, also supported by Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City), were encouraging.

"No one should be afraid of a full, complete and balanced study," she said. "I encourage everyone to come to the table in good faith to assist the state in preparing a thorough analysis of all the options." ####

None of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' active judges voted to hear the case again. The decision is the latest victory for the Hoopa Valley Tribe and fishing and environmental interests that have fought for years to cut diversions from the Trinity to the Sacramento River, where Westlands and other irrigation districts get their water.

Westlands said it hasn't decided whether to seek a U.S. Supreme Court review. Some say the Supreme Court is unlikely to hear the matter given last week's ruling. Westlands, however, said there are unresolved issues that need to be addressed.

The suit by Westlands and the Northern California Power Agency has led to extensive delays in putting in place a congressionally supported plan authorized by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 2000. It calls for just under half the Trinity's water to remain in the river. The 9th Circuit earlier this year ordered the program to move forward.

"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said Mike Leavitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental protections, he said, must be done "in a way that maintains the economic competitiveness of the country."

Leavitt pointed out that four more years give administration officials an opportunity to mold the environmental agency's professional staffs to more closely reflect their priorities. Leavitt said 35% of the EPA's staff would become eligible to retire in the next four years, giving him a chance to remake from the inside out the agency that takes the lead in enforcing air and water pollution and the cleanup of toxic dumps.

Administration officials spoke of a renewed commitment to long-standing priorities. For example, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said President Bush would not reconsider regulating carbon dioxide emissions — despite scientific alarm over global warming — because such a policy would hurt the domestic coal industry and send jobs overseas.

To the administration's most vocal critics, the agenda amounts to a sweeping overhaul of the nation's 30-year-old system of environmental protections.

"They are trying to shred the environmental safety net," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. Pope predicted renewed efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The melting ice will cause the world's sea levels to rise by three feet. This is not the scientists' worst-case scenario. It's their middle-of-the-road estimate.

Even before the report's formal release, the Bush administration offered an appalling response. If addressing global warming means reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that costs America jobs (a "single" job, one official said), the administration simply won't respond. That position is breathtaking. Global warming will cost this country many more jobs in the long run than a careful transition. Even so, federal inaction does not absolve California from preparing for the future.

"Our current flood management system is broken," said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources. "If we don't fix it, we're going to have disaster after disaster after disaster."

Snow was speaking at a two-day conference sponsored by the nonprofit Water Education Foundation.

The system is underfunded, has a potentially deadly backlog of repair problems, is encouraging entire subdivisions in flood-prone areas, and likely faces more pressure as climate conditions change, Snow and Army Corps of Engineers Col. Ronald Light told several hundred water managers.

Moreover, recent court rulings on liability will cost taxpayers millions of dollars and could bankrupt some local reclamation districts, they said.

The 1,600 miles of levees that permitted much of the development in the Central Valley were often poorly constructed of sand and gravel, yet that haphazard lacework now protects 2.5 million people, 2 million acres of farmland, and $47 billion worth of homes and businesses, Snow said.

Comments will be accepted until 3 p.m. Nov. 29, for a Sutter Mutual Water Company fish screen project designed to help the recovery of at-risk fish, including winter-, spring- and fall-run chinook salmon and steelhead on the Sacramento River.

The Tisdale Positive Barrier Fish Screen Pumping Plants Project is tentatively recommended for funding by CalFed agencies. CalFed funding of $6.8 million is being sought for construction, in addition to $1.8 million of previously-approved CalFed and Proposition 204 funding.

The total estimated project cost, including all of the studies, design, environmental documentation, permitting, construction and performance testing is $17.4 million.

11/7/04 - Los Angeles Times
By Bettina Boxall, staff writer
The 10-year-old accord balancing demands on the state's most abundant source of water is in jeopardy because of new pressures that threaten to undermine fragile ecological gains in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, environmentalists warn.

At issue is a plan that would send more water to Central Valley fields and Southern California subdivisions and the effect it could have on delta wildlife, particularly salmon.

In 1991, only 211 winter-run Chinook salmon swam under the Golden Gate Bridge and returned to their historic Sacramento River spawning grounds. That perilously low number reflected the long decline of the delta, the center of not only the state's water supply but also of some of its most intractable environmental problems.

More than a decade and many millions of dollars of restoration work later, the number of winter-run Chinook is approaching 10,000, a tenuous sign of recovery in a region that once supported millions of migrating salmon.

But that progress could be aborted, environmentalists and some federal biologists argue, by a proposal to crank up the output at the delta's biggest pumping operation.

Water managers want to raise by roughly a quarter the pumping limits at the Harvey O. Banks state plant. The sturdy heart of California's giant water delivery system, Banks pulls several billion gallons of water a day from the south delta east of San Francisco and funnels it into the 444-mile-long California Aqueduct.

Growing controversy over the pumping proposal threatens to splinter support for CalFed, an ambitious decade-old government program of environmental and water supply improvements to the San Francisco Bay delta system.

Recently reauthorized by Congress, CalFed has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to undo 150 years of environmental damage to the bay and delta. But CalFed also promised water users more reservoir space and more pumping capacity.

Some feared it would be a repeat of 2001, when two-thirds of the returning fish perished before spawning. But predicting nature is a tricky business. To the surprise of many, several big storms and weeks of milder weather have cooled off Folsom reservoir and the American River.

"Mother Nature has bailed us out," said Rob Titus, a biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game. "Six weeks ago, we were very concerned about a big fish kill. That is not happening now."

In the lower American River, chinook salmon need temperatures below 60 degrees to spawn successfully. When the river cools below that threshold, female salmon somehow know it is safe to start laying their eggs.

The fish dig a nest in the gravel, where the eggs are laid. The males fertilize the nest, which gets covered with more gravel. The adult salmon then try to protect their progeny from predators, before the fish go belly up and die.

On closer inspection, these dense swaths aren't the real thing, the delicate native Pacific cordgrass, for centuries home to fish and nesting birds. The grass on the island's edge is Atlantic cordgrass, an aggressive invader -- now one of the most important threats to the ecological balance of San Francisco Bay.

Scientists say the stands of non-native cordgrass and its hybrids would grow like dense meadows on the mudflats if left unchecked, likely causing the extinction of the native variety and displacing thousands of acres of shorebird habitat, choking tidal creeks and dominating newly restored marshes.

It is not an unexpected result. Reservoirs store water and heat, warming and cooling slower than a river would naturally, the paper reads. Taking out the four hydropower facilities below Link River Dam on Upper Klamath Lake would allow the river to quickly cool in chilly fall temperatures as tens of thousands of chinook salmon are pushing upstream to spawn, according to the paper's authors. It would also create warmer conditions in the spring. While the paper postulates that would harm growing young chinook, it also admits that it could help speed their development, generally an advantage for fish.

The paper was submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is overseeing Portland, Ore.,-based PacifiCorp's dam relicensing request.

Removing the dams would also make more of the river hospitable to spawning salmon in the fall, the scientists found. That could keep an additional 50 kilometers of river below the temperature threshold for spawning salmon and incubation of eggs in the fall.

That does not include habitat that would be opened up above Iron Gate Dam, a barrier which blocks all migrating fish, said USGS author John Bartholow. The stretch of river most likely to experience a change is Seiad Valley, upstream from Happy Camp. That's because flows from warm, shallow Upper Klamath Lake can at best provide 48 percent of the water to that reach, which has few unmanaged tributaries, the scientists wrote. The prediction it is only one take in a barrage of complex questions being asked about the Klamath's dams as part the relicensing process.

While important, water temperatures may affect salmon more or less than the exceedingly poor water quality in the reservoirs. The dams also may act as settling pools for nutrients coming downstream -- including from massive algae die-off in Upper Klamath Lake -- a benefit according to PacifiCorp. They also prevent sediment from above the dams from moving downstream. Asked to relate the importance of water temperature to these other factors, Bartholow said that work is in progress.

"To answer that would be speculative," Bartholow said. The paper has yet to be published, and Bartholow said some changes may be made before it is.

PacifiCorp spokesman Jon Coney said the paper and the company's work show the same thermal lag caused by the shallow reservoirs, as well as the result that Iron Gate Reservoir isn't big enough to be used to influence water temperatures. He said PacifiCorp's water quality and water temperature studies are now being applied to fish, including coho salmon and steelhead."One thing we've tried to emphasize is that water quality modeling shows that it (removal of the dams) could be potentially worse," Coney said.

It's hard to imagine.

In a request for more studies on the dams' impacts, the California State Water Resources Control Board lodged this observation: A scientist was using equipment to locate fish in Copco Reservoir in October 2003. A low-pressure system blew in, and the wind picked up. The scientist "observed a massive release of gasses from the bottom of the reservoir that turned the surface of the reservoir to foam."

The reservoir's fall turnover, when its warm upper layer cools and sinks, may suspend nutrients and organic matter trapped during the summer months and flush them in huge quantities downstream, the board's memo reads.

Mike Belchik, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, added fish passage to the problems that may harm salmon runs more than water temperature. But he said the earlier rise in temperature predicted by Bartholow and others may accelerate the hatching of fish eggs and juvenile fishes' growth. That could get young fish out of the river faster, away from many predators and increasingly warm temperatures.

"This is an effect that the dams are having," Belchik said. "This is an effect that needs to be mitigated. #

Trout Unlimited and the National Audubon Society's Peregrine Chapter of Mendocino County filed the petition asking that steps be taken to assure that streams keep adequate water for the preservation of wildlife in their natural habitats. "This petition was filed to bring some sense of consistency and wise management to the use of water from northern California's streams and rivers. It is designed to move a process forward that will, in the long term, benefit both the region's communities and those species that depend on adequate flows in those waters," said Chuck Bonham, Trout Unlimited's California counsel and California Water Project director.

There are some 276 applications for new water rights pending before the Water Board, some of which were filed more than 10 years ago. Many of the applications are regarding water rights in the Russian River and Navarro River watersheds. Unauthorized diversions have become an increasingly common practice with hundreds of pending water right applications,. Records show hundreds of documented cases of unauthorized diversions in Mendocino County alone and an estimated 1,406 existing water diversions along the Russian River.

"There are hundreds of outstanding applications for water rights that have not been acted on. There also appears to be a large number of dams and diversions in Mendocino County that are not being addressed. Part of that is the permitting process here in Mendocino County because people with a grading permit felt that was all they needed," said Park Steiner, conservation chairman with the Mendocino County Peregrine Audubon Society.According to Steiner, Mendocino County was issuing permits without other necessary permits in place and only in the last two years has it suggested to people that other permits are needed.

"I think that there are many common points of agreement between Peregrine Audubon Society, Trout Unlimited, landowners and the Farm Bureau. The advantage to landowners is that through this process the water permits should be prompt (three year maximum permit process). We feel that this is a good step towards fairness," Steiner said.

Steiner stated that with landowners not being able to complete water right applications, their water rights are not guaranteed. Once the water right is issued, landowners are guaranteed to that water, he continued.

"From the conservation side, we feel that this is mandatory because we need to see adequate resource protection. There is already an existing law; we are just asking for it to be implemented. We feel that a petition will change budget constraints and allow more money to go to the resource agencies that deal with these critical problems," Steiner said.

David Katz, Trout Unlimited's California director, said the petition asks the Water Board to lead a workshop process to create a system whereby order and balance will be brought back to the water allocation process.

"One of the reasons why we pursued this approach rather than legal action is because we believe that, with the leadership of the Water Board, the stakeholders should be able to develop workable solutions that address water demands and the needs of fish and wildlife," he said.#

These assessments can be used in cooperation with new regulations that require monitoring of waterways, she said. This can help guide the location of required water quality analysis through the program. The district works with property owners by helping to find grants to help pay for projects that protect the county's natural resources. For example, some unpaved roads create runoff that brings sediment into waterways. With funding, roads can be graded and sloped so this does not occur, Sevelius explained. Or, water can be directed to culverts that help with groundwater recharge.

Dec. 8 is the annual stakeholder meeting where the public is invited to find out what the district does.

"We really, really, really encourage people to come to give us input so we can prioritize those various inputs and put them into our planning documents," Sevelius said.

Hue Dang, with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said this December meeting is fairly critical because that's when priorities are set for the near future.

(The Resource Conservation District office is located at 150 Chuck Yeager Way Suite A, in the USDA Oroville Service Center at the Oroville airport, 534-0112 ext. 3.#)

California's congressional delegation did something rare and important recently. It managed to agree on legislation to advance water and Delta/river habitat projects in California. As a political achievement, particularly for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, this is one to relish, especially after President Bush signed the bill on Monday.

But the political success had its price — or more accurately put, its scaled-down price. There's a lesson here — to be wary of relying so much on Washington — that California's water community is slow to learn.

To get this bill through Congress, Feinstein and Pombo had to shrink this funding bill from an estimated $2.4 billion down to $395 million to be stretched over four years. That is a reduction of more than 80%. California's wish list of water and habitat projects, however, has not decreased by 80%. If anything, it has grown.

Finance — the mismatch between the supply of subsidies and the demand — is the biggest challenge for Cal-Fed. This is the name given to the state/federal effort to better manage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and simultaneously make progress on the water needs of humans and fish.

Cal-Fed has been remarkably successful at getting more than a dozen state and federal agencies to co-manage the Delta, and at providing better science. It derived its ambitious list of restoration, reservoir and conveyance projects — with a cost perhaps as much as $30 billion — during the late 1990s, when the federal and state governments were running big surpluses. That's no longer the case. Cal-Fed is studying whether to build a new generation of reservoirs, but the new federal legislation contains no funds to actually construct any of them. The most ardent proponents of reservoirs seem to be banking on considerable federal help in building them.

That seems more than a little backward in terms of logic. If any given water supply project has merit, whether it is desalination or conservation or a reservoir, shouldn't the water districts that would benefit be lining up to make the investments directly?

Consider the State Water Project. This system of dams and aqueducts was built by the state borrowing the funds and the water districts paying off the debt. This is a reliable method of financing projects. But with future projects, the challenge is identifying who benefits from them (and thus who has to pay off the debt). That may sound simple. But it's not.

The winter-run salmon that come up the Sacramento River are proposed to have their listing changed from "endangered" to "threatened," indicating the run is in better shape than it has been. Also, the spring-run salmon that swim up the Sacramento and then come into Butte, Big Chico, Mill and Deer creeks and a few other streams to spawn, were evaluated by the federal agency. It is recommended that they continue to be designated a "threatened" species.

The 2001 decision by Oregon Federal District Court Judge Michael Hogan upheld a challenge to the federal agency filed by a group calling itself the Alsea Valley Alliance. In doing so, the judge set aside the Fisheries Service's 1998 listing of the Oregon Coast coho salmon as a threatened species.

The judge's reasoning went like this: The service had concluded the two groups of salmon that make up the Oregon Coast coho unit that is salmon that spawn naturally in rivers and streams and salmon that are spawned artificially in hatcheries were so genetically similar that they really comprise one unit.

But then the agency listed only the naturally spawning salmon as "threatened" and afforded no special protection to the hatchery-spawned fish. The judge found this illogical and called it "arbitrary and capricious." Fisheries Service officials decided against appealing and instead moved to change their policies to conform to the judge's ruling.

Consequently, a new rule has been proposed. Under it, the service would list both hatchery and naturally spawning fish in cases like that of the Oregon Coast coho, a major policy change throughout the region. Public hearings have been held and written comments will continue to be taken on the proposed rule through Nov. 12. Craig Tucker of Friends of the River, a Northern California conservation group, called the proposed rule misguided.

By including both hatchery and naturally spawning fish under an endangered-species designation, "it will look like there are more wild, sustainable fish than there really are," he said. "This is a big win for developers and timber companies."

Craig Wingert, a supervising fisheries biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, of which the Fisheries Service is a part, said he's well aware of the politics and controversy surrounding the proposed rule. He said the rule is an honest effort to boost protection for anadromous fish while complying with Judge Hogan's ruling. Those who claim the rule would jeopardize fish that are now protected are oversimplifying the procedures.

Rep. Wally Herger, R-Chico, said in a statement that he supported the proposed rule. "I would think that Bush administration efforts to recover species would be good news to environmentalists," he stated. "But it seems they will blindly oppose movement toward recovery if it lessens regulatory burdens and land-use restrictions and gives landowners more flexibility." Because of Judge Hogan's ruling, teams of scientists reviewed the 25 groups of salmon and steelhead that have been listed as threatened or endangered in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Wingert said the naturally spawning spring-run chinook salmon in Butte and other north-state streams were studied, as were the spring-run salmon that are spawned at the Feather River Hatchery in Oroville. The two types of fish were found to be very distinct genetically, he said. As a result, the hatchery fish won't be included under the threatened designation that has been applied to the naturally spawning fish.

Tucker said reducing the listing of the Sacramento River winter-run salmon from "endangered" to "threatened" would be premature. "There have been gains," he agreed. Not so long ago there were just a few fish, and now recent runs have been around 10,000. But historically runs have been in the hundreds of thousands, he said.

Written comments on the proposed rule can be sent to Assistant Regional Administrator, NMFS, Protected Resources Division, 501 W. Ocean Blvd., Suite 4200, Long Beach, CA, 90802-4213.

After reviewing public comments and scientific studies, Wingert said, the head of his agency will make a decision on the proposed rule sometime next year.#

DELTA WATER SHIFT WILL NOT HURT ENDANGERED SPECIES, AGENCY SAYS

The ruling clears the way for the federal Bureau of Reclamation and state Department of Water Resources to sign long-term water contracts with rural irrigation districts and urban water districts. They also can continue with plans to pump more water through the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to thirsty Southern California.

Environmental groups have fought the expected decision by NOAA Fisheries, formerly known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, alleging it was politically motivated. They cite draft biological opinions that said the water transfer would imperil the fish.

Jim Lecky, NOAA Fisheries' assistant regional administrator for protective resources, denied any outside influence or improper altering of the final decision. Changing the ultimate recommendation was "just typical project management oversight and supervision," Lecky said. "There was some analysis that was faulty and needed to get a second look, and that's what we did."

The three major species at the heart of the opinion are the Sacramento River winter chinook run, the Central Valley spring chinook run, and the Central Valley steelhead. Also considered was danger to Southern Oregon-Northern California Coast coho salmon and Central Coast steelhead.

The 350-page decision concludes none are likely to be jeopardized. It includes requirements to try to minimize fish kills by maintaining cold water in the Sacramento River to aid winter run salmon and establishing fish kill thresholds that would require the Bureau of Reclamation to stop pumping water through the Delta, Lecky said.

A task force would help set cold water requirements each May 1, based largely on how much water had been stored from the winter rain and snowfall, he said. Friday's decision "will become the underpinning ... of long-term contracts that the bureau will consider later this year," Lecky said.

The federal reclamation bureau and state water department want to integrate their parallel reservoir and pumping systems, sign dozens of water contracts lasting 25 to 40 years, and send 27 percent more water south through the state's Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant near Stockton.

California's two Democratic U.S. senators and a half-dozen Democratic House members, including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, have called for delays and more information before water regulators act.

Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council criticized the agency for signing the biological opinion before the inspector generals of the Commerce and Interior departments complete their investigations of whether the reclamation bureau improperly influenced NOAA Fisheries to alter initial draft findings that the water transfer could endanger fish species.

"What the bureau is attempting to do is bring Klamath-style management to the Bay and Delta," Nelson said. The reference was to alleged political influence on federal decisions affecting the Klamath River in Northern California and south-central Oregon that allegedly contributed to one of the nation's largest fish kills in 2002.

Nelson, also criticized the state and federal water agencies for continuing with the proposed water transfers unilaterally, instead of working through the open and collaborative California Federal Bay-Delta Program, commonly known as CalFed. He had not seen Friday's decision and could not comment on its specifics.

------ Read the relevant Bureau of Reclamation documents at www.usbr.gov/mp/cvo/index.html

10/23/04 - Los Angeles Times
By Bettina Boxall, staff writer

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued an opinion Friday that opens the door to increased water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The agency concluded that additional pumping from the delta, as well as changes in dam operations, would not seriously harm endangered or threatened salmon species.

That reversed earlier draft findings by its biologists that could have stymied plans to send more water south to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and the cities of Southern California.

In an August draft letter, never publicly released but leaked to the media, the agency said that increased pumping and other proposed changes in the federal water system were "likely to jeopardize the continued existence" of the Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead.

The agency's regional administrator also had written to county officials in Northern California saying the agency was concerned that a significant amount of spawning grounds would be lost if water managers moved ahead with plans to alter Shasta Dam operations.

SACRAMENTO - A federal agency ruled Friday that shifting more Northern California water to Southern California will not jeopardize five threatened or endangered species of fish. The ruling clears the way for the federal Bureau of Reclamation and state Department of Water Resources to sign long-term water contracts with rural irrigation districts and urban water districts. They also can continue with plans to pump more water through the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to thirsty Southern California.

Environmental groups have fought the expected decision by NOAA Fisheries, formerly known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, alleging it was politically motivated. They cite draft biological opinions that said the water transfer would imperil the fish.

Jim Lecky, NOAA Fisheries' assistant regional administrator for protective resources, denied any outside influence or improper altering of the final decision. Changing the ultimate recommendation was "just typical project management oversight and supervision," Lecky said. "There was some analysis that was faulty and needed to get a second look, and that's what we did."

The three major species at the heart of the opinion are the Sacramento River winter chinook run, the Central Valley spring chinook run, and the Central Valley steelhead. Also considered was danger to Southern Oregon-Northern California Coast coho salmon and Central Coast steelhead. The 350-page decision concludes none are likely to be jeopardized. It includes requirements to try to minimize fish kills by maintaining cold water in the Sacramento River to aid winter run salmon and establishing fish kill thresholds that would require the Bureau of Reclamation to stop pumping water through the Delta, Lecky said.

A task force would help set cold water requirements each May 1, based largely on how much water had been stored from the winter rain and snowfall, he said. Friday's decision "will become the underpinning ... of long-term contracts that the bureau will consider later this year," Lecky said.

The federal reclamation bureau and state water department want to integrate their parallel reservoir and pumping systems, sign dozens of water contracts lasting 25 to 40 years, and send 27 percent more water south through the state's Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant near Stockton.

California's two Democratic U.S. senators and a half-dozen Democratic House members, including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, have called for delays and more information before water regulators act.

Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council criticized the agency for signing the biological opinion before the inspector generals of the Commerce and Interior departments complete their investigations of whether the reclamation bureau improperly influenced NOAA Fisheries to alter initial draft findings that the water transfer could endanger fish species.

"What the bureau is attempting to do is bring Klamath-style management to the Bay and Delta," Nelson said. The reference was to alleged political influence on federal decisions affecting the Klamath River in Northern California and south-central Oregon that allegedly contributed to one of the nation's largest fish kills in 2002.

Nelson, also criticized the state and federal water agencies for continuing with the proposed water transfers unilaterally, instead of working through the open and collaborative California Federal Bay-Delta Program, commonly known as CalFed. He had not seen Friday's decision and could not comment on its specifics.

------ Read the relevant Bureau of Reclamation documents at www.usbr.gov/mp/cvo/index.html

10/23/04 - Contra Costa Times
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

The federal agency responsible for protecting California's imperiled salmon and steelhead gave its approval Friday to a sweeping plan that helps clear the way for water agencies to increase pumping of Delta water to Southern California.

The document says that continuing to operate the dams and pumps in California's two largest water projects will not drive salmon or steelhead to extinction.

More importantly, perhaps, the document removes a major obstacle to two hotly contested initiatives: a new batch of 25-year federal water contracts for some of the state's biggest farm districts and other water users, including the Contra Costa Water District; and plans to boost the pumping capacity of the Delta's state-owned pumps by more than 25 percent.

The report by the National Marine Fisheries Service already has come under fierce criticism because earlier, leaked versions concluded water operations would jeopardize some salmon runs. Later versions of the report showed the agency reversed those conclusions and determined the projects pose less risk to salmon and steelhead.

More than a dozen members of Congress, led by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, charged federal agencies with politically manipulating the biologists' conclusions. In response, the offices of inspector general in two federal departments are investigating.

10/22/04 - Redding Record Searchlight
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
LAKE SHASTA

After slowly shrinking all summer, the state's largest reservoir began inching back up this week with Tuesday's dramatic downpours. But there's an awful lot of room to grow this year. The massive lake is less than half-full. Despite the storm, Lake Shasta on Thursday was at its lowest level for that date since 1994. Its waters languished 48 feet down from last year, exposing a reddish bathtub ring that in places looks more like the walls of a canyon than the shores of a lake. The lake had just 2.18 million acre-feet of water in storage at the end of the official water year on Sept. 30. That's down nearly a million acre-feet from last year and is the smallest amount of carryover water in a decade.

With a long winter ahead,it's too early to worry about next summer's water supply, officials said Thursday. "We're hopeful for a wet year to help replenish" the lake, said Larry Ball, an operations division chief with the Bureau of Reclamation at Keswick Dam, just downstream from Shasta.

The problem traces back to last winter. Relentless February rains forced officials to crank the spigot and drain some of Lake Shasta's precious water, saving room for spring storm runoff. Those storms never came.The lake peaked too early and dropped too low as a result.

Compare that with April 2003, when steady spring rains allowed officials to virtually fill the lake just as the high-demand summer months approached. Come fall, the lake was still reasonably high.

This year's scenario was frustrating, but unavoidable, officials say. Shasta Dam's first purpose is to prevent floods downstream, Ball said, and if the lake is too full, dumping water is the only solution. That's precisely the argument some use in supporting a proposal to raise the dam, giving water managers more flexibility to regulate releases. Even if augmented by only 6.5 feet -- the smallest of three alternatives under review -- officials could allow more water to accumulate in the wet winter and spring before releasing it downstream. Others, however, question how boosting the dam could help because the lake is rarely full anyway.

Shasta is the largest of 18 reservoirs in the federal Central Valley Project, which supplies water for irrigation, municipal use and environmental benefit. Trinity Lake, also part of the project, is 26 feet lower this year than last.

Projectwide, 5.7 million acre-feet of water was stored through September -- a decrease of 1.9 million acre-feet from last year, said Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken. An acre-foot is enough water for a family of four for a year. Farmers are already keeping a close eye on Lake Shasta, hoping the reservoir rebounds this winter. "We would love to see a wet year," said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition in Sacramento. "It's a delicate balancing act that they engage in every year. Sometimes following normal operating procedures leaves you on the short end."

Shasta could be enlarged or supplemented by other storage facilities to catch some of the excess 10 million acre-feet of water that flows untouched into the ocean every year, Wade said.

Whatever the long-term solution, there have certainly been years worse than this. Ball recalls 1994, when the lake was at its current level -- about 100 feet down -- going into December. The next month, it rose 60 feet in 10 days. Tuesday's storm was a big first step, boosting the water about 1 foot. "We still don't know what's coming," Ball said.

How low can you go? On Thursday, Lake Shasta was at its lowest level for that date since 1994. Here's a look back at other lake levels for Oct. 21, as measured in feet above sea level. A full lake would be 1,067 feet.

California Bay-Delta Update
News Highlights from the California Bay-Delta Authority

Finally, the Authority received an update on the draft 10-Year Finance Plan for CALFED. The draft final will be presented at the joint December BDPAC and Authority meeting. The current draft can be accessed at http://www.calwater.ca.gov/FinancePlanning/Finance_Plan_Straw_Proposals_10-7-02_Authority_supplement.pdf.

· AB2572 (Kehoe) requires urban water suppliers to install water meters on all municipal and industrial connections by January, 1, 2025. It also requires urban water suppliers to begin charging customers with metered connections based on volume of water used by January 1, 2010. The bill makes water meters a condition for eligibility for state grant funding in the areas of wastewater treatment, water use efficiency and drinking water treatment.

· SB 1155 (Machado) requires state and federal agencies to prepare and submit a plan to meet water quality objectives set by the State Water Resources Control Board prior to increasing permitted pumping at the state's facilities in the Delta.

PSPs Released for ERP, Science Grants: The California Bay-Delta Authority has released solicitation packages for two grant programs. The Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) is seeking applications for projects to monitor and evaluate ecosystem restoration actions previously funded through ERP. Up to $20 million is available, and proposals are due November 19. Details are at http://calwater.ca.gov/Solicitation/ERP_Solicitation.shtml.

Through the Science Program, another $18 million to $20 million in grant funding is available for projects that develop new knowledge about how water use and management activities affect key aquatic species and environmental processes. Proposals are due January 5. Further details are posted at http://www.science.calwater.ca.gov/psp/psp_package.shtml.

Proposition 50 Safe Drinking Water Grants: The California Department of Health Services is accepting pre-applications for more than $400 million in funding available through nine drinking water-related grant programs funded by Proposition 50. Workshops will be held throughout October, and pre-applications are due December 5. Details are posted at http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ps/ddwem/Prop50/.

Agricultural Water Quality Grants: The State Water Resources Control Board is accepting applications for $46 million in grant funding from the Agricultural Water Quality Grant Program and the Clean Water Act Section 319 Implementation Program. Workshops were held throughout September on the programs, and applications are due November 10. Further information is available at http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/funding/awqgp/index.html.

Salmonid Habitat Restoration Grants: The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries, is accepting grant proposals for Central and South San Francisco Bay salmonid habitat restoration projects to be initiated beginning in 2005. A total of $3.5 million in funding is available. The California Department of Transportation provided initial funding to mitigate for impacts to steelhead and Chinook salmon from pile driving and other activities during construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge East Span Seismic Safety Project. Applications are due December 15. Further information is at http://www.nfwf.org/programs/sfbshrf.htm.

Workshops Set on Review of Bay-Delta Water Quality Standards: The State Water Resources Control Board has scheduled a series of public workshops in October and November to explore potential revisions to water quality standards adopted for the Bay-Delta in 1995. A staff report outlining areas for potential review and further details are available at http://www.waterrights.ca.gov/baydelta/Triennial%20Plan.htm.

BDPAC Subcommittees to Meet in October: Several subcommittees of the Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee will meet in coming weeks. Scheduled meetings include the Drinking Water and Watershed Subcommittees on October 22, and the Levees and Habitat Subcommittee on November 5. More information is available at http://www.calwater.ca.gov/calendar/calendar.shtml.

EWA Review Set for November 8-10: The fourth annual review of the Environmental Water Account will be held November 8-10 in Sacramento. The review follows a technical workshop in September that examined the first four years of EWA activities and issues related to a longer-term program. Details are available at http://science.calwater.ca.gov/workshop/ewa.shtml.

The fish were spotless, gleaming in their perfection. "Not as good as the ocean but pretty good," said Calderone, a retired Carmichael resident. State Department of Fish and Game officials worry that the condition of river-caught salmon won't be as pristine in about a month. While fall-run chinook salmon are always subject to white fungus, this year the problem could be more pronounced, they said. If there are low water conditions in the river this year, salmon may become more marked with fungal imperfections. Low water is warmer, which prompts the fungus to crop up easier and spread more. River flows were at 1,500 cubic feet per second last week, while historically at this time of year, they are at 2,000 cfs.

Flows are low because Folsom Lake's level is low due to a combination of factors. It is partly due to a warm spell that caused an early snow melt that the Bureau of Reclamation was not able to capture because of flood-control requirements. Spring runoff into Folsom Lake was minimal.

Salmon need water below 60 degrees this time of year. As of just a few days ago, the American River was 67 degrees.Then winter arrived - in October. And, perhaps, just in the nick of time.

The river is now hovering right around the temperature that allows the salmon to spawn. In just a few days, winter-like storms have helped chill this river at a remarkable rate. State biologists will be monitoring the river in the coming weeks to estimate how many salmon successfully spawn and how many die beforehand. It's quite possible that this spawning season was saved by a dose of December-like weather.

This is a lucky break for the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Interior Department. They are the ones who have made some water decisions that left precious little water behind Folsom Dam. And they are also the ones who have been dragging their feet - for at least 13 years, based on our documents - to guarantee adequate flows in the river for the fish.

Water leaders in this region have been imploring the bureau for many months to get serious about protecting the American River. Bureau officials have not responded with deeds, only with promises and pledges. That speaks volumes about their water priorities.

Meanwhile, the American remains too much at risk. Water districts along the river have taken historic steps through cooperative agreements to provide adequate water for the river, particularly in dry years. The effort is for naught, however, unless the government agency that controls the spigot - the Bureau of Reclamation - protects the river through a guarantee known as a "flow standard."

The next administration - whoever is the president - will be left once again to decide whether to protect the river or, once again, punt. It makes no sense for so many governments and groups to try to save these fish only to see the Interior Department leave those efforts floating belly-up.#

10/21/04 - Davis Enterprise
By Elisabeth Sherwin, staff writer

WOODLAND - The Sierra Club's lawsuit against Yolo County for allowing a large dairy to expand without requiring sufficient environmental review was thrown out of court on Tuesday.

Yolo County Superior Court Judge Thomas Warriner ruled on a technicality, disappointing members of the Sierra Club who were eager to have the court hear the issues raised. Warriner found that the Sierra Club's attorney filed the complaint too late, missing the statute of limitations deadline for a challenge to a conditional use permit by more than a month.

"I respectfully disagree with his ruling," said attorney Brent Newell of Petaluma, who represented the Sierra Club.

Legal observers say the county decided a conditional use permit was not needed in the case of the dairy's expansion, therefore, to make a ruling on a deadline required by the permit seemed illogical.

10/21/04 - Chico Enterprise Record
By Michelle MacEachern, staff writer

Those who want to fight a plan to send cold water from Lake Almanor downstream filled a Chico meeting held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Wednesday.

It was supposed to be a public meeting to take input on the environmental impact statement for the relicensing of the dam that creates the lake, as FERC representative John Mudre repeatedly noted.

He went over the process for relicensing that has been conducted so far, and what's in the future. But everyone else just wanted to talk about water curtains.

"There is no proposal from PG&E to make any modification to the Prattville intake," said Mudre, "at least not from our point of view ... Your concerns are premature."

Part of the review included the fact that agreements involved in relicensing of downstream projects included a promise from the power company to do what's reasonable to lower the temperature of water released from the lake to 20 degrees. It's currently around 21 degrees during parts of the year, according to FERC.

10/21/04 - San Francisco Chronicle -
By Glen Martin, staff environment writer

HEALDSBURG - Two hundred salmon fingerlings were released Wednesday into Mill Creek, a tributary of the Russian River, in a campaign to restore wild coho to one of Northern California's most beleaguered watersheds.

The fish looked much like any other juvenile salmon -- thumb-sized, with silvery scales and distinctive bars along the flanks. But they are the end product of a laborious three-year program that used sophisticated DNA tests and careful breeding to raise the odds of success.

Coho, which are somewhat smaller and sleeker than their cousins, chinook salmon, are federally listed as threatened throughout their range. They are in particularly dire straits on the Russian, a large river that drains much of northern Sonoma County and once supported vigorous coho runs.

"Four years ago, there were fewer than 1,000 juveniles in the entire system," said Bill Kier, an anadromous fisheries consultant based in Sausalito. "That means there were perhaps 10 or 20 mature salmon returning to spawn."

Coho are especially susceptible to habitat degradation, said Zeke Grader, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, a lobby group that represents commercial fishing.

10/20/04 - Klamath Falls Ore. Herald & News
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

Federal officials will be meeting with the public in Chiloquin and Klamath Falls this week, in hopes of getting input that will eventually lead to a solution to the ongoing Klamath Basin water issue.

The Chiloquin meeting will be in the auditorium in the Klamath Tribes Administration Building at 501 Chiloquin Blvd. Thursday and the Klamath Falls meeting will be at the Klamath County Fairground's Exhibit Hall No. 2 Friday. Both meetings will run from 6 to 9 p.m.

The meetings are a part of a series throughout the Basin to solicit input on the proposed multi-party Conservation Implementation Program being developed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. During September meetings were held in Yreka, Arcata, Calif., and Klamath, Calif.

Representatives from many of the interested parties, stakeholders and government agencies involved with the water issue will be at the meeting, said Rae Olsen, spokeswoman for the Bureau's Klamath Falls office. Anyone else interested in getting involved with the process is also invited to come to the meetings, she added.

The different groups and individuals involved get to choose their level of participation, from just getting the program newsletter to being on the governing committee, she said.

Last week, four federal agencies, along with the states of Oregon and California, entered into an agreement to work together to find a solution for the Basin watershed. In the agreement, the program was singled out as the vehicle to get to that solution. Olsen said the program will build on previous efforts, meetings, groups and programs.

"This in now way supplants or supercedes them, we intend to interweave with them and be a road map for the entire watershed," she said. A draft of the plan is available on the Internet and by calling the Bureau's Klamath Falls office at 883-6935. Written comments on the draft may be submitted to Christine Karas, Deputy Area Manager, Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Basin Area Office, 6600 Washburn Way, Klamath Falls, OR 97603.

10/21/04 - Eureka Times-Standard
By John Driscoll, staff writer

Two challengers will take on longtime incumbents in a race for two seats on the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board.

The board oversees the wholesale water supplier, which provides water to more than 80,000 people in the Eureka area. It's a board unchanged for nearly a decade, and which has overseen key improvements and changes in the district's infrastructure and operation.

Two years ago the board also faced a unique challenge. A major industrial customer -- the Simpson Paper Co. pulp mill -- had been gone for years, and the then-Samoa Pacific pulp mill was curtailing its use of water, increasing the cost burden for municipalities.

An Alaska entrepreneur named Ric Davidge wanted the district to consider selling industrial grade water to his company, Aqueous Corp., to be bagged and shipped by sea to Southern California and perhaps other thirsty areas.

10/20/04 - UC Davis Aggie (student newspaper)
By Elly Schmidt, staff writer

Within the next 50 years, earthquakes, rising sea levels and oxidizing California Bay Delta soils will cause many Sacramento-San Joaquin levees to break if the state fails to reinforce the structures.

Jeffrey Mount, a UC Davis professor of geology, writes that there is a grater than 60 percent chance that by 2050 levees will break in a single disaster caused by interval flooding or a seismic event.

The collapse of multiple levees would upset the supply of drinking water to 22 million people, two-thirds of California's population.

The strong evidence that levees will fail in the near future has prompted Congress to begin processing the authorization of $90 million to reinforce the Delta's weakest levees. Although that much money may seem like a huge commitment, it will only begin to fix the levee problem.

10/20/04 - Marysville Appeal-Democrat
By Harold Kruger, staff writer

The weakest portions of levees protecting southern Yuba County offer less than a 100-year level of protection, says a new study.

Olivehurst, according to the report, has one chance in 50 of flooding in any given year, a 50-year level of flood protection. The state Reclamation Board standard for urbanized areas is a 200-year level of flood protection.

The Western Pacific Interceptor Canal offers even less protection, a 33-year level of protection, the study said.

"It's true that the current condition is bad, but it's a mixed bag," said Joe Countryman, president of MBK Engineers, which helped prepare the study. "It's not uniform. I think it's a little misleading. This doesn't represent all of the levees. It represents the weakest spots in the levee."

Countryman acknowledged, "It is somewhat alarming to see those low levels of protection, but it's not inconsistent with the history."

The California Performance Review wants to do away with certain conservancies, removing their access to state grants and laying off their staffs. The local San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, plus four others, are on the chopping block. But the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy would keep its state status and remain unscathed because quote, it protects land and habitat resources of statewide interest, unquote.

What are we, chopped liver? The RMC, as its known, has successfully worked on ground- water treatment and preservation of the Puente Hills. It has moved ahead with the purchase of a former duck farm along the San Gabriel River with plans to transform this blight into a river park. We think adding parklands, preserving open space, and cleaning ground water are of statewide interest.

It's an insult that the governor's cost-cutting mechanism would suggest that the largest urban conservancy in the state, with land area the size of Rhode Island, is not important. Cuts, when applied fairly, are the mark of good government. But that's not what is going on here. This kind of blatant bias toward funding the celebrity- laden Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy efforts while cutting urban conservancies that function away from the spotlight of Hollywood and big campaign contributors is a return to business as usual in Sacramento where the squeaky wheels get the grease.

It is not only wrong, but suggests a troubling trend.

The San Gabriel Valley is a sitting duck for carving up by more powerful lobbies. First, it was the Los Angeles-dominated MTA board trying to stall the extension of the Gold Line through San Gabriel Valley foothill cities by hoarding state and federal monies for LA and Westside projects. The LA lapdogs went to Sacramento and killed a governance bill by Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, that would have given eastern Valley cities a say over the track alignment and stations that would slice through their cities.

Now, the governor's cost-cutting board which didn't have the decency to hold a single public hearing in the San Gabriel Valley (the closest they came was Long Beach) wants to withhold state bond money from the RMC, but keep the money flowing to the Santa Monica Conservancy.

That's just not fair.

If it's OK for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to come to the San Gabriel Valley to chum for votes for his ballot initiatives and for photo opps with businesses in La Verne and Altadena, then it should be just as OK for the 1.8 million people living here to keep a conservancy it fought like hell to create to continue doing its job: to preserve open space and habitat, provide recreation uses, restore and protect wildlife and improve watershed.

In fact, the savings from cutting small conservancies to save $1 million this year and another $2.1 million the next is chicken feed. These are hardly the bloated bureaucracies that the governor pledged to tear down.

We believe the RMC status should not be changed. And we join the SGV Council of Governments, the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, the cities of La Puente, Santa Fe Springs, Lakewood and Bellflower in asking the governor to keep his hands off. callout: The San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy should not be stripped of its state status. The governor should find a different target. #

PG&E Project 2105 manager Tom Jereb's presented six alternatives to cool the Feather River downstream with cold water from Lake Almanor and Butt Valley Reservoir. The presentation was made Thursday, Oct. 14, during a meeting of the 2105 Licensing Group collaborative.

The 2105LG meeting, which included government and private agency staffers as well as interested individuals, ended after Plumas County Supervisor Bill Dennison presented the Plumas County Resolution 04-7076 to "cease and desist any consideration or further study of the Thermal Curtains in Lake Almanor and Butt Reservoir."

Dennison asked U.S. Forest Service employee Mike Taylor to make a statement before the meeting closed.

Taylor said, "It (the thermal curtain) is an alternative and it can't be dismissed because it's unpopular."

The Save Lake Almanor committee's planned Oct. 15 public protest at the 2105LG meeting was called off "to save their energies" for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's public meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 19, according to 2105LG member and local resident Mike Willhoit.

FERC's project manager John Mudre had public comments and questions recorded at the Oct. 19 meeting.

Moving forward with the FERC Project 2105 relicensing, PG&E is currently requesting proposals from consultants for the project's State Environmental Quality Assessment, which is part of the preparation needed for 401 Certification. The Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification is verification by the state that the project will not violate water quality standards.#

The California Performance Review wants to do away with certain conservancies, removing their access to state grants and laying off their staffs. The local San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, plus four others, are on the chopping block. But the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy would keep its state status and remain unscathed because quote, it protects land and habitat resources of statewide interest, unquote.

What are we, chopped liver? The RMC, as its known, has successfully worked on ground- water treatment and preservation of the Puente Hills. It has moved ahead with the purchase of a former duck farm along the San Gabriel River with plans to transform this blight into a river park. We think adding parklands, preserving open space, and cleaning ground water are of statewide interest.

PG&E Project 2105 manager Tom Jereb's presented six alternatives to cool the Feather River downstream with cold water from Lake Almanor and Butt Valley Reservoir. The presentation was made Thursday, Oct. 14, during a meeting of the 2105 Licensing Group collaborative.

Friday morning a number of state, county, city, Maidu, and community representatives came together to share in the spectacular vistas above the Feather River Nature Center, where the trail head for the Sewimbo River Trail begins.

This segment of the trail, which is a part of the 41-mile Bradford P. Freeman Trail that travels from the Oroville Dam to the Oroville Wildlife Area, is now marked by three gazebo-style ramadas, cement park benches, side trails leading down to the Feather River, newly planted indigenous flora, and informative markers. The trail itself now gives greater access to citizens and visitors to the wild life area with three ADA- compliant parking and access areas, and significantly increases access to busses for school educational field trips.

According to local natural historian Rex Burress, the idea to improve this scenic trail came from former planning supervisor Peter Maki, who himself did a lot of the initial work, but now lives out of state. The idea was more recently continued by Friends of the Feather River Nature Center, namely Loren Gill, and even active citizens like Richard Harvey, who assisted with Native Maidu "grinding rock" placement.

Undeniably, the greatest asset in this revitalizing effort came from the Department of Water Resources (DWR), who together with Butte County and Oroville City officials agreed to provide funding in its first efforts towards an interim project that is intended to demonstrate good faith dealings.

Swarms of chinook salmon, their fins glistening in the sun, wriggle against the current as they flop up a narrow fish ladder into this hatchery east of Anderson.

It seems you could walk across the creek on their slimy backs.

The salmon run is one of the world's natural wonders, but increasing numbers of scientists and conservationists are questioning whether hatcheries are taking the "natural" part out.

The federal government earlier this year said it wants to count hatchery-reared salmon or steelhead when deciding whether a species should be listed as endangered or threatened. If hatchery fish inflate population numbers, critics fear, species whose wild stocks are imperiled might lose protection.

"The danger in our mind is that they're just going to raise them in concrete tanks and say, Hey, we're meeting our quota,'" said Craig Tucker of the conservation group Friends of the River.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says that's an exaggeration. Of the 27 Pacific salmon and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act, none would be taken off the list completely. Two would be upgraded from "endangered" to "threatened."

One of those is the Sacramento River's winter-run chinook. The fish once numbered less than 200, but has rebounded close to 10,000.

The Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery at the base of Shasta Dam bolsters the winter-run population by about 10 percent each year. That, combined with other conservation strategies, convinced officials to upgrade the fish.

"It's not going to change the fact that they'll be protected, and that we'll be continuing to manage them in a very careful way," said Craig Wingert, a biologist for the fisheries service.

But critics say counting hatchery fish is dangerous since they're far different from their wild cousins:

After spending most of their lives in the ocean, wild fish often return to spawn and die in the very streams where they were bred. Hatch-ery fish might wander up a foreign stream, breeding with other species and potentially altering the genetic pool.

When wild fish die after spawning, their carcasses fertilize the banks. But some hatchery fish at Coleman are canned and fed to prison inmates across the country -- about 1.2 million pounds of fish last year alone.

Wild fish forage underwater for insects. Hatchery fish get pellets from above, which conditions them to swim near the surface and easily be snatched up by predators.

"It teaches incredibly bad survival techniques for fish," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice in Seattle.

Though most of the species affected by the new policy live in Oregon or Washington, the impact is felt no less on the Sacramento River, the only Pacific waterway with four distinct chinook salmon runs.

When Shasta Dam was built, the winter-run chinook lost nearly all its cold-water habitat in the upper Sacramento and McCloud rivers. The once-mighty fish declined from an estimated 200,000 before the dam to 191 in the late 1980s.

Under the Endangered Species Act, new fishing limits were ordered. The gates of the Red Bluff Diversion Dam were raised during the off-season to provide fish passage. Cooler temperature restrictions were placed on the river from Redding to Red Bluff.

But despite the rebound, the fish is in danger even today, said Steve Evans, conservation director for Friends of the River.

"The numbers themselves certainly don't justify downgrading" to threatened status, he said. "This is not a species well on its way to recovery."

The policy, open to public comment until Nov. 12, stems from a 2001 lawsuit in which a federal judge ruled that the government shouldn't treat hatchery and wild fish differently. Dozens of members of Congress have criticized the plan, along with two independent teams of scientists.

Coleman itself was scrutinized earlier this year when a CalFed report said the hatchery operations could pose "significant risk" to winter-run salmon spawning in that creek someday.

The hatchery should consider dropping its fall and late-fall chinook salmon restoration programs, the panel of scientists said. Swarms of those fish might out-compete the less abundant winter and spring runs, causing disease and interbreeding.

On the other hand, 20 percent of salmon caught off California's coast were raised at Coleman, providing an economic boost that conservationists acknowledge.

In explaining its decision to include hatchery fish, the government says many species are in better condition than when they were listed.

Still, compared with pre-development times, salmon have lost more than one-third of their habitat.

"You wonder why any of them survived," Evans said. "You wonder why we have any of them left." #

In separate requests, the lawmakers urged the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general to investigate the practice, called for congressional hearings and submitted detailed questions to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt. Four of the lawmakers are Democrats; the fifth is an independent.

"We must do all that we can to make sure that this hydraulic fracturing activity is done safely," Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette, both Democrats from Colorado, said in a letter to the EPA's inspector general requesting an inquiry. "This is particularly important because water is a scarce resource, especially in this prolonged drought."

Hydraulic fracturing provides access to hard-to-reach oil and gas deposits by pumping liquids underground at high pressure. The liquids sometimes include diesel fuel or other hazardous chemicals. Some of the fluids remain in the ground.

Halliburton, which Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000, is one of three U.S. companies that dominate the fracturing market. The Houston-based company generates about $1.5 billion a year in revenue from fracturing.

Sens. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, asked Leavitt to explain why the agency was not monitoring fracturing nationally despite a federal court decision mandating regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) also wrote to the inspector general, asking whether "political considerations improperly influenced" an EPA study completed in June that found that fracturing in coal bed methane fields did not threaten drinking water supplies. Waxman and DeGette are on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Waxman cited a report in Thursday's Times that disclosed that EPA employees had criticized the study before its completion and after its publication. One of the employees, Weston Wilson, an environmental engineer in the EPA's Denver office, last week sent an 18-page statement challenging the study's conclusions and methodology to the agency's inspector general and to the Colorado congressional delegation.

Wilson criticized the failure to include field research, and the EPA's selection of a panel heavily weighted toward the energy industry to review the study.

An EPA spokeswoman, Cynthia Bergman, said the agency was reviewing Wilson's letter, but added, "We do not believe that any of the concerns raised by his analysis would lead us to a different conclusion."

The office of EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley had received Wilson's statement and was reviewing it, a spokesman said Thursday.

The EPA study found that although some of the fracturing fluids were hazardous when undiluted, they were sufficiently watered down before injection to minimize the risk to sources of drinking water. The study found no proof that fracturing directly caused contamination.

The controversy over regulation of fracturing dates back a decade. Following years of litigation, a federal appeals court in Alabama ruled in 1999 that the EPA was required to regulate the practice in the same way it regulates injection wells used for disposal of drilling waste.

That decision sparked an industry lobbying campaign to pass legislation exempting fracturing from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Halliburton, which controls at least one-third of the domestic fracturing operations, has said that regulation would increase costs and delays and have a severe effect on its business.

The Alabama decision has not been applied nationally by the EPA. In their letter, Jeffords and Boxer asked Leavitt to explain why the agency had not done so.

DeGette and Udall urged the EPA's inspector general to investigate Wilson's allegations.

"People's health and safety as well as overall environmental quality may be at risk" if fracturing proceeds without adequate controls, the lawmakers wrote.

In interviews, DeGette and Udall said they would seek congressional hearings on fracturing and the possible need for more regulation and oversight.

"It would serve us well to get a clear picture of what is actually occurring with this technology," Udall said. "I am not against responsible oil and gas development, but if we are creating a long-term problem by polluting precious groundwater, it is not worth the short-term gain."#

The results of the survey, published today in the journal Science, show that 1,856 of the known 5,743 species are "globally threatened'' in their forest, stream or underground homes.

The delicate creatures, which have thin, porous skins and need fresh water to stay moist, are faring much worse around the world than either birds or mammals, the scientists say. Around a tenth of bird species and a quarter of mammal species are threatened.

As many as 168 amphibian species, some of which evolved over millions of years, may already be extinct. Up to 122 seem to have disappeared since 1980, the assessment said.

"It's tragic. Many of them are beautiful species, or they had extraordinary lifestyles that are just lost to us," said Simon N. Stuart, a report author. "Wiping out a fantastically wonderful set of species impoverishes our own lives."

Stuart is senior director of biodiversity assessment at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It keeps what is known as the Red List, a compilation of the world's imperiled plants and animals.

The assessment in today's Science, however, is the first detailed look at amphibians. Disease and climate change may eventually affect not just these sensitive animals but also hardier species like humans.

"What happens to amphibians now could well be a prophecy of what happens to other species, maybe even ourselves,'' Stuart said. "They serve as an early warning system.''

Losing species can set off unforeseen consequences involving the health of other species, including pollination of plants and predation on insects, scientists say.

The assessment found that California has more threatened or extinct amphibians than any other U.S. state -- 13 out of 54 known species.

The imperiled amphibians here include the Yosemite toad, California tiger salamander, California red-legged frog, the mountain yellow-legged frog, the Cascade's frog and the lowland yellow-legged frog, according to amphibian biologist David Wake, professor emeritus of integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

"We don't see any common elements leading to their decline. For California red-legged frogs and tiger salamanders, the biggest loss is due to habitat modification by humans. The introduced East Coast bullfrog eats the eggs and the young of the California red-legged frog," Wake said. "For the Yosemite toad in the high Sierra, the reasons for the loss are not so clear.''

A group in his department is studying a fungal disease of the skin, chytridiomycosis, that the global assessment has implicated in many of the declines. Scientists suspect that it is spread when frogs such as the U.S. East Coast bullfrog or the African clawed frog are carried around the world for laboratory study or food farms.

According to the assessment, the disease appears to be more prevalent when animals are under stress during extreme drought, which has been occurring more frequently in recent years and is linked to climate change.

More than 500 scientists from 60 countries contributed to the three-year Global Amphibian Assessment. There were also 14 regional workshops in countries such as India, Thailand, Brazil, China, Ecuador and Kenya, where data are the hardest to find.

The number of globally threatened species is expected to rise in the future.

The assessment showed that 43.2 percent are already declining in population, and 7.6 percent of those are declining rapidly.

The largest numbers of threatened species occur in Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador. The highest levels of threats are in the Caribbean, with more than 80 percent of amphibians threatened in the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica, and 92 percent in Haiti..

The Global Amphibian Assessment may be seen at www.globalamphibians.org. #

The company is under pressure to take "reasonable steps" to cool the Feather River water to 68 degrees Fahrenheit to comply with a 1978 decision designating the river above Lake Oroville a cold-water fishery. The state Water Resources Control Board designation is designed to benefit trout, invertebrates and the ecosystem.

Instead of building a curtain as big as 14 football fields in the Plumas County lake, the company could build dams in Humbug Valley or Genesee to provide the cold water, said Tom Jereb, the PG&E official coordinating the project.

Or it could build cooling towers at each of three dams in the scenic Feather River Canyon; drill cold-water wells in the Feather River Canyon; pump cold water from Lake Oroville 30 miles upstream; pipe cold water from Yellow Creek three miles downstream; or increase shade to cool the water between Belden and Poe.

Jereb dismissed every option he presented.

"I don't think any of these alternatives is feasible," he told a panel of local, state and federal officials appointed to make recommendations to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on relicensing hydroelectric dams operated by PG&E.

The initial thermal curtain proposal would shunt cold water from the bottom of Lake Almanor through existing outlets to Butt Lake, where two smaller curtains would move the cold water through an existing creek and pipe system eventually emptying into the Feather River.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said the agreement would help the two states and four federal agencies as they work with farmers, Indian tribes, fishermen, conservationists and other groups that use the chronically dry basin along the California-Oregon border.

"The people of the Klamath Basin cherish the land and its natural beauty and desire to hand their way of life down to future generations," Norton said. "Together, we have an opportunity to work toward a vision that includes clear waters, abundant fisheries, increased waterfowl, a vibrant agricultural community and an end to the legal fighting ... which continues to poison the relationships among its people."

The new Klamath River Watershed Coordination Agreement expands on a 2 and 1/2-year-old effort among federal agencies that deal with Klamath issues. A Cabinet-level working group, headed by Norton, includes representatives of the Interior, Commerce and Agriculture departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

SACRAMENTO – A comprehensive access point for data related to the health of California’s waterways has been created at www.baydelta.ca.gov. Thanks to a joint effort by four state agencies and the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory the Web site has been enhanced to allow state waterways information to be available to users on an ongoing basis.

"Scientists, engineers, stakeholders, decision makers and the general public will all now have a place to gain information on the health of California’s waterways," said Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman. "This is a great step in allowing scientists and engineers access to the data they need to inform decision makers and the public about the health of our state’s water system."

The California Resources Agency in partnership with the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA), the Department of Water Resources (DWR), the State water Resources Control Board and the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory have created a central location where waterways data may be retrieved. Previously, factual information had been located among various agencies making the data difficult to locate and retrieve. Inconsistent formats also required even more time to merge the data before analyses could be done.

Working together, the five entities implemented a data management and sharing system that consolidated environmental data from many different sources into a consistent format in one location. More than 50 other organizations currently contribute data voluntarily to the Web site. In addition, the state agencies and Moss Landing Marine Laboratories are using their combined resources to include information from more groups throughout the state in an ongoing expansion of their data sharing process.

Each of the five entities contributes to the Web site in different ways:

The Resources Agency’s CERES system (http://ceres.ca.gov/) facilitates the overall process by cataloging the various environmental monitoring programs throughout the state. Cal/EPA is working with the U.S. EPA to integrate the state’s environmental regulatory data. DWR manages data sharing for the network and provides distribution services to support the system.

The SWRCB created the Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program (SWAMP) that along with Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is gathering and combining data about surface water quality. SWAMP has developed standards required for water boards, or any group collecting environmental monitoring data, using funds from Propositions 13, 40 and 50. More information on the SWAMP Program is available at: http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/swamp

This effort will expand the information currently available through the California Data Exchange Center (CDEC). CDEC makes available river flow, snow survey, weather, and Delta water quality and related information at: http://cdec.water.ca.gov .#

The federal government, via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is coming to the city's rescue and fixing about a third of a mile of levees for about $3.8 million. The city is supposed to maintain this levee. But when it comes to flood control and levees, nothing is simple.

The Corps is generally in the business of building levees, not fixing them. That is why the state agrees to take responsibility for a levee after the Corps builds one. The state, in turn, usually transfers the responsibility of levee maintenance to a local government.

That was the case for 3.6 miles of Sacramento River levee fronting the city.

Ah, but try fixing that levee once a small hole appears, as did the one that the Corps spotted along Miller Park in 1997. It's not like the olden days, when a maintenance crew could dump a load of rock in the river and be done with it. Sterile, steep banks of rock are tough on fish. The federal Endangered Species Act protects the river's endangered salmon and steelhead. Generally, the act requires enhancing habitat somewhere else along the river in order to use loads of rock.

This creates a perverse incentive for local agencies to wait for a levee flood problem to get big enough for the Corps to forget its own rules and to step in. The city's routine levee maintenance budget (mostly mowing and brush clearing) is a paltry $150,000 a year. The Corps, meanwhile, is agreeing to spend upward of $20 million on "emergency" levee projects on the Sacramento and American rivers. What's more, emergency projects have some flexibility dealing with the Endangered Species Act that routine maintenance frequently does not. Another perverse incentive.

What would happen if the local flood agencies and the Corps failed to fix a levee and it flooded and nearby residents sued? The state itself is legally liable, according to a recent court ruling.

Fortunately in this region, the local agencies are talking to one another and working hard to fix the levees. They find themselves prisoners of a broken system that needs an overhaul. Local crews need to quickly fix small problems. To bank on the federal government to come to the rescue in time is a dangerous gamble.#

Congress just last week sent President Bush a bill authorizing the California Federal Bay-Delta Program, better known as CalFed, after a decade of dispute.

But the environmental groups are upset state and federal water agencies are proceeding unilaterally with approving dozens of water contracts that would send more water flowing from Northern California through the Delta to Los Angeles and San Diego.

The agreement was hammered out in a series of closed-door sessions in Napa in July 2003, while the environmental groups said it should have been negotiated in public through CalFed.

"The back room deals have turned the CalFed process into a sham," said Barry Nelson of the National Resources Defense Council. "The program's falling apart."

The region's users currently receive roughly half of water pooled in Millerton Lake behind the Fresno-area dam. In August, a federal judge in Sacramento ruled that it was illegal under California law for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to have dried up the San Joaquin River below the Friant Dam, and that a substantial amount of Millerton Lake water, perhaps as much as 200,000 gallons per day, must be released downstream. In 1998, a coalition of groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Bureau of Reclamation seeking restoration of the salmon run.

"Two hundred thousand gallons is the worst-case scenario," said Joel Nelson, president of the Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual trade association. "We've got to impress on the state Water Resources Control Board that a judge's ruling is one thing, but doing it correctly and scientifically is another."

Either the resources board or an appointed expert could be brought into the case, or it could remain the sole responsibility of U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton, said Randy McFarland, spokesman for the Friant Water Users Association and association General Manager Ron Jacobsma.

"We may be looking for the lesser of three evils," Jacobsma said. "The resources board filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs."

The ruling by Karlton said a "reasonable" water-release plan must be crafted to restore the salmon run while not crippling Central California agriculture.

The Lindsay-based Friant Water Users Association represents scores of area farmers who use Millerton Lake water carried to Tulare County by the Friant-Kern Canal.

Section 5937 of the state Fish and Game Code, the state law the federal Bureau of Reclamation was held to have violated by totally damming the San Joaquin, requires a dam owner to allow sufficient water to pass over and around the dam for the environment downstream to support fish. A years'-long court battle largely concerned whether that statute applied in the case of the Friant Dam. The judge ruled the state statute did apply.

It shouldn't be this difficult, said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the exasperated spiritual leader and principal tribal chief of the Winnemem Wintu.

Sisk-Franco insists that a bureaucratic mistake decades ago is what unknowingly cost the Wintu their status as a federally recognized tribe. But rather than fixing the problem, she said, the government is giving the Wintu the runaround.

"We don't know who makes decisions, but we've never come across someone who does," she said.

The timing couldn't be more critical.

A freshly minted deal reauthorizing the huge state-federal water program known as Cal-Fed anticipates raising Shasta Dam to store more water for eventual shipment to Central and Southern California, and the legislation includes the project as one of four for study on a fast track for construction.

A month ago, the Wintu staged a "war dance" at Shasta Dam to demonstrate their opposition to the proposed project. It was their first such dance since 1887, when the Wintu protested construction of a fish hatchery on the McCloud River.

Sisk-Franco said she is under no illusion that the Wintu could halt expansion of the dam. "That would take a lot of people, a lot of studies," she said.

But the Wintu desperately want to be able to press the case for better management of Shasta Dam's water releases before their sacred lands are flooded again. That requires a seat at the table, which the Wintu get only if they are a recognized tribe.

"Why are they going to raise the dam when they haven't even brought its 30-year-old flood plan up to date?" Sisk-Franco asked. "It doesn't make sense. Why not manage the water a little closer, with a little more expertise, and see if you can yield more water than they are right now?"

There are about 125 Wintu, roughly 30 of whom live communally on a 42-acre Jones Valley ranch that they hope one day will be officially recognized as Indian country.

But the Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn't officially consider the Wintu a tribe despite their documented 150-year history along the McCloud River, and even though the government maintains a cemetery for Wintu moved from old tribal graves when Shasta Lake began forming behind the dam six decades ago.

The status of that cemetery, and their long history and inclusion in a string of federal Indian laws, should be enough to qualify them as a tribe, the Wintu maintain. But for some unexplained reason, Sisk-Franco said, the cemetery ended up under the control of the Bureau of Land Management and not as Indian country held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Without tribal recognition, the Wintu don't have the sovereign status that would require the federal government to treat them on a government-to-government basis in deciding the fate of what remains of their sacred homelands.

It's not that the concerns of the Wintu are being ignored, Bureau of Reclamation officials say. But the Wintu have only the status of any other group of citizens, rather than the clout of a sovereign people.

Last month, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee's chairman, Colorado Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell, introduced legislation to clarify the tribal status of the Wintu.

The legislation declares that there has been an ongoing trust relationship that should have qualified the Wintu for recognition, and it requires that their 42-acre farm, now operated as a nonprofit corporation, be established as a tribal reservation.

Campbell made clear when introducing the bill that he was doing so only because the Wintu have asked him to.

He said his interest was to "initiate discussion of the tribe's status among all interested parties."

So far, the Wintu have not made much progress with their congressional representatives.

Rep. Wally Herger, R-Chico, whose district includes the Redding area, said he believes the Wintu should take their case to the BIA's Office of Acknowledgment and Records.

"The Winnemem Wintu have not exhausted the administrative avenues available to them," Herger said. "I do not believe Congress should be in the job of circumventing executive authority and process to show one group preference over another."

But that process is astonishingly slow and bureaucratic.

"On paper it should take about two years," said BIA spokesman Gary Garrison. "Unfortunately, it's running as a 10-to 15-year process."

And that's for the lucky tribes.

Of 296 petitions for tribal recognition that have been filed over the past several decades, only 60 have been resolved, and nine were by acts of Congress. The last petition to be decided involved the Cowlitz Indians of Washington state, and that took 27 years, Garrison said.

Sisk-Franco said she also hasn't gotten very far with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who she had hoped would have sponsored their legislation.

The San Francisco Democrat is focused on unraveling the deal that gave the small Lytton Band of Pomo Indians the right to develop a huge casino at San Pablo. That deal is the result of a tribal recognition bill sponsored by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, four years ago.

Sisk-Franco said that Campbell's staff told her that when he recently tried to put together a package of Indian legislation, including the Wintu provision, for last-minute congressional approval, Feinstein balked.

Calls to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee were not returned. But Howard Gantman, Feinstein's press aide, essentially confirmed that account, saying that Feinstein's priority now is an up-or-down vote on her Lytton legislation.

As to what Feinstein thinks of recognizing the tribal rights of the Wintu, Gantman said, "She is seeking additional information."

Sisk-Franco said she believes that the Wintu have become victims of a fight over Indian gaming in which they are not involved. The Wintu don't want to engage in gaming, she said, and their tribal recognition bill specifically prohibits it.

But the lesson she's learning is that California Indians with well-documented cases for tribal recognition can speed up the process dramatically by joining forces with a gaming partner with the bankroll and lobbyists to get what they want.

The 300-page study examines how politically charged plans to rejigger operation of dams and pumps that deliver water through the Delta from Northern California to Southern California will affect several species of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

The lawmakers said they feared there was an ongoing "catastrophic failure of oversight" that could drive salmon and steelhead toward extinction.

"I would hope the inspectors general would investigate these allegations immediately," said Rep. George Miller, one of 19 members to seek the investigation. "There is a great deal at stake."

Miller, D-Martinez, was reacting to the differences between two versions of the salmon report: one written late this summer by biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries office and a second version that contained revisions by the agency's managers.

The latter version, if made final, would make it far easier to renew long-term water contracts in the Central Valley and boost the capacity of Delta pumps that deliver water to Southern California.

Although the study, called a "biological opinion," has yet to be finalized, the Times obtained portions of the earlier draft and a full copy of the most recent draft.

The versions have key differences, most notably that the earlier version says water operations will jeopardize the continued existence of some fish species, and the later draft does not. The differences were first reported in the Sacramento Bee last week in a story that prompted the congressional letter.

In addition, the earlier draft contains a requirement that would have forced the Contra Costa Water District to shut down one of its water supply canals for six months a year. The revised report says only that the agency must monitor salmon caught in the canal.

A Contra Costa water official said the earlier version was in error because biologists had wrongly assumed the canal at Rock Slough was used for all of the district's water supply, an assumption that led them to conclude more fish were being killed there than actually were.

"That was a goof," said Contra Costa Water District assistant general manager Greg Gartrell.

Jim Lecky, the assistant regional administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who oversees the salmon report, said there were other errors.

"I reviewed my staff's work and I didn't think they did a good job," Lecky said. "There were a bunch of errors in their assumptions about the project."

The congressional letter is the latest in a series of efforts by Miller to slow down and examine plans by federal water managers in California. For weeks, he has been trying to get the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to reconsider plans to renew dozens of long-term water contracts for farmers and others throughout the Central Valley that Miller considers unduly favorable to water users.

In addition, water officials are looking to increase the capacity of pumps that move water from the Delta to Southern California.

Both the contract renewals and the increased pumping hinge on the salmon study, which technically is a review of a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation document called the "Operations, Criteria and Plan" that describes how the state's two largest water delivery projects, the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, will be operated.

The congressional letter suggests the bureau, "in its haste to finalize water contracts in California, has improperly undermined the required NOAA fisheries environmental review process."

Reclamation Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said his agency had no improper influence on the biological opinion.

"We never saw the earlier draft that had the alleged different opinion in it," McCracken said.

Earlier in the week, state Sen. Mike Machado, D-Stockton, asked for an independent scientific review of the biological opinion.

Lecky said the issue was being blown out of proportion.

"This is a typical consultation process," he said. "It's nothing out of the ordinary."#

Associated Press - 10/6/04
By Erica Werner, staff writer

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives passed a sweeping $395 million California water bill Wednesday, sending the milestone legislation to the president after a decade of dispute. The bill to authorize the California Federal Bay-Delta Program, better known as CalFed, aims to restore California's fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and ensure a reliable water supply for millions of users. It represents the first major changes to California's water systems since the 1960s.

"This historic bill is a giant step forward in resolving California's water supply problems," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy.

"When it comes to water, nothing is easy. Everything is hard," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who worked with Pombo to champion the legislation.

The bill passed on a voice vote and President Bush is expected to sign it soon.

The CalFed legislation seeks to satisfy often-warring groups of farmers, environmentalists and residential users with provisions on storage, restoration and recycling.

It authorizes feasibility studies for several major new storage projects and includes $90 million for reconstructing levees. It contains ecosystem restoration projects, provisions to expedite approval of 49 recycling projects and an Environmental Water Account to ensure water for fisheries. Water flows to thirsty Southern California are increased, and the bill requires a federal feasibility study on restoring California's largest lake, the Salton Sea, which is suffering from increasing salinity.

The House approval came after Pombo and other House members decided they could accept the version of the bill passed by the Senate last month. The bill leaves out so-called pre-authorization language that would have allowed the secretary of the Interior to approve four specific water storage projects without congressional sign-off - enlarging Los Vaqueros reservoir in Contra Costa County, raising the Shasta Dam, surface storage on the Upper San Joaquin, and the Sites reservoir in the Antelope Valley.

Some California House Republicans believed the pre-authorization language was necessary to guarantee needed storage projects would get built, but key Senate leaders opposed it. In the end Pombo and other House members were satisfied with language in the Senate bill that pressures Congress to act quickly on the projects once feasibility studies have been conducted.

If Congress doesn't act, the Interior secretary would have to declare the CalFed program "out of balance" and recommend ways to regain balance between environmental and storage measures.

The bill "creates storage as the linchpin for implementation of all CalFed elements," Pombo said. "This bill ensures that the program will be carried out in balance with new water storage or else the program will simply not exist."

Lawmakers also got a commitment from Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Republican chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that he would try to include $11 million for the feasibility studies in a spending bill for the 2005 fiscal year. The studies for the four storage projects have an overall pricetag of about $50 million, of which the federal share is about $28.5 million.

Environmental groups have expressed fears that streamlining storage projects would override concerns about the effect on the environment, and have favored more conservation programs instead.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pressed lawmakers to get the legislation passed. He and Pombo spoke Tuesday night, and Schwarzenegger faxed Pombo a letter assuring him that the state would come up with its share of funding for the feasibility studies.

"Every aspect of our golden state - the people, the environment, agriculture and industry - benefits from this balanced legislation," the governor said in a statement Wednesday.

Congressional appropriators would have to determine exact funding levels for projects in the bill later. But without the authorization bill, no money could be appropriated. The bill spans six years, through 2010.

The CalFed program, a state-federal effort, has been in the works for a decade. The current effort stems from a 2000 agreement, reached after years of negotiations, on a package of projects to ensure water for different groups of users.#

It's not quite Jurassic Park, but members of a west Sonoma County environmental group are looking for an old stuffed fish in the hope that DNA can be extracted from the musty trophy and help return vanished coho salmon to a stream where the fish's spawning runs are as dead as a dinosaur.

"We're asking old-timers to rummage through their attics," said Kurt Erickson, a member of the Salmon Creek Watershed Council. "What we are looking for is the skin or even just a scale of a Salmon Creek coho from which we might get some DNA of the native fish. There aren't any more now, and nobody knows what the genetics are.

Bruce Babbitt was secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001. He is a former governor and attorney general of Arizona.

Wild salmon are drifting toward extinction in the northern Rocky Mountains. Last month, the Bush administration delivered a decision that will be the death blow, if it stands: four obsolete dams on the Snake River in eastern Washington state will not be dismantled.

The Snake River dams were conceived on a field of industrial dreams. The idea took root in the 1960s, when local boosters persuaded Congress to authorize a huge project to transform Lewiston, Idaho, 400 miles from the Pacific, into a seaport.

The Army Corps of Engineers then proceeded to subdue 140 miles of the wild Snake, remaking it into a slack-water barge channel.

The dream soon turned into a nightmare for people and towns that depend on wild salmon. The fish began disappearing from the lakes and rivers upstream from the dams.

In one year, only a single sockeye managed to find its way up to Redfish Lake, in the Sawtooth Mountains, to spawn.

Prized Chinook runs vanished throughout central Idaho. Fisheries and fishing jobs in the Northwest and as far away as Alaska, tribal fisheries included, declined with them.

Meanwhile, the promised inland seaport boom did not arrive.

The volume of barge shipments never reached expectations, in part because many farmers in the region still found it cheaper to ship by rail to the deep-water port at Tacoma.

That didn't deter the corps, which continues to spend $36 million a year to operate and maintain the four Snake River dams, their locks and the navigation channel.

Yet even at this late date, there is still a chance to save the salmon. The corps, the farmers and the fishermen could cooperate to get the wheat off the river and onto railroads where it belongs.

The track is in place. The mainlines of the Burlington Northern and the Union Pacific run right through this wheat country and then west to ports at Pasco, Vancouver, Tacoma and Portland.

The state of Washington just purchased the short lines that feed the mainlines. This system already ships a lot of local wheat, and with modest further investment, the Burlington Northern says it will be ready and willing to handle what is now shipped by river.

Farmers near the river who use the channel to transport grain are the main voice for keeping the dams, because they save 3 to 7 cents per bushel compared with shipping by rail. What stands between waters alive with salmon and the silent expanses of extinction is that 3 to 7 cents per bushel.

All of this cries out for a common-sense solution that takes all sides into account. There is one that has yet to be considered: Simply shut down the barge traffic, take out the dams and then dedicate a small part of the annual $36 million that would be saved to making up the shipping differential with the farmers.

In contrast, the administration's plan to keep the dams and "save" the salmon has an estimated total cost of $6 billion over the next 10 years. Much of that would go to various schemes to barge, truck, pipe and steer migrating salmon around the dams.

Scientists have repeatedly concluded that these proposals offer little hope of restoring the wild salmon to fishable abundance.

Neither science nor logic - nor economic theory - supports the administration's plan. The dams could be dismantled, the farmers who ship on the river compensated and the relatively small amount of electricity the dams generate replaced, for about one-third of the $6 billion. A restored fishery would be worth at least $1 billion a year to Pacific Northwest states.

The administration's plan is a very expensive roadmap to salmon extinction. It's time to admit a mistake and set about fixing it for the sake of fishermen, farmers, Native Americans, the salmon, the inland Pacific Northwest ecosystem - and the taxpayers.#

U.S. Forest Service officials said the changes, contained in an administrative rewrite of national forest rules expected to take effect next week, would free them from wasteful and time-consuming paperwork and give them the latitude to more quickly respond to evolving forest conditions and scientific research.

"The new rule will improve the way we work with the public by making forest planning more open, understandable and timely," said Forest Service Associate Chief Sally Collins. "It will enable Forest Service experts to respond more rapidly to changing conditions, such as wildfires, and emerging threats, such as invasive species."

But environmentalists and former Clinton administration officials said the new rules in effect diminish public participation in the management of public lands and give forest managers more leeway to open them to increased logging and gas and oil development.

"This is the most dramatic change in national forest management policy since passage of the [1976] National Forest Management Act," said Jim Lyons, who oversaw the Forest Service as Agriculture undersecretary during the Clinton administration. "It is really a clandestine effort in my mind to subvert much of what the national forests stand for."

The 160-page document outlining the new rules contains two major revisions to forest planning regulations. The first drops the 25-year-old requirement that managers prepare environmental impact statements — a cornerstone of public involvement in environmental decisions — when they develop or revise management plans for individual national forests.

The new rule directs forest managers to involve the public in the planning process but leaves the "methods and timing of public involvement opportunities" up to forest officials.

Management plans are a forest's basic zoning document, outlining which activities are allowed on every acre of the land — from recreation to oil and gas drilling, road building and logging.

The second change drops a mandate, adopted during the Reagan administration in 1982, that fish and wildlife habitat in national forests be managed to maintain "viable populations of existing native and desired nonnative vertebrate species." Instead, managers will be directed to provide "ecological conditions to support diversity of native plant and animal species."

The viability clause is widely considered the Forest Service's most important wildlife protection — and has been a key point of contention with logging interests. It was cited in environmental lawsuits that forced drastic reductions in timber harvests to protect the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

"I'm very fearful that we've just lost the foundation for the protection of old-growth forests and wildlife that has protected the national forests for the last 20 years," said Mike Anderson, senior resources analyst for the Wilderness Society.

Forest Service officials denied that the new approach would weaken wildlife protections.

"We tried to bring the best, newest scientific thinking as to how to protect species, and we think we've got that in the rule," Collins said. "We're going to be able to protect species better with this approach. The accountability that people have been clamoring for so long has never been stronger."

The new rules also mandate that all forests adopt an "environmental management system" — used more commonly to manage private-sector land — and conduct periodic independent audits of whether they are meeting their management goals.

By eliminating the requirement for environmental impact statements — bulky documents that outline the environmental consequences of proposed actions and call for extensive public comment — Forest Service officials said they will shave years off the preparation of new forest plans.

"The problem with [the current system is that] it's a lot of wasted motion that takes a lot of time," said Fred Norbury, associate deputy chief of the national forest system.

"The [environmental impact statement] model is based on a 1950s model of how you relate to the public. It creates documents that don't get used or don't get read and are rapidly obsolete," he said.

Environmental impact statements would still be required for individual projects, such as large logging operations or oil and gas drilling.

But environmentalists pointed out that previous rule changes and legislation under the Bush administration have exempted more and more projects from environmental review.

"Their justification is that the public can comment on individual projects, but they've already issued policies that cut out public comment on many projects. All the pieces fit together," said Amy Mall, forest policy specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Representatives of the timber industry and several Western politicians applauded the rule changes, saying they were overdue.

Michael Goergen, executive vice president of the Society of American Foresters, said the "rules could be the difference in getting managers out from behind their desks and into the forest." Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) called the new regulations "a great Christmas present for our national forests and the people who depend on them."

"This new rule involves the public from start to finish, but no one has to worry about dying of old age in the interim. In too many Western states, forest planning became so convoluted under the old rule that the process was taking 10 to 15 years to complete. That's an absurd tangle of pointless red tape," Domenici said.

But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco called the new regulations "an insult to every American who cares about our national forests" and maintained they would "increase the exploitation of our natural resources by private companies without ensuring the survival of the forests for future generations."

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, is a former lobbyist for the timber industry, which threw its political support overwhelmingly toward Republicans in the last election cycle, donating more than $1.7 million to GOP candidates and party committees and just $380,000 to Democrats, according to data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Virginia firm that tracks campaign contributions.

Contributors identifying themselves as working for the timber industry gave $268,552 to the Republican National Committee and another $163,321 to President Bush, records show.

Three of Bush's elite fundraisers were also top timber executives: W. Henson Moore, chief of the American Forest and Paper Assn., the industry's trade group; Otis B. Ingram III, president of a Georgia lumber company; and Peter Secchia, chairman of Universal Forest Products.

Among the first donors to Bush's 2005 inaugural committee was International Paper Co., which donated $100,000 to help pay for the festivities.#

But just as critics rev up for a major rewrite of the act in Congress next year, environmentalists see in a new plan for West Coast salmon and steelhead trout sure signs from the Bush administration that it wants out of the recovery business.

NOAA Fisheries, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, insists that its proposal is the result of better information, not a radical policy shift.

It says that scientists now know more about where the endangered fish hang out in the rivers and streams, and that there is no need to designate critical habitat where the fish aren't.

But under a draft proposal released earlier this month, 80 percent to 90 percent of the riverbanks and watersheds once considered critical for the recovery of the endangered fish will be freed from any constraints under the controversial law.

In some cases, entire watersheds will become exempt from critical habitat designations. The areas are vast. For instance, most of the Russian River, and many of its tributaries, no longer will be treated as critical habitat for salmon and steelhead, according to Trout Unlimited.

Further reductions in critical habitat could result from the agency's decision to exempt fish habitat on streams or rivers otherwise covered by state or federal management plans.

To environmentalists, it adds up to a larger strategy by the administration and on Capitol Hill to weaken the act's focus on helping endangered species get healthy.

"This is part of an all-out assault to remove the recovery standard from the Endangered Species Act," said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity in San Diego.

Federal officials and congressional leaders see it differently.

They say the designation of critical habitat, rather than bringing fish and wildlife species back from the brink of extinction, is burdening agencies with crippling lawsuits and landowners with restrictions that don't work.

"Critical habitat is one of the most perverse shortcomings of the act," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, a Tracy Republican whose mission since coming to Congress in 1992 has been to rewrite the law. "It has been interpreted to mean that if an animal is determined to be in trouble, there is only one viable option - to designate critical habitat and let nature take its course."

The problems are legion, Pombo and others say. The act requires decisions under strict schedules that, if not met, land the government in court. And even when deadlines are met, they say, decisions often are made before scientists determine where species live and habitat gets designated as critical when it's not.

Such is the case with the salmon and steelhead proposal. To meet deadlines when the fish were first listed, the fisheries agency proposed critical habitat four years ago that basically included all the waters where the fish swim.

That decision was undone by a lawsuit from the National Association of Homebuilders that claimed economic considerations were ignored. The agency then was sued for not meeting its habitat deadline, resulting in a settlement requiring a new proposal no later than Nov. 30.

But what the agency proposed on Nov. 30 is certain to bring another round of lawsuits because it trims dramatically the amount of habitat the agency now regards as critical.

In announcing their decision, federal fisheries managers said salmon and steelhead are not found on most of the habitat once considered critical, and the stocks themselves are improving.

"Since 2000, 13 of the 16 listed runs of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and three of the four Northern and Central California runs for which NOAA Fisheries has recent data, have experienced significant improvements," the agency said.

Certainly there have been improvements, said David Katz, California director for Trout Unlimited. But the improvements are largely the result of increased cooperation, much of it voluntary, with county governments, road builders and foresters because of critical habitat designations, he said.

"We have a very innovative partnership with timber companies, for instance, who are not normally friendly to fish," he said. "They're voluntarily working closely with us to do a better job. They have accepted the fact that we are going to bring these fish back and that there's a regulatory process in place.

"To undermine this after we've done all this work to build partnerships would be really unfortunate."

But in the Pacific Northwest, said Earthjustice lawyer Michael Mayer, the Bush administration proposal not only reduces critical habitat by 90 percent, it also writes off entirely those stocks where there is too little critical habitat left for them to regenerate.

"Snake River steelhead, upper Columbia River spring chinook, middle Columbia River steelhead, Oregon coast coho - all these are likely not to receive any critical habitat," he said. "These are pretty broad-brush efforts to take critical habitat off the table."

Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, equated the administration's deferral to state or federal conservation plans already in force to "death by a circular firing squad," because those plans are largely regarded as ineffective for fish protection.

"This is a status quo plan - keep the fish at the extinction level and leave it at that," Spain said. "It's as if they just threw up their hands and said, 'This just costs too much.' "

Hogan, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration's view that critical habitat exists only where fish are currently found virtually eliminates any possibility of restricting development elsewhere so that recovering stocks can move into those areas as well.

"What that does is to throw out the window the entire purpose of the critical habitat designation - that is, to identify areas that are necessary to ensure the survival of the species and provide for recovery," he said.

The retrenchment on critical habitat proposed by the administration is echoed by work already under way on Capitol Hill to rewrite the Endangered Species Act.

In October, Pombo's House Resources Committee voted 28-14 to approve legislation sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, revising the process the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses to determine critical habitat.

Among the provisions of that bill, which died with the adjournment of Congress but which committee aides say is likely to be revived next year, is an exemption for lands already covered by state or federal conservation plans, the same approach now proposed by federal fish managers for salmon and steelhead.

"We see this a lot in this government," Hogan said. "A conservative administration will work closely with lawmakers to identify their gripes and begin to respond in their policies, and then the lawmakers will turn that policy into new law."

But what troubles Spain, of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, is that the administration is moving ahead independently from Congress.

According to court records, Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald tried to change scientific recommendations related to protecting wetland species and endangered fish.

In the first instance, the correspondence was between MacDonald, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managers and the California Farm Bureau Federation in April. A month later, the federation used the information to back a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the service's decision continuing protection for the delta smelt.

MacDonald sent an e-mail to regional officials in California that disputed that they could reasonably estimate the remaining population of the tiny fish, which federal biologists had determined is in danger of extinction.

She then telephoned the farm bureau's chief lawyer and read her the e-mail, providing the farm bureau with a printout of the e-mail the same day.

Environmental groups say such contacts suggest top-level administrators at the nation's land management agencies care more about business interests than the wildlife they're assigned to protect.

MacDonald, whose office is in Washington, D.C., confirmed the e-mail and the telephone calls in an interview with The Associated Press but said they do not indicate bias against the Endangered Species Act.

"This was part of an ongoing series of calls in which they were unhappy with a decision that had been made. This was a case where I had to agree with them," MacDonald said.

During dry periods, the delta smelt clusters around the gigantic intake pipes that draw water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta before sending it south to Central Valley farms and Southern California. The endangered species designation forces water managers to slow the pumps just when farmers need the water most.

"This has real consequences for our members. It's not hypothetical," said Brenda Southwick, the farm bureau lead attorney MacDonald called that day. "We can't grow crops without water."

MacDonald said the Interior Department supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to continue protections for the smelt, although that isn't evident in her e-mail. The e-mail challenges the science behind the ruling, particularly its reliance on population estimates and other "flawed assumptions and data."

MacDonald also intervened at the last minute to exclude five California counties from wetlands protections in a separate decision that aided farmers and land developers. She now acknowledges that decision was based on a flawed analysis.

In that case, MacDonald substituted her own cost-benefit analysis for that done by the Fish and Wildlife Service. She made the changes the night before a court-ordered decision was due on establishing critical habitat for 15 plants and animals that survive only in shallow seasonal pools across much of California.

MacDonald wrote Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Craig Manson in a July 2003 e-mail, saying the costs of establishing critical habitat outweighed the economic benefits in five counties – Butte, Madera, Merced, Sacramento and Solano.

Wildlife managers later discovered her analysis was flawed. For example, it underestimated each county's annual taxable sales a thousandfold, which affected her cost analysis.

"This is like the stupidest mistake in the world. It's humiliating to have made it," MacDonald told the AP.

Nonetheless, Manson excluded the five counties, with some of MacDonald's reasoning showing up word-for-word in the final decision. She said the correct numbers wouldn't have altered her recommendation to eliminate the five counties with the highest unemployment rates.

In that case, the exchange worked in the favor of the environmental groups, as the service agreed to reconsider. Its new decision is expected in July.#

December 16, 2004
The Bureau of Reclamation announces the availability of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed long-term renewal of Central Valley Project water service contracts between Reclamation and up to 145 Sacramento River Settlement Contractors. The proposed contract renewals allow for the continued diversion of up to 1.8 million acre-feet of Base Supply water per year and 380,000 acre-feet of Project Water per year for agricultural and municipal and industrial uses for a period of 40 years.

The written comment period on the Draft EIS ended on November 15, 2004. A separate 60-day public review and comment period for the associated Sacramento River Settlement contracts ended September 7, 2004. The Final EIS contains comments received on the Draft EIS and responses to those comments. Reclamation will make a decision on the proposed action no earlier than 30 days after the date of publication of the Final EIS. The Record of Decision will state the action that will be implemented and discuss the factors leading to the decision.

The Final EIS can be reviewed at the following Reclamation offices: Northern California Area Office, 16349 Shasta Dam Boulevard, Shasta Lake, California; Red Bluff Division Office, 22500 Altube Road, Red Bluff, California; Willows Office, 1140 West Wood Street, Willows, California; and Regional Office, Public Affairs Office, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, California.

The Final EIS is available online at www.usbr.gov/mp/cvpia/3404c/eis/Final/index.html, click on Final EISs and scroll to Final EIS for Renewal of Sacramento River Settlement Contracts. To request a copy of the Final EIS, please contact Mr. Buford Holt at 530-276-2047, TDD 530-275-8991, or e-mail bholt@mp.usbr.gov. If you need help accessing documents online, please contact Ms. Lynnette Wirth at 916-978-5102 or e-mail lwirth@mp.usbr.gov.# # #

Relevant Links:
Final Environmental Document Available for Renewal of Sacramento River Settlement Contracts

In the Bush world of nature, no right of a fish or animal species is apparently enough to cause discomfort to any citizen holding a deed to land anywhere in America. This must be what they mean by achieving an ''ownership society.'' The more the land is owned by individuals, the more privatized, the less there is in commons, the less we have the right to even care what happens to any of the natural wonders of Indian country's remarkable landscape.

This season the pressure is again on the Pacific salmon. The ''dry-out'' of the salmon has begun in earnest, as the Bush administration has opted to drop protection from four-fifths of protected rivers, judged crucial to the recovery of salmon and steelhead, from Southern California to the Canadian border.

Declaring that these are no longer critical for salmon and steelhead recovery, tens of thousands of miles of river have been set loose for change and exploitation in the broadest environmental policy reversal in recent history. Down to only 27,000 miles of river, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, the federal agency assigned to handle salmon recovery. ''A flip-flop on Salmon,'' the Idaho Statesman calls it.

The controversy dates back to the extended California drought in the early 1990s, when the federal government held back water from two San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts to protect the Chinook salmon and delta smelt populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

A private law firm, Marzulla & Marzulla, sued the federal government on behalf of the irrigation districts -- which in turn represent 285 growers in the area. The suit claimed that withholding the water represented an illegal ''taking'' of property, prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

In 2001, John Wiese, a judge in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., ruled in the grower's favor. The ruling effectively overturned decades of California law. For years, it had been accepted that our water is owned by the people of California, and not by those who have signed contracts to use it. ''You can acquire rights to use water, but you can never acquire ownership of water in the same way you can a piece of land, or an automobile,'' said Joseph Sax, a UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law professor who helped prepare a brief against the water districts' claims. Wiese in effect ruled that the users of the water, through their local water districts, owned the water. He ordered the federal government to pay the growers $14 million in damages, which, with interest and attorneys' fees, has grown to $26 million. ''This could have a devastating impact on regulating water in the public interest in California,'' Sax told us.

But instead of appealing the case to a higher court -- which the federal government typically does when it has to pay out large sums of money - - the Bush administration is reportedly on the verge of reaching a settlement with the growers, to the alarm of state officials.

On Dec. 1, California's Water Resources Control Board, representing the Schwarzenegger administration, urged the Bush administration to appeal Wiese's decision and to consider having the case transferred to the California Supreme Court. In a letter to three Bush cabinet secretaries, water board chairman Arthur Baggett Jr. wrote that Wiese's ruling could ''fundamentally change the way water resources are managed in California.''

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer has made a similar request. Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, charged with managing the nation's fisheries, has urged the administration to appeal the ruling, arguing that ''liability was wrongly decided.''

All Californians should be concerned about the Justice Department's apparent eagerness to go along with a flawed ruling in a single court that could have a disastrous impact on the environment, as well as determine who controls water in California for decades to come..

Urge Attorney General John Ashcroft to stand up for taxpayers and the environment by appealing this ruling. E-mail him at askdoj@usdoj.gov. #

What will it take to fill streams again with these silvery fish, symbols of nature and a clean, thriving environment? There are lots of answers, but don't expect any good ones from the Bush administration.

Step by step, it is rolling back policies and changing rules to undercut a revival of these fish. The latest is a plan to cut protections for rivers, which are the vital nurseries of the fish to spawn and grow before heading out to sea.

The proposal wipes out 80 percent of the habitat controls that prevent timber cuts and roads that muddy the clear-flowing water needed by the fish. The shift also helps developers who want to build near streams, another activity that can lead to lower water quality.

It's a giveaway to business and a loss for the environment. Coming a month after the presidential vote, the move seems timed to minimize fallout for President Bush.

The cuts in river protections aren't the only dismaying setback for salmon. Earlier, the administration tried to count hatchery-raised fish along with slim numbers of wild fish to show that populations weren't endangered.

Also, this week Bush officials formally buried talk of taking down federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers that obstruct migrating fish. Removing the eight major dams -- a radical step, to be sure -- had at least stayed on the table in a long-running argument in the Northwest about salmon losses.

Salmon and steelhead are no match for the White House's political calculations. #

A coalition of 22 environmental groups said Wednesday the plan would shift some of the federal water burden - and potentially more than $20 million in expenses in some years - onto the state-controlled water supply. In some years, hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water might not be available for wildlife, the groups said.

Federal spokesmen said the plan would protect the environmental water allotment while balancing the needs of farmers and urban residents.

At issue are agreements, federal law and a federal court decision that requires the government to guarantee 800,000 acre-feet of federally controlled water goes to Delta fisheries each year. That's roughly enough water to supply 800,000 households for a year.

"This is a big, thorny issue of water in California," said Diana Jacobs, deputy director of the state Department of Fish and Game.

Twenty populations of West Coast salmon and steelhead are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which requires that the government identify "critical habitat areas" -- the places where a listed species can recover. The plan put forth by the National Marine Fisheries Service designates habitat for the endangered fish in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California.

But the habitat proposed Tuesday is 80 percent less than the habitat identified by the service from 1999 to 2002, when it announced it would suspend the process pending further study. The proposal resumes the habitat- designation program.

"We've reduced the area under designation to one-fifth as large as it was, " said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the agency.

Critical habitat areas can be subject to restrictions on activities such as development, logging and grazing -- and Tuesday's proposal also emphasized that potential impacts on such economic activities would be weighed in the consideration of critical habitat.

A 60-day public comment period follows the announcement. The agency is expected to make a final decision on the matter by June 2005.

Gorman said the move was essentially procedural and wouldn't have a major impact on salmon and steelhead protection.

"The real teeth of the ESA (Endangered Species Act) comes from the listing itself, not the critical habitat," Gorman said. "(Critical habitat) is basically a red flag to other agencies that they have to be careful, to adjust their activities accordingly."

Gorman said that original critical habitat proposals for Pacific salmon and steelhead were more extensive than has turned out to be necessary because the agency had not completed its research -- and wanted to err, if at all, on the side of caution.

"We now have scientific tools and maps that allow much more refined determinations, that show which streams have viable populations (of fish), which should be critical habitat," Gorman said.

But Bill Kier, a Sausalito-based fisheries consultant who specializes in salmon and steelhead, said the announcement marked "a sea change" in federal policy, one that could prove disastrous for the fish.

"It's a default shredding of the ESA," Kier said. "Salmon and steelhead have essential freshwater stages, and they need precisely those areas NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) plans to abandon. If 80 percent of the critical habitat is to be cut, I don't see how these fish can sustain their recovery."

Kier said that much progress has been made in resuscitating populations of steelhead and coho and chinook salmon, particularly in California.

"This, however, could pull the rug out from lots of landowner groups, community groups and local agencies that have been working to bring these fish back," he said.

The revised plan, which was prompted by a lawsuit from the National Assn. of Homebuilders, could exclude 80% to 90% of the "critical habitat" that the National Marine Fisheries Service designated four years ago as necessary to keep West Coast salmon and steelhead populations from going extinct and to allow their depleted populations to recover.

Streams and rivers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County would be withdrawn as protected habitat because the military argued that the protections would delay training exercises and space launches and diminish military readiness.

In addition, streams that run through millions of acres of national forests stretching from northwestern California through western Oregon and Washington would be excluded as critical habitat for the fish. Federal officials said they did not want to impose another layer of restrictions on areas already subject to protections for the northern spotted owl.

The new plan also drops protections on private land where developers have struck conservation deals with government officials.

By removing all of these areas, "We would get down to excluding around 90% of the critical habitat that had been [previously] identified," said Jim Lecky, an assistant regional administrator for the Fisheries Service.

The new plan, released late Tuesday, was immediately applauded as "a very large improvement" by Christopher Galik, an environmental policy analyst for the National Assn. of Homebuilders.

But environmentalists and fishermen said it failed to meet the agency's own scientific criteria for what is needed for the once-abundant fish to return to healthy population levels.

"None of this is defensible," said Chris Frissell, a fisheries biologist with the Pacific Rivers Council. "There is no way it would come anywhere close to helping these fish recover."

All sides in the battle are predicting more lawsuits over designating critical habitat, arguably the most powerful tool under the federal Endangered Species Act to control development, timber harvesting and farming practices that can degrade healthy streams and rivers.

"That is the one certainty," Lecky said. "More litigation."

The legal battle began in the 1990s after the federal government began a 15-year effort to bring back salmon, as well as steelhead, which are prized by fishermen and seafood lovers.

The Fisheries Service in 2000 designated large areas of the Pacific Coast from Malibu Creek in Los Angeles County to the tip of Washington state as critical habitat for the ever-declining salmon and steelhead. It extended into the northern reaches of California's Central Valley and included vast areas of the Columbia and Snake river valleys that stretch into Idaho.

Homebuilders feared the habitat restrictions would stall, change or cancel streamside projects. Timber companies worried that the restrictions would curb plans for logging roads and harvesting practices that can muddy streams. Farmers were concerned that they would be prohibited from siphoning water from rivers and streams used by the fish.

The National Assn. of Homebuilders led a list of groups that sued, arguing that the designations were excessive, unduly vague and lacked a required analysis of economic impact.

The federal government withdrew the critical habitat designation for 19 types of salmon and steelhead.

On Tuesday, it reissued substantially modified designations after taking into account the economic costs of its first plan, which federal officials said could run about $220 million a year in the Pacific Northwest and $100 million to $200 million a year in California.

"Clearly, there were some areas where the economic costs of the critical habitat clearly outweighed the biological benefit," Lecky said. Other areas were eliminated, he said, because better mapping and more accurate data allowed federal officials to more precisely pinpoint which streams were used by the fish.

Nicole Cordan, policy and legal director of Save Our Wild Salmon, called the plan "ridiculous" on its face, predicting that eliminating 90% of protected habitat would fail to meet the biological needs of salmon and the legal tests of the Endangered Species Act.

The proposal, she said, falls in line with other administration positions, including one announced Tuesday stating that federal dams do not jeopardize salmon by blocking their migration to and from the ocean.

Salmon, which live as juveniles in rivers and streams, spend most of their adult lives in the ocean and then return to fresh water to spawn.

The Fisheries Service ruled out demolishing eight dams on the lower reaches of the Columbia and Snake rivers, even as a last resort. Instead, it said the endangered fish could be protected by continuing to truck fish around the dams and building a new type of weir that works like a water slide to allow juvenile fish to slide around the obstructions on their way to the ocean.

The administration's plan, which must be approved by a federal judge, is estimated to cost about $600 million a year.

Earlier this year, the administration proposed counting millions of hatchery-raised fish that are released into the wild as wild fish, undercutting the need to keep fish born in the wild on the list of endangered species.

Federal officials next year will review the status of 26 species of wild salmon that are supplemented with hatchery fish to determine if they should remain protected as endangered or threatened species.

All these actions, Cordan said, "are typical of this administration — ignore science, ignore sound economics and ignore the law."

Glen H. Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns., said the administration is making a critical error in its economic analysis by failing to consider the benefits of restored salmon populations — such as helping the struggling salmon fishing industry.

"Conservation makes good economic sense," Spain said, "and we are a perfectly good example of this. Our livelihood is on the line." #

The Arundo donax species is an aggressive Mediterranean plant that looks like bamboo, but can grow four inches a day and reach heights of 30 feet. It also consumes about 80 percent more water than other plants.

Arundo was introduced in Southern California by Spanish missionaries and used for roofing material. It is still used today in reeds for musical instruments.

Officials once thought it could be used as a tool to stabilize stream banks, and ranchers and farmers around the state planted it. But during storms, the roots break loose and release silt into the water, harming fish. Stalks have become lodged beneath bridges, building up pressure and wiping out roads.

The plant does not produce enough shade for salmon and trout, which need cold water. And its also highly flammable and does not provide much food or habitat for other wildlife.

The Western Shasta Resource Conservation District is applying for grants to pay for eradication efforts, said biologist Valerie Shaffer.

"The money and effort spent now is a drop in the bucket compared to what we will have to spend later if we allow the further spread of invasives" like Arundo, she said.

The Redding Rotary Club, fly fishing and trails enthusiasts, Boy Scouts, and other clean-stream advocates will work with the state Department of Fish and Game to clean up several local creeks on Dec. 4.#

Sacramento Bee - 11/27/04
By Ed Fletcher, staff writer
Two young girls bounce between the shin-high concrete tanks, tossing rice-sized pellets of fish food at the thousands of weeks-old salmon waiting to test their fins and instincts on the open waters. One girl, a quick-minded 9-year-old, knows plenty about salmon, their life cycle and the Nimbus Fish Hatchery in Rancho Cordova, to which her mother and another home-school mom took their children on a recent Friday afternoon.

"We like feeding the fish," said Beata Mackenroth. "I also like to see the fish ladder." One question she couldn't answer was: How different are hatchery-born fish and fish that spawn naturally? That's no elementary school question. Heck, grown-ups are fighting over the answer.

Whether hatchery salmon should be counted with salmon born in the wild when making Endangered Species Act determinations is the latest battleground in the long-standing war between environmentalists, who are pushing habitat protection, and landowners, represented by a Sacramento-based legal group that wants less stringent land-use rules.

The Endangered Species Act, enacted by Congress in 1973, protects a wide array of wildlife, but landowner rights advocates say it is overused and hurts property owners.

Prompted by a 2001 court decision, NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for salmon recovery, is rewriting the rules on how it determines whether a species qualifies as "threatened" or "endangered" under the act.

The finalized rule isn't due out until June, but because the comment period ended recently, the draft of the proposed rule was being attacked from both sides.

Environmentalists and land-rights advocates each had problems with the new rule, which seeks to take factors other than population into account when determining the viability of salmon and steelhead populations.

Under the rule change, genetic diversity, survival rates and population distribution would all be considered in addition to a raw population count.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, who requested the report, said consumers and policy-makers should be concerned, but he didn't recommend specific legislation. The San Francisco Democrat has reached his term limit and will leave office next month.

Burton pushed a bill through the Legislature this year to ban foie gras - a liver pâté derived by force-feeding geese - beginning in 2012 unless its makers adopt more humane feeding practices.

The suit is part of Butte Environmental Council's larger effort to preserve wetlands throughout the state, said Barbara Vlamis, BEC's director.

Filed last week, the suit challenges plans for more than 8,400 homes on 3,162 acres, which the city of Roseville would annex on its west side.

Vlamis isn't so concerned about the houses as she is the vernal pools dotting the land and the principle that land designated critical habitat ought to remain undeveloped.

Vernal pools, found in certain areas up and down California, are low spots in the land that fill with water in the spring. They are home to various plants and animals that appear with the water. Some of these organisms, such as meadowfoam, are on the Endangered Species List.

Because of BEC's pushing, the federal government in 2003 designated as critical habitat nearly 1.7 million acres of vernal pools in 36 California counties, Vlamis said. But last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cut that back to 740,000 acres in 30 California counties and one Oregon county.

BEC sued the wildlife service , demanding that the full 1.7 million acres receive the critical-habitat designation. The case is continuing. Butte is one of the five counties where wetlands lost the critical-habitat designation. BEC wants the designation restored to wetlands in all five counties.

Another issue is whether land designated as critical habitat will receive protection or not.

Vlamis said the project west of Roseville would destroy 2,100 acres of vernal-pool grasslands. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers approved the project. Yet, just last week, she said, the service identified this land as vital in a draft Vernal Pool Recovery Plan for the state.

If the land is so important to achieving recovery for these endangered species, she asked, how can it be approved for elimination?

A spokesman for Fish and Wildlife in Sacramento said he couldn't comment on the matter because it was being litigated.

Vlamis said last summer a federal court ruled in two cases that land designated critical habitat could not be changed in ways that jeopardized endangered species. Those two cases involved the habitat for the spotted owl and the Mojave desert tortoise.

Another conservation group, Defenders of Wildlife, joined BEC as a plaintiff the suit filed Friday.#

"We got a great crop," he says.

After a few years, the refuge will flood the land again. The ducks and marsh plants will return. Then the refuge will drain it once again, and the farmers will return. So the cycle goes.

Refuge managers see the rotation between wetland and cropland as a chance to improve the outlook for both wildlife and agriculture -- not only in this wildlife refuge but also in the rest of the Klamath Basin and possibly elsewhere in the country.

"I like to think that what we are doing here is sound stewardship, one that will carry this basin and maybe some other basins to a much longer life," says Ron Cole, Tule Lake refuge manager.

Cole wants to expand the "walking wetland" program from a few experimental plots to cover much of the 39,000 acres in the refuge.

The practice is a rare bright spot in the Klamath Basin, where conflict is as regular as the turning of the seasons. Agriculture and development have taken about 75 percent of the basin's wetlands, leaving farmers, tribes and endangered fish to compete for limited water.

Audubon Oregon and Waterwatch, an environmental group that advocates phasing out farming altogether on Tule Lake, support the rotation. "The walking wetland program is a good program, and it shows how productive reconstructed wetlands can be," says Bob Hunter, staff attorney with Waterwatch in Medford.

Founded in 1928, the Tule Lake refuge sits in a semi-arid punch bowl just south of the Oregon-California border. It's one of the six refuges in the Klamath Basin that lie in a geographic bottleneck along the Pacific Flyway. Every fall, 80 percent of the birds heading south from Alaska to warmer climates pass through the river basin.

At Tule Lake, the water surface is thick with battalions of black American coots. Mallard and pintail ducks seek cover in the reed beds. Seen from a migratory bird's-eye view, the refuge looks like a checkerboard of brown and green cropland.

Almost half of the refuge's acreage is dedicated to commercial agriculture, while only 8 percent is marsh. Uplands and open water make up the rest.

The refuge here -- as does the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge -- leases acreage to private farmers under a 1964 law that sought to balance the demands of farming and wildlife in the basin. "It was a law that said, 'You're going to have agriculture, and you're going to have wildlife. Now get along,' " Cole says. "And for a long time, they didn't."

When the law was passed, several million ducks and geese visited Tule Lake. In recent years, those figures have declined to about 400,000, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service figures show.

The Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington, D.C.-based group, recently listed the entire complex of Klamath Basin marshes as among the nation's most endangered. At the same time, agricultural land on the refuge has declined in quality. Decades of planting and harvesting depleted organic matter in the soil, requiring more fertilizer. Pests such as nematodes, which cover potato skins with tiny pimples, became endemic.

In the early 1990s, refuge managers began experimenting with flooding agricultural lands and discovered that long-dormant marsh plants recovered within one year, Cole says. Then in 1999, the refuge drained an experimental wetland and leased the field to private farmers. The plot was known as Lot 5. Farmers had joked the site would drop 6 inches if you took all the bugs out of the soil. It had been under water for two years when Marshall Staunton and his two brothers entered the winning bid to farm its 90 acres. What they found surprised nearly everyone: After it was drained, Lot 5 held black, sweet-smelling soil relatively free of pests and pathogens.

Basin potato crops average about 24 tons an acre. But that fall, Staunton harvested 29 tons per acre of worm-free potatoes from the plot. Plus, because the pests were gone, he saved about $200 an acre on fumigants and other chemicals, he says.

Eventually, word of the Stauntons' success got around. Minor bidding wars erupted to win the leases of other newly drained wetland plots. This year, farmers bid an average of 75 percent more, or a total of $160 an acre, for formerly flooded land compared with non-wetland acres.

At the same time, ducks and geese have begun taking advantage of the temporary wetlands. Pintail ducks have increased more than threefold since 1997 and green-winged teals more than fivefold in the same period, in part because of the wetland-rotation program, refuge managers say.

"For some species of waterfowl, we're seeing numbers we haven't seen in a quarter of a century," Cole says.

Now about 3,000 acres of refuge land are in different stages of wetland/cropland rotation, but eventually Cole hopes to have 18,000 acres in the mix.

The program is part of a massive plan to re-engineer the refuge by draining some portions of the lake and flooding other long-dry areas to better mimic the historic range of habitats at Tule Lake, he says.

Though still somewhat experimental, it's showing good results for farmers and the refuge, Cole says. "If this isn't a good way to manage an ecosystem, we'll find out soon enough," he says. "But one thing I do know: It's better than what we were doing."

Cole and others at the refuge hope to see farmers eventually adopt a wetland rotation on their own land just as they might a cropland rotation. The process could be adapted to other areas -- the Willamette Valley, for example, or even the Mississippi Delta.

"It's one of these tools where everyone can come out better than they went into it, and that's what you're looking for. You're not looking for winners and losers," says Steve Kandra, a Tulelake farmer and president of the Klamath Water Users Association.

But the ecological benefits of the walking wetlands are less certain.

For instance, a system of temporary wetlands probably won't have near the biological diversity of established wetlands, says Mary Santelmann, a research scientist at Oregon State University who focuses on wetlands and ecosystem ecology.

Put simply, when the wetlands "walk," many species such as amphibians can't follow. Other species, such as sandhill cranes, return to their same nesting spots year after year and may not react well to a shifting mosaic of habitats.

Once the fields are drained again, "you could create ecological traps for some species that aren't particularly mobile," Santelmann says.

She also says the program may not work in other places, such as Iowa, where farming is more established and marsh germination slower.

But in the Klamath Basin, the walking wetlands may ease some of the strains on the basin's water, soil and people. Staunton is one of the farmers looking for ways to export the program to private lands.

Out of his pickup and standing in the neat potato rows, Staunton sniffs the damp soil and inspects some pest-free russets in the back of a harvester.

"This basin seems to get more than its share of crisis, confusion and conflict," he says. But "these are good potatoes, a good crop."#

The Cache Creek Conservancy, Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, and the Yolo Resource Conservation District, are working with USDA Agricultural Research Service and NASA to explore the feasibility of satellite monitoring of invasive plant infestations on Cache Creek.

Scientists from USDA-ARS and NASA's Ames Research Center recently met with participating Yolo County agencies to discuss the feasibility of satellite monitoring. NASA researchers, led by Dr. David Bubenheim, are interested in conducting research on the reach along Cache Creek from Clear Lake to Woodland's Settling Basin.

"This is an opportunity to apply cutting edge technology to on the ground work being done along Cache Creek," Dr. Bubenheim said. "We are touring Yolo County to get a better idea of what problems are encountered by land managers and the restoration community," he added.

"The Cache Creek Conservancy has worked closely with USDA-ARS for the past five years on eradication efforts aimed at tamarisk and Arundo," said Jan Lowrey, the Conservancy's Executive Director. "We welcome NASA's interest and believe they could be invaluable in the battle to eradicate invasive plant species from the creek."

During the meeting, NASA researcher Lee Johnson displayed a preliminary website that will show the extent and location of invasive plant species including yellow star thistle, tamarisk, and Arundo and the extent of infestation. Hyperspectral imaging is used to document the presence of invasives, to identify the species, and the size and location of the infestation.

Invasive plant species often crowd out native species, provide poor habitat for wildlife, use disproportionate amounts of water, and frequently lodge in streambeds where their presence may facilitate flooding and erosion. Tamarisk and Arundo are two types of invasive species commonly found throughout Yolo County.

In addition to invasive species, the satellite imagery also could be used to display the presence of native plants stands as well. "This is a tremendous opportunity to fine-tune and integrate an update of the Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District's water management plan update with other restoration work proceeding in the area," General Manager Tim O'Halloran noted. "Furthermore, by increasing our knowledge of the location and density of existing, beneficial wildlife habitat we can better practice our role as stewards of the environment."

NID directors last month decided to send out a special mailing to about 5,400 irrigation water users with information about the Placer-Nevada-South Sutter-North Sacramento Subwatershed Group.

Individual growers are banding together into watershed groups so they can apply for a discharge waiver and more easily share the costs of water quality monitoring programs.

The Sacramento Valley is divided into 10 groups to comply with agricultural discharge waiver rules approved by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Yuba, Sutter and Butte counties are in their own watershed group. The Colusa Basin includes Glenn, Colusa and northern Yolo counties.

The Nevada Irrigation District sent a five-page letter to its customers in early November that was written by the local subwatershed group.

According to NID, many of its water users objected to having to join the watershed group and to pay its acreage fee. A few customers thought NID was seeking the money.

"This is something we were not really involved in," NID General Manager Ron Nelson said in a statement. "We were simply trying to support our local agricultural groups. We're sorry for any confusion or misunderstanding this letter may have caused."

Lane Therrell, assistant director of the Placer County Farm Bureau, acknowledged that "our message wasn't delivered very clearly."

This fall, the returns of chinook salmon to Bogus Creek and the Shasta, Scott and Salmon rivers -- Northern California tributaries to the Klamath River -- have been disappointing. Estimates based on fish and carcass counts are showing less than 25 percent of last year's returns and less than 10 percent of the strong returns of 2000.

The reasons are difficult to nail down, but the more researchers look, the more disease they are finding in young chinook migrating down the Klamath River. The fish that survive to reach the ocean are finding less food than they did a few years ago.

Meanwhile, an El Niño building in the South Pacific could reduce the mountain snowpack that feeds the Klamath River and make food even more scarce for salmon in the ocean.

The disease and ocean conditions come on top of the continuing struggle to balance scarce water between threatened coho salmon and farms on a federal irrigation projected along the Oregon-California border. A drought in 2001 prompted the federal government to shut off water to most farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project.

The health of the Klamath's chinook salmon also has widespread effects because when runs are down, harvests in the ocean off Southern Oregon and Northern California are cut back to allow more to return to the river to spawn.

Declines blamed on habitat loss, poor water quality and overfishing prompted Congress to initiate a rebuilding effort in 1986, which led to increased research that has uncovered an alarming rate of disease.

Understanding the role that diseases play in salmon returns is becoming increasingly important in the rebuilding effort, said Nick Hetrick, fisheries program leader for Fish and Wildlife in Arcata, Calif.

That's where Scott Foott comes in. He is a fish pathologist at the agency's California-Nevada Fish Health Center who has been studying fish diseases in the Klamath Basin.

Samples taken from traps and seining indicate that as many as 80 percent of young Klamath chinook are infested with the parasite parvicapsula minibicornis by the time they reach the ocean. It doesn't appear to be fatal, but it weakens fish by making their kidneys less efficient at filtering their blood, Foott said.

Another parasite, Ceratomyxa shasta, infests the intestines. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of young chinook swimming down the Klamath get infested with it, and nearly all of them die.

Biologists don't know how many salmon are spawned in the wild in the Klamath Basin, so they cannot estimate how many are being killed by disease. Overall, though, the chances of salmon surviving from egg to spawning adult generally are tiny.

The numbers of chinook smolts released from Iron Gate Hatchery on the Klamath River that survived to return to the hatchery averaged less than 1 percent from 1979 to 1999, said Hampton, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

"This disease problem hits much harder in some years than other years," he said. "We're just now finding out what it's doing."

The fish do not appear to become infested with C shasta in their home tributaries, Foott said. It all appears to happen after they enter the Klamath. The rate of infestation appears to be related to the prevalence of a tiny worm, found in fine sand at the bottom of river pools and in algae that grows on rocks, that serves as an intermediate host for the parasite.

"The general thought is, if you have high concentrations of (the worm) in the upper river ... you are creating this condition of a higher rate of infection than you normally have," Foott said. "It could be a cyclic phenomenon. It could be due to a lack of flushing flows in winter. These are just open questions right now.

"A river is a very dynamic creature. When you turn it into a drainage canal, it doesn't operate like it used to."

Diseases could become another issue in the debate about water allocations in the basin. Right now, the timing and amount of flows down the Klamath River are dictated by the needs of coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act.

That could change if the Yurok Tribe wins a lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation demanding more water for chinook and other fish to fulfill tribal trust responsibilities. Also, PacifiCorp is seeking a new license to operate dams in the basin.

Beyond anyone's control are changing conditions in the ocean based on climate drivers such as El Niño in the South Pacific and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in the North Pacific.