Editorial: New roadmap to a healthy future for the Delta; Delta Vision task force's report lays out a course of action; will the governor lead?
Sacramento Bee – 12/30/07

The multiple perils that threaten the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta look much like those that endanger the Everglades, the Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries around the world.

Fisheries are declining. Urban encroachment is adding to the historic loss of wetlands. Exotic species are forcing out native ones. Polluted runoff is contributing to the meltdown of fragile ecosystems.

Yet California's Delta faces some stresses that set it apart from other estuaries. Unlike its counterparts in Maryland or Florida, the Delta is a direct source of drinking water for 25 million people. Farms in the San Joaquin Valley also are highly dependent on this water. Those demands add to the challenge – and the urgency – of restoring the Delta, which many scientists say is on the verge of collapse.

Is California ready to grant the Delta the recognition and protection it deserves? It might be, especially if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders heed the final report of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force.

Released this month, this report seeks to elevate the status of the Delta as a "unique and valued" place, one where ecosystem restoration and a reliable water supply should be "primary, co-equal goals."

This hasn't always been the case. For decades, the state has allowed powerful interests to treat the Delta as a plumbing valve and a real estate venture instead of a sensitive estuary. Although millions have been spent on supposed restoration, much of it has been frittered away. All the while, the volume of water pumped from the Delta has gone up steadily.

The Delta Vision task force, appointed by the governor and chaired by former Sacramento mayor and legislator Phil Isenberg, urges a new course. In 12 recommendations – see http://deltavision.ca.gov/ – the task force notes that a revitalized Delta "will require reduced diversions, or changes in patterns and timing of those diversions … at critical times."

It also concludes that new facilities for storage and conveyance will be needed "to better manage California water resources."

Not surprisingly, interests on both sides of the water divide moved quickly to quash those proposals.

Environmentalists questioned the need for more storage. Meanwhile the State Water Contractors and Westlands Water District took aim at the suggestion that reduced diversions are needed. The latter claimed the public won't support spending billions on the Delta "to get less water."

Last week saw the death of former State Water Resources Director David Kennedy, who was widely respected for his knowledge and ability to bridge gaps. More than ever, the state needs a modern-day David Kennedy who can break through the impasses and pursue "co-equal" protections for both the environment and water reliability.

Schwarzenegger could serve this role. Yet to date, he has been far too aligned with the water siphoners of the Delta to forge broad consensus. If the governor embraces the recommendations of his task force – all of them – it will show where he stands. But if the Delta Vision report ends up collecting dust, or getting picked apart, it will mean business as usual in the water world: deadlock, an outcome the state can't afford. #

Capital Press – 12/21/07

The largest agricultural water district in the nation has become a habitat helper. Westlands Water District, which serves the sprawling 600,000-acre area of farms along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, has just closed escrow on a 3,450-acre tract of farmland in the southern portion of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The district intends to farm part of the land and turn the rest into upland habitat and tidal wetlands for at-risk fish species like the Delta smelt, according to Tom Birmingham, Westlands' general manager.

"We're trying to solve a problem that is of critical importance, not just for agriculture, but also for 25 million Californians who get drinking water and water for irrigation from supplies conveyed through and pumped from the Delta," Birmingham said in a statement.

The tiny smelt has become the "canary in the coal mine" to environmental groups that have pushed for curtailed water exports from state and federal pumps near Tracy. Efforts to protect the smelt led a federal judge to order a shutdown of pumps in August to help the federally protected native fingerling. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger issued his final ruling Dec. 14 that will mean sharply reduced water pumping until new federal biological permits are obtained approximately a year from now. His ruling means that up to one-third of the water that normally flows through the Delta to farms and cities will be cut off. His decision is expected to fallow farmland and cause severe conservation measures in urban areas.

"Saving the Delta smelt is an issue of self-preservation for most of California," Birmingham said. "Regulation of the state's water supply projects alone hasn't worked, and as a public agency with responsibility for providing water for more than 500,000 acres of farmland, the District's Board of Directors decided we need to act directly to help solve a critical problem."

Jerry Johns, a deputy director at the California Department of Water Resources, told Capital Press that he is impressed with Westlands' decision.

"It is gratifying that Westlands is willing to step forward and is trying to make progress," Johns said. The land purchased by Westlands is considered prime real estate for smelt habitat, according to Johns. He noted that about 20 stakeholders have been meeting regularly with government officials on a Bay-Delta conservation plan that will provide better fish protection for at-risk fish species while also helping water supply reliability for water projects which operate under state and federal environmental laws.

Projects such as the one Westlands is undertaking to use land in a floodplain, Johns said, could provide "more productivity to the system and provide better food and habitat for delta smelt during important life stages."

It is generally agreed that the Delta's ecosystem and water management operations are in crisis. Management of water in the Delta is precarious enough, but the state's lingering drought has only made water supply less reliable and the future of smelt and other fish species less certain.

State Water Resources Director Lester Snow, in a statement on Wanger's final ruling, said "The Delta is indeed broken, both environmentally and as a source of water for most of California's people, businesses, industry and millions of our most productive farmland," he said. Snow continues to lobby support for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to invest billions of dollars in new surface and groundwater storage, and long-needed improvements in the Delta's deteriorating ecosystem.

"The need for the Governor's plan has never been greater," Snow said.

While state leaders and lawmakers continue their debate about how to best forge ahead on fixing the state's water works, action by Westlands Water District is commendable, progressive and responsible.

Obviously, more needs to be done to help Delta smelt and other fish species reverse course.

Much needs to be done to add flexibility and capacity to the state's water system.

But at least Birmingham's directors have shown by their actions that doing something positive to find a solution. #

News Release: Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force – 12/17/07
Contact: Keith Coolidge (916) 445-0092, (916) 275-6809 (cell)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. --The Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force today submitted to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger 12 linked recommendations and several proposed near-term actions to protect the Delta ecosystem and the state’s water supply.

The Delta formed by California’s two largest rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, is the largest estuary on the West Coast and the hub of the state’s water systems. California’s Delta increasingly has become a center of controversy as federal, state, and local governments and private entities have sought to make use of its resources.

“We've got to turn the water debate in California on its head to make any progress. We can't keep hitting brick walls," said Task Force Chair Phil Isenberg. “The Delta is in crisis and each day brings us closer to a major disaster, be it from flooding, from the decline of important fish species, or from court-ordered reductions in the amount of water that can be pumped for the state’s water supply.”

Governor Schwarzenegger appointed the seven-member Task Force in February to develop a long-term sustainable Vision for the Delta by the end of the year, and an implementation plan by October 2008.

“We started from the premise that the Delta ecosystem and a reliable water supply for the state are co-equal values, and that conflicts between them should be resolved by applying the state constitutional principles of ‘public trust’ and ‘beneficial use,’” said Isenberg.

From there the Task Force recommends a significant increase in conservation and water system efficiency, new facilities to move and store water, and likely reductions in the amount of water taken out of the Delta watershed. The Task Force also recommends a new governing structure for the Delta that would have secure funding and the ability to approve spending, planning and water export levels.

In addition, the Task Force recommends several near-term actions. These focus on preparing for disasters in or around the Delta, including emergency flood protection and disaster planning, protecting the Delta ecosystem and water supply system from urban encroachment, and making immediate improvements to protect the environment and the system that moves water through the Delta.

Task Force members cautioned that their recommendations are linked and meant to be implemented together. In their cover letter to Governor Schwarzenegger they noted that “The Delta cannot be ‘fixed’ by any single action. No matter what policy choices are made, we Californians are compelled to change the ways we behave toward the environment and water.”

Addressing the inevitable questions about water conveyance facilities the Task Force members wrote: “For those who rush to discuss Delta water conveyance as if no other issue is of importance, we caution that decisions about storage and conveyance flow from all twelve recommendations in our Vision, and cannot be decided by themselves. To that end, we have recommended an assessment process focused on dual conveyance as the preferred direction, allowing an ultimate decision which fits into the other elements of this Vision.”

Developed during 14 days of public Task Force meetings since March, the full report is available at www.deltavision.ca.gov. In addition to Isenberg, Task Force members are: Monica Florian, Richard M. Frank, Thomas McKernan, Sunne Wright McPeak, William K. Reilly, and Raymond Seed. #

Central Valley Business Times – 12/18/07

Immediate and coordinated action is needed to preserve California’s major source of water, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, says a report from a the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force.

The report makes 12 recommendations and several proposed near-term actions to protect the Delta ecosystem and the state’s water supply. About 23 million Californians – from the Central Valley and Bay Area to Southern California -- get at least some of their water from the Delta.

“The Delta is in crisis and each day brings us closer to a major disaster, be it from flooding, from the decline of important fish species, or from court-ordered reductions in the amount of water that can be pumped for the state’s water supply,” says Phil Isenberg, chairman of the task force, which was appointed in February by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to develop a long-term sustainable vision for the Delta by the end of the year, and an implementation plan by October 2008.

The Delta, formed by California’s two largest rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, is the largest estuary on the West Coast and the hub of the state’s water systems.

The report says the recommendations are linked and meant to be implemented together. “The Delta cannot be ‘fixed’ by any single action. No matter what policy choices are made, we Californians are compelled to change the ways we behave toward the environment and water,” the task force says in a letter to the governor.

“New facilities for conveyance and storage, and better linkage between the two, are needed to better manage California’s water resources for both the estuary and exports,” the report says.

It says major investments should go to strengthen selected levees, improve floodplain management, and improve water circulation and quality.

It also says that the current boundaries and governance system of the Delta must be changed. “It is essential to have an independent body with authority to achieve the co-equal goals of ecosystem revitalization and adequate water supply for California — while also recognizing the importance of the Delta as a unique and valued area. This body must have secure funding and the ability to approve spending, planning, and water export levels,” the report says.

With some 400,000 people living on land reclaimed over the past century from what was the original Delta, the report also calls for restrictions on further development.

“Discouraging inappropriate urbanization of the Delta is critical both to preserve the Delta’s unique character and to ensure adequate public safety,” it says.

The report urges immediate action.

“This is the time to act. The difficult choices we face today will become even more difficult in the future. Procrastination will result in irretrievable losses: severe reductions in water uses and severe damage to the estuarine ecosystem,” it says. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 12/18/07
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

Jeremy Notch's arms aren't as tired as they usually are this time of year.

A field technician with the state Department of Fish and Game, Notch spends late fall spearing carcasses of spawned out salmon in the Sacramento River near Redding. This year, there have been fewer for him to spear than normal.

"Compared to last year, it's pretty bad," he said.

The low carcass count is just one of many signs that this year's fall run of chinook salmon on the Sacramento has been down, said Doug Killam, associate fisheries biologist in DFG's Red Bluff office.

Another is low returns at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek near Anderson, he said.

About 20,000 to 25,000 fall-run chinook made it into Battle Creek this year after their several-year trek to the ocean and back, said Scott Hamelberg, Coleman's manager.

The largest return on record was 400,000 in 2002. In 2005, there were 150,000 salmon and last year 75,000 returned to Battle Creek.

Despite the huge drop, there were more than enough for the hatchery to meet its spawning goals, he said. The hatchery brought in 10,000 chinook this fall and will be able to release about 12 million tiny salmon fry in April.

Of those salmon, Hamelberg said, biologists expect one in a hundred to make it back in three years.

"They face a lot of dangers out there," he said.

It's those dangers out in the ocean that could be the cause of this year's drop, said Killam, Hamelberg and Peter Adams, fisheries investigations chief in the National Marine Fisheries Service office in Santa Cruz.

"Obviously something is going on in the ocean, but we don't know what," he said.

Possible problems include higher water temperatures and food supplies at sea.

Adams said this year's commercial and recreational salmon hauls off the state's coast have been low, with the recreational catch one of the lowest ever.

Back on the river, it's also been a slow year for recreational salmon fishing, Killam said.

He said many fishing guides this year weren't able to double book -- which means having a customer set to go out in the morning and another in the afternoon, each allowed to catch two salmon -- because it's been hard to catch the limit this year.

"Last year, it was easy for guides to catch the limit," he said.

A guide for 10 years on the Sacramento, J.D. Richey, owner of J.D. Richey Sportfishing in Sacramento, said he has seen good and bad years on the river. This year has been bad, real bad.

"It's been the worst year I've ever seen," he said. #

On frosty fall mornings and brilliant spring days, millions of Californians splash into the state's waterways seeking fish that they can hook, fight to possess – and then set free.

In their drive to preserve fish for future generations, "catch-and-release" anglers may also be changing species in uncharted ways.

Biologists are certain that releasing fish helps sustain populations that would falter if those fish were eaten. But they know much less about how repeated releases may affect breeding, behavior and more.

"We are making more docile bass," smaller and less able to defend their nests, said Dave Philipp, a scientist at the Illinois Natural History Survey who studies the effects of angling on reproductive success.

Milton Love, a research biologist at UC Santa Barbara, calculated that for certain long-lived fish, even a few catch-and-release deaths can multiply into a serious problem if the same animals are caught over and over for years.

Love, who has fished since he was 5, worries when he hears recreational anglers, proud that they've released a fish for posterity, imply that they have no impact on fisheries.

"That's still an open question," Love said. He has urged more studies to help determine "at what point does the mortality rate, even if it's very small, begin to catch up with the population?"

Another open question – which troubles some anglers as well as animal-rights activists – is whether fish feel pain.

"I think they do feel pain. I'd be kidding myself if they didn't," said Kurt Bailey of Sacramento, who cares enough about fish to have trekked down to the Delta on a bitterly cold morning earlier this month to help save striped bass stranded on Prospect Island.

When he's not in rescue mode, Bailey fishes off the coast for rock cod and tuna, inland for black bass, and where he can for salmon and steelhead. He eats some and frees others, but he wonders about the ones he lets swim away.

"One thing I've thought about, when you let them go, do they survive? How messed up mentally are they? If someone did that to me, I'd be stressed out," Bailey said.

So are the fish.

Their hearts pound faster and pump more blood. Stress hormones such as cortisol increase. Lactate, the same waste product that can give humans muscle cramps after exercise, builds up.

For many species, the effect dissipates in two to four hours, said Cory Suski, a professor of fish physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Suski compares the physical effects of angling to a human exercising hard. Just like a person who runs a marathon, a fish will recover, he said.

It is a comparison that does not sit well with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"Every parent who fishes is telling their kids that it's fun to torment and abuse animals," said Lindsay Rajt, manager of the group's factory farming and vegan campaigns.

"There are a variety of ways to enjoy the outdoors that don't involve hooking a live animal by the mouth and dragging them into an environment where they can't breathe," she said.

Yet there is no scientific certainty on what a fish actually feels.

"Even the world's most renowned expert in pain can't tell you if a fish feels pain," said Steve Jinks, a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at UC Davis Medical School.

"Pain is a very subjective sensation and involves other emotional processing," said Jinks, who has done research on an eel-like fish called a lamprey.

Those who argue against fish pain rely on a medical definition that describes it as an emotional experience.

You can't have emotion without consciousness, and fish don't have a complex enough brain for consciousness, said James D. Rose, a retired University of Wyoming neuroscience professor who is one of staunchest advocates of the idea that a fish can feel no pain.

When a fish flinches, grunts or moves away from something that we imagine might hurt, what we're seeing is simply a reflex that relies on nociception, the nerve system that detects and reacts to noxious stimuli, he said.

Yet fish clearly benefit from pain medication, said aquatic veterinarian Scott Weber, a UC Davis professor who has operated on fish tumors, cataracts and other disorders with and without analgesia.

The fish that got pain medication returned to feeding and normal behavior much sooner than those that didn't, Weber said.

In the wild, it's incredibly difficult to design experiments that can fully assess the impacts of being caught and released, say those who spend their careers studying fisheries.

We have really good data on only five species – largemouth bass, walleye, striped bass, Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout, according to a 2005 study by Suski and co-author Steven Cooke.

That's out of an estimated 28,000 species of fish worldwide.

Mortality after release can range wildly, from zero to 89 percent, according to the 2005 study.

In California, about 95 percent of freshwater trout survive on release, with warm water fish such as catfish and bass doing better and anadromous fish such as salmon – which migrate from the sea to breed in fresh water – doing worse, said Dave Lentz, a senior fishery biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game.

"Catch and release has been successfully used for many decades," Lentz said, keeping fisheries far more robust than if all those fish had been taken home for food. In 2006, California issued more than 2 million recreational fishing licenses, and studies have estimated that recreational fishing pumps more than $5 billion into the economy.

Over the years, anglers have learned how to reduce death rates, choosing hooks, lures and other gear that put less stress on fish, and being especially careful when waters warm up and make fish more vulnerable.

"Fishers are keenly aware of these things," said Chris Lowe, a marine biology professor at Long Beach State University. "They go to the library, they go online, they do their homework. They tell me, 'I'm really worried about fish populations.' "

Al Kroeger, a Sacramentan who spent Saturday taking a friend's son on his first fishing trip, said he's constantly on the lookout for the best strategies to boost fish survival.

"I enjoy it so much, I want to pass it on to future generations," Kroeger said.

Many researchers say that passion among anglers is why more information about the effects of catch and release is especially important.

Among the cautionary tales is the one that Illinois scientist Philipp tells about largemouth and smallmouth bass. In both species, males make a nest and tend the fertilized eggs and young, hatched fry for several weeks. If the male is pulled from the water, predators can destroy half the offspring in five minutes and 90 percent in just 10.

A bass caught and released while it is caring for young often cannot return to its nest in time or abandons the few offspring left. That means it is removed from the gene pool for that breeding season. The bass fathers whose fry survive tend to be smaller, more docile fish that are less likely to strike at an angler's hook, Philipp has found in comparative studies of fished and less-fished lakes.

"We are putting selective pressure on every bass fishery around and selecting for the least aggressive fish," he said. "It probably means they're not as good defenders of their babies … which can't be good for the population."

Most other fish are not as well studied, so we don't know which ones might lose their ability to spawn or produce less viable eggs because they've been caught and released, he said.

"Any fishing during the reproductive period of a fish is probably a bad idea," Philipp said. #

Sacramento News and Review – 12/13/07
By Jennifer Davidson, staff writer

Eight miles of the American River stretching between Ancil Hoffman Park in Carmichael and the Nimbus Dam in Rancho Cordova are all that remain of a once robust 125 miles of Chinook salmon spawning habitat in the Central Valley.

Although California’s salmon populations have declined since early settlers colonized the region 150 years ago, nothing has had a greater impact on the species than the construction of the Folsom and Nimbus dams.

In the 1940s, Congress identified the untamed spirit of the Sacramento River as a flood hazard to the region and ordered the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to dam the river and regulate its flow. The dams were designed to complement a growing population’s infrastructure with flood control, energy generation, drinking water for nearly 1 million people and a culture of aquatic recreation that is a signature of our region, said Jeff McCracken of the Bureau of Reclamation. However, the salmon would lose more than 100 miles of precious habitat in the deal.

To compensate for the habitat loss and the direct impact on the species, the Bureau of Reclamation provided funds to build and operate the Nimbus Hatchery, built in 1955 at the time of Folsom Dam’s completion, to artificially spawn and raise Chinook salmon to propagate declining wild species, McCracken explained. As part of its mitigation, the Bureau of Reclamation is required to meet minimum flow levels in the American River, as well as water quality criteria and regulation of temperature for salmon populations. The bureau works with the California Department of Fish and Game to implement these requirements.

“The dam allows us to keep the American River flow up by releasing excess water into the river when it gets extremely low during the dry season,” McCracken said. Minimum flow levels stimulate salmon to migrate and help maintain clean spawning grounds and overall water quality by washing away pollutants and sediment.

For cold-water species such as salmon, temperature is imperative to its reproductive cycle. Five years ago, the Bureau of Reclamation installed a device to allow cold water to be withdrawn from the bottom of the reservoir and released into the river to meet temperature requirements for salmon migration, McCracken explained. Though this year, salmon ready to spawn returned to Nimbus Hatchery later than usual due to warmer river temperatures.

In November, the river temperature reached the required 61 degrees Fahrenheit for spawning and the first fascinating, but brutal, egg-take and fertilization of the season finally took place at the hatchery. In a little less than one year, these newly fertilized pea-sized, bright orange eggs will be among 32 million, 6-inch salmon smolt raised at the hatchery and ready for release.

As part of the management strategy, some of the smolt are released into the American River at the hatchery, while the majority of the 32 million are trucked and released at key locations in the Delta and Bay Area, close to the Pacific Ocean, explained Harry Morse, Public Information Officer for the California Department of Fish and Game.

“This reduces the in-river mortality rate of the smolt and ensures that most of the fish will make it to the ocean,” he said. A smolt’s journey downstream is the most perilous leg of a salmon’s life. The staggeringly low rate of salmon that return to the hatchery to spawn makes this management strategy imperative to propagate the species as efficiently as possible.

“We see less than 1 percent and sometimes less than one-half of 1 percent return rate,” Morse said. On the low end, that’s fewer than 160,000 fish out of 32 million that are genetically pre-determined to return to Nimbus Hatchery.

Solving the mystery of salmon’s declining numbers challenges even the best Ph.D.s in the field, according to Morse.

Loss of habitat due to dam construction poses the greatest threat, though biologists target sedimentation, altered stream flow, loss of streamside vegetation, rise in water temperature and pollution—all the result of human activity—as the categorical biggies that account for dozens of complex threats to the species.

The Department of Fish and Game will soon undertake a major project to tag a quarter of the salmon raised and released at the hatchery to track where they go and how many survive to help biologists understand what is happening to the hatchery stock, Morse explained.

While the conundrum has captured the attention of the scientific community, there is still plenty the average citizen can do. One of the easiest methods to protect the health of salmon and waterways is to prevent pollution through storm drains, which empty directly into rivers without receiving treatment. Animal and green waste, trash, motor oil, detergent from washing cars and residual pesticides from lawns are typical storm drain pollutants.

“A pollutant itself may not directly kill a salmon,” Morse said, “but it can destroy or affect small invertebrates and plant life,” which in turn impacts the food supply and alters the landscape of sensitive salmon habitat.

Most importantly, Morse pointed out that to save the salmon, we must generate a collective voice that understands the needs of the species and recognizes its value as a natural resource with historical and cultural importance, and a species that deserves its place on the planet.

Salmon are arriving at the hatchery daily, completing their journey from the Pacific Ocean and ready to spawn. Come face to face with these magnificent creatures and watch them make their way up the ladder into the hatchery. The Nimbus Hatchery is located near Hazel Avenue and Highway 50, off Gold Country Boulevard and is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Call (916) 358-2820 for more information. #

Eureka Times Standard – 12/13/07

History holds many lessons for us, and current efforts to force the federal government to honor its financial commitment to a healthy Trinity River conjure up many of them.

The U. S. push westward left behind it many broken treaties with Indian tribes, such as the 1877 seizure of the Black Hills of South Dakota (yes, home of the noble monument at Mount Rushmore), despite a treaty that recognized the Sioux Nation as owner in perpetuity.

In southeastern California's Owens Valley, the 1920s “water wars” pitted valley farmers against the city of Los Angeles, which coveted the rural area's water for itself. Once verdant, the Owens Valley now features a dried-up lake and alkali dust storms. (This tragedy was immortalized in the movie “Chinatown”.)

Also in the 1920s, in northern California, the Hetch Hetchy Valley -- said to be even more beautiful than Yosemite Valley -- was dammed and filled with water to provide a reservoir for San Francisco, despite protests by John Muir and other early environmentalists.

Even closer to home in 1964, the Lewiston Dam began diverting Trinity River water to the Central Valley. The Bureau of Reclamation promised Congress that 45 percent of the water would stay in the Trinity to sustain its abundant salmon and steelhead populations.

That turned out to be a lie. Up to 90 percent of the flow was sent south. Not only did this have a tragic effect on the Trinity itself, depleting the fishery by 80 percent, but the Trinity is the only Klamath River tributary producing harvestable quantities of endangered species of salmon. The Klamath, in turn, is an economic lifeline for native people as well as for commercial and sport fishermen for 900 miles along the California and Oregon coast.

Then in 1992, Congress approved a law to fix rivers damaged by excess water diversion. In 2000, Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt signed a so-called “Record of Decision,” promising to fund the restoration of the Trinity's water levels and the riverbed. But soon George Bush came into office, and his administration began dragging its feet, despite a 2002 decision by the federal courts upholding the commitment.

Today, the Trinity agreement is five years behind schedule and receiving only half its annual funding, $8 million. Yet fulfilling a promise to the Trinity seems much cheaper that the recent payout of $60 million in federal aid to fishermen and businesses devastated by the 2006 salmon season failure.

That's why North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson is seeking the passage of a bill, HR 2733, mandating that the Bureau of Reclamation do what it promised to do. BOR Director Robert Johnson has made it clear that he won't do it willingly, opposing the bill because it “reduces the discretion of the executive branch.” That's why we support HR 2733, because that's what it will take.

Remember the desolate Owens Valley? In 1997, Inyo County, Los Angeles, farmers and environmentalists signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” laying out how the lower Owens River would be rewatered by June 2003. They're still waiting. #

Sacramento Bee – 12/13/07
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

RANCHO CORDOVA – Federal officials on Monday will begin delivering hundreds of tons of gravel to the banks of the American River for a project to improve fish spawning habitat.

The $1.5 million project by the Bureau of Reclamation will be on the north bank of the river between Nimbus Dam and Sailor Bar. For two to three weeks dump trucks will stockpile gravel along river. The 30 to 40 truckloads a day will be delivered only on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Starting next summer, the gravel will be spread on the river bottom to increase spawning areas for salmon and steelhead. The project also includes creating side channels to provide refuge and spawning areas for fish.

Salmon and steelhead spawn by depositing eggs in gravel beds on the river bottom. But there isn't enough gravel habitat in the two miles below Nimbus Dam, in part because the dam blocks movement of gravel downstream. The project, authorized under the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, is designed to remedy that.

In total, about 290 truckloads of gravel – about 50,000 cubic yards – will be added to the river over five years. #

California Farm Bureau – 12/12/07
By Dave Kranz, CFBF Communications/News Division

With many California farmers facing water shortages ranging from 30 percent to 70 percent in the coming year, there wasn't a lot of optimism to be heard at a water issues panel discussion held at the California Farm Bureau Federation's 89th Annual Meeting.

Water leaders who participated in the discussion predicted years of difficulty, particularly for agricultural water users, as California grapples with long-term solutions to its water problems.

"There's a rough patch ahead for California agriculture," Association of California Water Agencies Executive Director Tim Quinn told Farm Bureau delegates. "I think it can be made relatively temporary, but water quantities are going to go down in the next few years and water prices are going to go up."

A federal judge's decision committing more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to benefit protected fish leaves water agencies south of the delta scouting for alternative supplies, Quinn said.

"With what's happening in the delta, the Metropolitan Water District and big ag districts in the Central Valley are going to be getting their checkbooks out and putting the price of water up," he said. "I think we're going to go through a fairly tough time for everybody, but especially for agricultural water users."

A representative of one of those agricultural water users, Jason Peltier of the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, said the court ruling could lead to a 70-percent reduction in water supplies in Westlands and in "a bunch of other districts."

"Hopefully, it won't be that bad but certainly, that's what some of the modeling is showing," he said.

And that's just for one year in what could be a lengthy wait for a long-term solution for moving water through or around the delta.

"How do we deal with the eight, 10 or 15 years it takes to get a canal built so we can effectively separate our water from the fish?" Peltier asked. "It's a frightening prospect looking at that gap."

The prospect of a canal to carry water around the delta worries landowners and water users there. Tom Zuckerman, former co-counsel of the Central Delta Water Agency, said construction of a water conveyance in the delta "doesn't solve problems, it just moves them."

"Until we begin to address the severe imbalance between supplies of water and demands for water, building a conveyance that enables us to transfer the deficit from one area of the state to another doesn't really address our problems," Zuckerman said.

But Quinn said water conveyance lies at the heart of the state's water problems and that ACWA will seek solutions to solve "that controversial, difficult conveyance problem and still make sure all the boats are rising with the tide around the state of California."

Northern California Water Association Executive Director Ryan Broddrick said he worries that discussions about water supply reliability have not focused on what's needed to sustain long-term food and fiber production in the Central Valley.

"There's been a lot of discussion about what is needed for urban supplies and a lot of discussion about opportunities for conservation," he said. "But there has not been a discussion about the future of agriculture in the Central Valley. Is it able to stay economically viable? Is its value as a domestic source going to be valued considerably more than it is today? Those are questions that really haven't been addressed."

Westlands' Peltier said agricultural representatives in water negotiations must constantly deal with the myths that farmers use water inefficiently and that agriculture represents a low-value use of water. At one recent meeting, he said, he tried to change people's perceptions.

"I asked people to think about an acre," Peltier said. "You can play a football game on an acre of grass and it's pretty to look at, but what can a farmer do with an acre? A farmer can grow 12,000 heads of lettuce. That's 48,000 servings. A farmer can grow 100,000 pounds of tomatoes. A farmer can grow 2,000 pounds of almonds and if you're good and eat a can a week, that one acre can feed you for 150 years."

Richard Roos-Collins, director of legal services for the Natural Heritage Institute, said that sort of understanding among all the different interests involved in negotiating about California's water problems will ultimately be key to arriving at solutions.

"The water-supply system we have today was built at a time when Californians could do business together," he said. "We need to go back to that, or go forward to it, and find a way to do business together that protects our respective interests but nonetheless allows us to put aside differences that can be put aside, so we can get on with the business of the state." #

Associated Press – 12/12/07
By Samantha Young, staff writer

A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday gave federal wildlife officials until September to come up with a new plan to protect the threatened delta smelt while still providing water to about 25 million Californians and thousands of acres of farmland around the state.

U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that until they come up with a permanent plan, water managers must limit pumping out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta this year as early as Dec. 25, when the fish typically spawn, until June 20 when the young fish have moved pass the pumps.

Wanger ruled in August in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups that the pumping by state and federal authorities kills smelt, a fish that many experts say could be on the brink of extinction.

State officials and water users have previously estimated that pumping cutbacks could cut water supplies by at least a third, but it was unclear Tuesday exactly how much water might be lost under Wanger's proposal.

"We're still looking at very substantial reductions in our ability to export water out of the delta," Department of Water Resources deputy director Jerry Johns said after reviewing the order.

Officials with the State Water Contractors Association and the California Association of Water Agencies said Tuesday they needed more time to review the decision before they could assess its affect on the state's water supply.

Tuesday's 10-page preliminary order proposes a timetable and instructions on when and how the DWR and Bureau of Reclamation could pump water from the delta.

It will not become final until water users and environmental groups have a chance to comment on the proposed remedies, which is expected to happen at a hearing Friday.

In a year with an average amount of rain and snowfall, about 6 million acre feet of water are pumped from the delta, which supplies drinking water to Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pumps operated by the by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project send water to farmers in the agricultural valley south of the delta and the Department of Water Resources' State Water Project delivers water to urban and rural water users as far south as Los Angeles.

In a concession to the state, Wanger's latest ruling would restrict pumping only until June 20 an acknowledgment that California's agriculture industry relies upon delta water deliveries during the hot summer months to irrigate its crops.

Environmental groups had asked the judge to restrict water exports until delta smelt had been clear of the pumps for at least five days, which state officials said could limit pumping until July.

"The draft order in and of itself doesn't mean anything until it's finalized," said Craig Noble, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued the federal government over the delta pumping in 2005.

Wanger also instructed the state and federal governments to set up new programs to monitor the fish to accurately gauge their numbers in the estuary. Both agencies will have to buy new equipment such as mesh nets to capture the fish when they are small, something they do not do now.

Although measuring fish smaller than 20 millimeters poses technical difficulties, Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken said the agency could do the job.

State officials and water contractors had argued that pumping reductions would do little to help the 2- to 3-inch-long, silver-colored fish, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and is considered a measure of the environmental health of the delta. They said invasive species, toxic runoff, wastewater dumping and an antiquated plumbing system in the delta were harming the fish. #

Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 12/7/07
By Mike Geniella, staff writer

A lawsuit filed in federal court alleges toxic algae is being discharged into streams and reservoirs below four controversial dams on the upper Klamath River. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco this week by a coalition of fishing, environmental and tribal interests who are seeking removal of the hydroelectric power generating dams. The Klamath is the North Coast's largest river, stretching 200 miles across northeast California from its mouth north of Eureka to the Oregon border.

Fears of possible effects from the algae on salmon habitat and water users prompted state water quality officials to post warnings the length of the Klamath during the recent peak salmon fishing season, according to the lawsuit.

"This discharge has serious consequences for both the environment and human health," said Regina Chichizola, Klamath Riverkeeper.

But PacifiCorp, the Portland, Ore.-based utility that owns and operates the Klamath dams, this week dismissed the concerns, calling them "exaggerated and groundless."

Spokeswoman Jan Mitchell said Thursday that the "blue-green" algae found in the Klamath is harmless and often found in rivers, reservoirs and lakes across Northern California including Clear Lake.

"We are not discharging any toxic substance into the lower Klamath," said Mitchell.

The new legal challenge was filed two weeks after a federal agency's final environmental report recommended the dams remain in place. Instead of dam removal, staff for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is recommending renewal of PacifiCorp's power generating licenses but with new restrictions, including a disputed "truck-and-haul" system to get spawning salmon around the dams and upstream to traditional spawning grounds.

Fishing groups, environmentalists and tribal leaders are pressing for dam removal in order to enhance restoration of what was once the nation's third-biggest producer of salmon. The suit is the latest salvo in a hard-fought conflict pitting fish against 90 years of benefits from hydroelectric production that currently meets the needs of nearly 200,000 people.

In the lawsuit, the Riverkeeper organization contends that levels of toxic algae downstream on the Klamath have been found to be nearly 4,000 times what is considered safe for recreational contact by the World Health Organization.

"The lawsuit will demonstrate that the toxic algae is a solid waste created by Pacificorp's damming of the Klamath River, and that it is illegally discharging the waste in violation of (federal law)," according to Chichizola, the Klamath Riverkeeper.

Daniel Cooper of Lawyers for Clean Water, Inc. said its "high time for PacifiCorp to take responsibility for the destruction of one of America's greatest rivers."

But company spokeswoman Mitchell said the lawsuit was part of a calculated "public relations campaign."

"They have cited violation of federal laws that govern solid waste discharges, not common algae growth in rivers, and lakes," Mitchell said. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 12/9/07
By Tim Hearden, staff writer

Last week's rainfall provided a needed boost for farmers and ranchers in Tehama County, many of whom have been grappling with a loss of feed and drinking water for cattle.

Red Bluff received 0.85 inches of rain in the first four days of December, and Corning recorded 0.61 inches of rain in the same period.

Red Bluff's season total of 2.68 inches is well below the 5.03 inches that's normal by this time of year, and last week's return of wet weather was cheered by Tehama County Supervisor Charlie Willard, who expressed his appreciation during Tuesday's board meeting.

Willard's sentiment was echoed within the agriculture industry.

"For some people it may be too late, but for others it may have really helped them," said Josh Davy, the livestock and natural resources representative for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Red Bluff.

Ranchers could use a lot more rain to fill stock water ponds that are close to empty, Davy said. Trucking water in is expensive, so many ranchers have had to cut their stocking rates.

As ponds have dried up and grass has withered, north state ranchers have been left scrambling to find feed and water for their herds. Many had to pull cattle off summer and fall rangeland weeks or months earlier than normal.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns declared a drought emergency in Tehama County early this summer, making local ranchers eligible for low-interest loans, reimbursements for supplemental feed and water, and other programs approved by Congress.

Tehama was one of about 20 California counties that sought federal emergency disaster aid as forage yields dropped by as much as 70 percent.

Tehama County saw a 57 percent reduction in forage production through the spring, Davy said. Economic effects have been mounting since, as ranchers have incurred added costs for feed and water while needing to shrink their herds.

Early rain in October started germination of grasslands, but dry weeks followed, depleting the seed bank, Davy said. Crop growers have felt an effect, too, by needing to plant later.

While the county is eligible for aid, the federal government is concentrating funds on areas that declared disasters before Feb. 28, Davy said.

"Really all that we have for an option as of right now ... are a few tax breaks that help defer taxes on cattle that are forced to be sold due to the drought," Davy said. "The problem is, you don't know until the spring whether a drought is going to persist."

The best that growers can hope for at this point is more rain. Longer-range forecasts show the best shot for more valley rain and mountain snow is on Wednesday, then maybe a wetter pattern could develop by Dec. 17 or 18.

Contra Costa Times – 12/8/07
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

Customers of one of the state's largest water delivery systems secretly commissioned a study last year to estimate how much it would cost to build a highly controversial peripheral canal to deliver water around the Delta.

The $50,000 study, completed in August 2006, shows that contractors of the State Water Project were actively considering a new canal similar to the aqueduct voters killed in 1982.

The report, obtained under the California Public Records Act, estimates it would cost from $3.3 billion to $3.7 billion in 2006 dollars to build an unlined, 46-mile canal.

A separate study being done for the Department of Water Resources puts the cost at from $4 billion to $5 billion, but critics say the cost is likely to be much higher and that even if those numbers are accurate, they will be highly inflated before construction begins.

In many ways, the contractors' decision to get a cost estimate is unsurprising.

When the Delta's fish populations began crashing in 2005, and then Hurricane Katrina later that year demonstrated the vulnerability of levees in New Orleans, many water officials began looking anew at alternate ways to deliver water from north to south.

"We did it to get an idea whether the previous concepts of a peripheral canal were still affordable, given we would have to pay for it," said Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors, the nonprofit association that commissioned the study.

The association includes many of the state's largest water districts, such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Kern County Water Agency and some smaller Bay Area districts. MediaNews obtained the study by filing a public records act request with the state Department of Water Resources, which had a copy.

A canal could improve water quality delivered south and eliminate fish kills at south Delta pumps. It might protect much of the state's water supply from the threat of earthquakes and rising sea levels, supporters say.

But such a canal, depending on how it is operated, could deprive the Delta of fresh water, leaving it to fill up with polluted drainage from farms and cities and intruding seawater.

The study is a preliminary estimate and does not consider how the canal would be operated or how much water it would deliver.

"Our position has been all options should be on the table, not necessarily that we were advocating for it but we were talking about it -- as were other people," King Moon said.

Once the numbers from the study became available, King Moon said, contractors were able to commit to paying for a canal if one is built.

But some critics of the canal, including some environmentalists, said that the information should have been shared during planning meetings over the past year.

"It is no surprise and it is not necessarily wrong for them to look at that," said Jonas Minton, a water policy adviser to the Planning and Conservation League. "What is disappointing is that they have had this information under wraps and unavailable for over a year."

"Considering those are public agencies, to withhold that information for so long seems ill-advised," Minton said. "We've repeatedly asked for that information."

King Moon said she did not recall being asked for the information and that the report was kept quiet because contractors did not want to feed the perception that they were backing a new canal.

"We didn't want to send out the message that this was a fast-moving train," she said.

The peripheral canal was part of the plan for the State Water Project when it was approved in 1959, but after Gov. Jerry Brown approved it, the canal was defeated in a referendum in 1982.

The plan at the time was for a 22,000 cubic-foot per second unlined ditch -- large enough to carry the entire Sacramento River at times -- that would have trickled water into Delta channels while having the capacity to fully feed state and federal pumps in the south Delta, about 15,000 cubic feet per second.

The 2006 cost study considers a 15,000 cfs aqueduct that would be from 500 feet to more than 700 feet wide.

Because some of the land along the original alignment for the canal has been developed since the early 1980s -- and because other land is developable and therefore more valuable -- the study suggests an alternate route that would bring the canal into the interior of the Delta.

The cost to acquire land along a path that mostly follows the original route was estimated at $200,000 per acre for about half of the land and about $50,000 per acre for the other half. Property acquisition along the alternate route through agricultural areas would cost about $5,000 per acre.

For the past year, water agencies, government officials, environmentalists, farmers, anglers, Delta residents and others have been searching for a solution to the Delta's water supply and ecosystem problems.

One study done during the discussions concluded that a peripheral canal, by itself, would actually reduce the amount of water available to water contractors unless water quality standards in the Delta were softened.

As a result, water agencies and others have been coalescing around a strategy that would build an aqueduct around the Delta but use it in combination with the existing plumbing. The idea is that by doing so, water managers would be able to minimize harm to the Delta environment and maximize water supplies.

There is widespread support for studying that concept but disagreements are sure to emerge before decisions are made on important details, like how large an aqueduct should be and how it would be operated.

"There's a whole lot of strategizing going on, and I think a lot of the stakeholders are keeping their cards close to the vest," said Ann Hayden, a water policy analyst for Environmental Defense and a participant in those talks. #

'The Delta needs a steward,' Wolk said Thursday. 'That is someone or some body whose sole interest is the health of the Delta. And proposals have to go through this body and be voted up or down.'

This wouldn't be a remote bureaucracy imposing its will on the Delta, however. Wolk said it would have local roots.

The issue was raised at an Assembly committee hearing Wolk oversaw at Rio Vista City Hall on the recent Prospect Island fish kill. Former Rio Vista mayor Marci Coglianese and Wolk both called the saga 'a cautionary tale.'

'We had a massive fish kill,' Wolk said. 'There are no guarantees that won't happen in the future, and there will be other crises as well.'

She mentioned a Delta stewardship body as part of the solution and talked of working to make this happen.

Prospect Island is located in eastern Solano County, a few miles north of Rio Vista. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation bought the island in 1994 for a planned federal wildlife refuge, but that fell through in part because of local opposition.

The bureau has held onto the 1,200 acres for 13 years and wants to get rid of it. It recently repaired a damaged levee that had caused the island to flood. Once the breach had been closed, workers pumped out the water.

Thousands of fish trapped on the island died, creating a furor that prompted Thursday's hearing by the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife chaired by Wolk.

John Davis, acting director for the Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, said the agency never knew that many fish remained on Prospect Island when it started pumping.

'If we could go back in time, I can assure you we would have handed the situation differently,' Davis said.

Wolk and others questioned why the bureau didn't know thousands of fish were there.

Other agencies told the bureau that a fish salvage operation would be impractical because of trees and brush on the island, Davis said. Previous levee repair operations in 1998 went forward with little interest or issues, he said.

The bureau's 'guard was let down,' Davis said. Instead, he said, the bureau should have gone the extra mile.

Wolk asked Davis whether the bureau would compensate somehow for the thousands of fish killed.

'We haven't talked about any mitigation,' said Davis, who added the bureau, for now, wants to stay focused on the existing situation at Prospect Island.

Jim Cox is among the dozens of anglers who volunteered last weekend to remove thousands of surviving fish from the island and put them back in the sloughs. That meant walking knee-deep in mud, he said.

Cox criticized the state Department of Fish and Game for not providing more equipment to volunteers, such as vehicles that could traverse the muddy terrain. With another such vehicle, he said, volunteers could have doubled or tripled the number of fish saved.

'It seems the powers that be are looking for reasons to keep you from doing a good job, rather than helping you do a good job,' Cox said.

Coglianese praised the anglers for sounding the alarm about the fish kill.

'If the normal bureaucratic response had gone on, fish would have died and perhaps no one would have known about it,' she said. #

Stockton Record – 12/7/07
By Hank Shaw, staff writer

RIO VISTA - Federal and state bureaucrats have managed to destroy one of the Delta's richer nurseries for baby fish at a time when populations of both sport fish and threatened species are at an all-time low.

Officials with both the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Fish and Game publicly apologized Thursday for not doing enough to stop a massive fish kill two weeks ago on Prospect Island, just north of Rio Vista.

"We didn't go far enough," said John Davis of the Bureau of Reclamation. "We should have gone the extra mile, and we should have reached out to the community."

Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, convened a hearing of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee in Rio Vista to try to find out what went so wrong.

"What we saw was a failure of government agencies to protect the public trust," Wolk said.

After several hours of testimony, the story that emerged from the hearing is a tale of bureaucratic inertia and corner-cutting that resulted in the government inadvertently destroying the one thing struggling fish in the Delta need: a place to raise their young.

Prospect Island's tale began in January 2006, when a levee broke in a storm, flooding the narrow island. A decade before, the Bureau of Reclamation bought the 1,235-acre island for $2.8 million with the intention of making it part of a larger national wildlife refuge. Prospect Island's purpose in this plan was to be flooded so it could serve as habitat for fish and birds.

But in September 2002, the project needed $1.9 million in state money to remain viable, and CALFED chose not to provide the cash. So the bureau abandoned the plan and began looking to unload the island. After the 2006 storm, money for levee repairs was scarce, so the bureau did not begin its work until October of this year.

Before beginning, the bureau checked with state and federal wildlife agencies to make sure pumping the island dry would be OK. The state Fish and Game Department said it would be, so long as they did the work at low tide during a period when the threatened Delta smelt would likely be elsewhere in the estuary. The agencies relied heavily on information gained from an earlier levee break on the island in 1998.

This proved fatal. The repairs in 1998 occurred with little incident. But this time, fish of all stripes and shapes and sizes had flocked to the flooded Prospect Island during the 22 months it was under water.

One reason was because all the debris - trees, shrubs, etc - submerged by the floodwaters provided perfect structures for fish to raise their fry. This same structure made rescuing the fish tougher because volunteers couldn't easily drag nets through the water to save the animals.

Volunteers almost didn't get a chance to help at all.

Levee repair crews noticed fish dying on Nov. 15, Davis said. Four days later, bureau staff visited the site but did nothing. They returned the next day, but by this time the local fishing community had noticed the die-off and began clamoring for a rescue effort.

A full week passed before bureau employees began the rescue, rebuffing volunteers who gathered to help. Davis said they were worried about legal liability.

It took two weeks from the time the levee crew first noticed the crisis for the government to allow volunteers on site to help.

By then, the island, mostly drained, was a stinking graveyard littered with the bloated bodies of dead striped bass, bluegill, carp, shad and other fish. Most of the stripers - the most important sport fish in the Delta - were adults. A few topped 20 pounds.

With the aid of the volunteers, the bureau and state officials stabilized the situation, and thousands of fish are still swimming in a shallow spot on the island that remains flooded.

Fish and Game investigators are looking into possible criminal charges against the bureau; fines could potentially run into the millions of dollars if the agency charged the federal government with wanton waste of a game fish.

Anglers say they're not holding their breath about the bureau paying for its mistake. After all, this is the same Bureau of Reclamation that routinely chops up thousands of fish inside the giant pumps outside Tracy.

"The laws we have on the books have been ignored for years and years," said Gary Adams of the California Striped Bass Association. #

Mt. Shasta News – 12/5/07
By Paul Boerger, staff writer

Ecologist and researcher Renee Henery of UC Davis presented an overview of the Mt. Shasta region watershed last week, emphasizing the need for research on the headwaters area.

Henery's “mantra,” which he frequently repeated during the Nov. 28 talk at the Flying Lotus in Mount Shasta, was that to fully comprehend the headwaters complex relationship to the area and the use of the water elsewhere - such as the flows that go to more southern parts of California - researchers need to look at the broad interrelationships of the rivers, 14,162 foot Mt. Shasta and its glaciers, and habitats.

“This is a very special place with a wealth of natural resources,” Henery said. “These are natural resources essential to the State of California. Natural resources nobody knows much about. This is a system that is poorly understood.”

The presentation, entitled The Geo-Hydro-Ecology of the Mt. Shasta Headwaters Region, provided an overview of the McCloud, Shasta and Upper Sacramento river systems, including past and current impacts to the systems that have, for example, cut down dramatically on fish that migrate from the ocean up the rivers to spawn.

“All three rivers used to have migrating fish, now they are only on the Shasta River,” Henery said as an example.

He said impacts from fish hatcheries in the 1800s that took salmon eggs from spawning grounds and shipped them all over the world resulted in a “zero” run one year on the McCloud River.

As an example of how interrelated environments can be with each other, Henery said there is evidence that when fish come from the ocean, spawn and then die in inland rivers, their bodies leave behind important nutrients that are used by inland plants and animals.

He said dams, sedimentation from land use including grazing in riparian areas, water diversion and temperature are “key drivers of change” for the system. He also noted the potential of climate change impacts for all three systems including loss of snowpack and glacial ice.

“But we need a better understanding,” Henery said. “The effect of the Box Canyon dam on the ecology is little understood.”

Henery said the watershed is a “key water faucet for the state,” but would not speculate on how much water goes downstream to southern California.

In a separate interview, however, River Exchange executive director Sandra Spelliscy provided some perspective on the issue.

She said, “The Sacramento River contributes over 17 million acre-feet of water each year to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, approximately 62 percent of total inflows. The Bay Delta provides water to over two thirds of the state's population. The water coming out of Shasta Dam represents about a quarter of the overall flows that feed into the Sacramento River.”

Henery said there has been “huge progress” in habitat protection on the Shasta River, but again stated the need for a better understanding of the system as a whole.

“The research has been on specific issues, not the long term perspective. Its really only in its infancy,” Henery said in conclusion. “We need to feel our connection to the bigger system. Treat it like it's a part of you. A part of your wellbeing and livelihood.” #

California Farm Bureau – 12/5/07
By Kate Campbell, Assistant Editor

With the year-long effort to create a road map for the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta coming to a close, a blue-ribbon task force is putting the final touches on a plan that will guide public policy and operations for this vital resource now and in coming decades.

The plan for sustainable management of the delta was mandated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 and requires the Delta Vision Committee to submit its report to him by Jan. 1, 2008. The report and its recommendations will also go to the Legislature. A strategic plan is required by executive order by Oct. 31, 2008 and work on that phase will begin shortly.

The report has been developed with input from a broad cross section of citizens, scientists, subject matter experts and a variety of organizations, including the California Farm Bureau Federation, through a series of stakeholder meetings and extensive public comment opportunities.

"We congratulate the task force on completing this phase of the process for restoring and protecting the delta and we look forward to analyzing the final report," said CFBF President Doug Mosebar. "Farm Bureau has devoted considerable resources to the effort to ensure the voices of all California farmers and ranchers are heard as we move toward workable solutions for this vital resource.

"Of primary concern to us is the protection of California agriculture as study and implementation by the state proceeds," Mosebar said. "We think there are still important governance, technical and scientific questions to be addressed and look forward to being a part of that process."

Members of the Delta Vision Committee, which has overseen the plan development process, include the California agency secretaries for Resources; Business, Transportation and Housing; and Food and Agriculture; as well as the president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

The Delta Vision Plan was created by an appointed task force and currently includes 12 interrelated recommendations based on the premise that the delta is critically important to California, but it cannot be sustained as it is today. The two primary goals of the plan are assuring a reliable water supply for California and a healthy delta ecosystem.

Two critical areas in the plan are the recommendation for water conveyance from the delta and governance--a single entity with a statewide perspective, a stable long-term funding source and sufficient authority to protect and improve the resource.

The recommendations on conveyance include beginning immediate improvements to existing through-delta infrastructure and operations while, at the same time, studying "dual conveyance" options to reach optimal solutions for the troubled estuary.

Chris Scheuring, CFBF managing counsel for the Natural Resources and Environmental Division, represents Farm Bureau on the Delta Vision stakeholder committee.

"Farm Bureau wants a forward-looking solution to the problems facing the delta," Scheuring said. "It is a critical resource, not just for agriculture, but for the entire state and we must find meaningful ways to sustain not only a healthy ecosystem, but also improved water supply reliability and in-delta water quality."

More than half of all Californians rely on water conveyed through the delta for at least part of their water. Much of California's agriculture depends on water from the delta watershed, with more than one-sixth of all irrigated farmland in the nation depending on watersheds that flow through the delta.

But the Delta Vision report notes that increasingly tight water supplies flowing through the delta are far from the only problem. Invasive species have changed basic aquatic food production chains. Recent studies show 95 percent of the living organisms taken in delta bottom samples are non-native species.

Nearly 400,000 people live and farm in the delta. Lives and livelihoods are protected by 1,300 miles of crumbling levees, some built nearly a century ago with minimal engineering. Almost every year a levee fails from floods or other events.

Experts say earthquakes could liquefy soils, destroy miles of levees and threaten water supplies, roads, aqueducts, power lines and gas transmission pipelines that cross the delta. The risk of catastrophic earthquakes builds over time along with the seismic pressure until a cataclysmic release.

"The delta is a resource of statewide significance and our Farm Bureau members are a microcosm of California," Scheuring said.

"Just like everyone, we're grappling with the same issues affecting the delta and we're looking for political and technical solutions.

"It's abundantly clear to everyone that the delta is troubled and significant changes need to be made," he said.

At a news conference Friday to discuss the plan and its final recommendations, Delta Vision Task Force Chairman Phil Isenberg said the task force concluded that to achieve the plan's goals the state must acknowledge the "co-equal nature of protecting and improving the delta ecosystem and the water supply for Californians."

"People may say that these objectives are battling with each other, but in our view they both must be satisfied in order for each to be satisfied," Isenberg said. "This is not a case where one side can win."

Isenberg said the task force concluded that the problems in the delta cannot be solved unless related problems also are addressed, for example the notions of conservation and sustainable management, as well as ground and surface water storage.

These would be in addition to improved conveyance.

"The problems are attributable to many things, not just the exports that go to Southern California," he said. "The diversions in Northern and Central California also play a role in creating problems, as do in-delta uses. We're all floating in the same boat and we'd better fix it or we're all going to sink."

He said near-term actions, things that must be done immediately and without regard to anything related to the "raging political questions of storage and export facilities," range from buying land in the delta to increase flood plain areas; prohibiting growth in flood-prone areas; and levee improvements, including setting performance standards for different kinds of structures.

"Our recommendation on conveyance is that it can't be viewed in isolation," Isenberg said. "Whatever the decision about conveyance--in the delta, around the delta, it doesn't matter--first we must invest in protecting and improving the existing conveyance facility.

"If you do not, then you're exposing the existing facility, which no one defends as adequate, to constant threat while you work toward a new facility, which everyone predicts will be 15 years before ground is broken," Isenberg stressed. "We need to protect what we have now, both for water supply and flood protection.

"There are more than 200 governmental agencies that 'futz' around in the delta today," he said. "These agencies all have some kind of authority. It's classic American government: Everybody's involved and nobody's in charge.

"We're realistic, but we have recommended on governance that an authority that has as its goals protection of the ecosystem and the water supply is in a better position to evaluate things than an agency with a single purpose," Isenberg said. "We think this would lead to a more holistic view of decisions."

CFBF Second Vice President Kenny Watkins, who represents Farm Bureau on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan Steering Committee, said that, as the state and stakeholders move from the vision for the delta to tactical changes and improvements, there is much to be decided.

"But whatever happens, our members have to be assured that Farm Bureau will continue to be part of the process and at the table advocating for the best possible solutions for all of California agriculture," Watkins said. "These are complex issues facing the delta and we're going to have to collaborate with diverse interests to come up with solutions."

He said Farm Bureau has been highly engaged on this issue, for example participating in the Delta Vision process and water bond initiative discussions, as well as arranging for the CFBF board of directors to tour the delta and educating members on these complex delta issues.

"Hard decisions are going to have to be made in the future," Watkins said. "The Delta Vision task force report won't result in concrete being poured tomorrow, but it helps to build consensus. Remember, however, there are federal jurisdictions that come into play with this. All these processes are going to have to come together and go down the road at the same time to make the pieces work.

"I would not have believed a year ago that we could have accomplished this level of dialog and consensus," Watkins said. "The delta is a difficult area of policy, but there are encouraging signs that we're moving forward." #

Sacramento Bee – 12/5/07
By Matt Weiser, staff writer

State water quality officials on Tuesday approved spending $600,000 to start a refuge population of Delta smelt, in case the fish goes extinct in the wild.

The program will be created at the University of California, Davis, Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory, near the State Water Project Delta export pumps in Byron.

The lab has bred smelt for scientific purposes for 15 years, but this is its first effort to create a captive breeding program as a safeguard against extinction.

The funding comes from a water pollution cleanup account managed by the state Water Resources Control Board, which approved the expenditure Tuesday at its meeting in Sacramento. The state Department of Water Resources will contribute another $640,000 toward the effort.

Biologists at the lab will use a population of wild smelt captured from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in fall 2006.

These fish may represent the last opportunity to create a refuge population, because a steep decline in smelt numbers forced wildlife officials to ban further collections.

The finger-length smelt is a threatened species under state and federal law. It may be near extinction after four years of still-unexplained population declines. #

Editorial: A very fishy situation; Faulty federal plans contribute to really big mess in the San Joaquin Delta
Stockton Record – 11/30/07

A small San Joaquin Delta island north of Rio Vista has become a massive killing zone for thousands of forgotten fish trapped in shallow, receding water during recent levee repairs.

A private company contracted by the federal Bureau of Reclamation drained 1,253-acre Prospect Island in Solano County as part of a project to close two levee breaks caused by January 2006 storms.

Someone forgot to tell striped bass, sturgeon, carp, catfish, bluegill, king salmon, steelhead and other fish species on the flooded island.

For a week, fish have been dying - some from lack of oxygen (only 8 inches of water over a 260-acre site remains) and others in pumps discharging water from the island.

Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Fish and Game workers reacted belatedly - not to rescue what aquatic life remained, but to remove the rotting fish stranded.

Meanwhile, the federal repair project has been suspended.

Not only did bureau officials fail to allow for so many fish dying. There also is no provision for relocating fish, dead or alive.

By this weekend, officials hope to pump fresh oxygen into the shrinking pool to rescue some species.

"I guarantee, when they get done, they won't save one fish," said Bob McDaris, owner of Cliff's Marina.

State and federal officials have argued for years about the cost of - and responsibility for - repairing long-neglected Delta levees.

The Prospect Island disaster demonstrates that, even with a small project, those responsible for implementing public policy aren't properly prepared to do so.

Bureau of Reclamation officials should learn from this mess that there are no substitutes for fully planning such projects while providing appropriate monitoring and oversight. #

Fresno Bee – 11/28/07
By Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Fish and Wildlife Service could have a hard time fulfilling its renewed vow to protect the California red-legged frog and other species.

Lacking money and hobbled by lawsuits, agency officials don't know when they can complete new reviews of seven controversial endangered species decisions. The agency revealed this week it must review the red-legged frog and six other species because undue political interference tainted past decisions.

"These are a top priority, but we are already working with a limited staff and limited resources, and facing a number of court-ordered deadlines," Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Valerie Fellows said Wednesday.

The resulting delays further stimulate frustration that's already choking the Endangered Species Act like a weed.

"We all would like some resolution to this," Calaveras County Supervisor Merita Galloway said Wednesday. "Everybody is in abeyance until something definitive is decided."

In an extraordinary if not unprecedented move, the Fish and Wildlife Service will review the endangered species decisions it now says "may have been inappropriately influenced" by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie A. MacDonald. A civil engineer skeptical about the Endangered Species Act, MacDonald aggressively rewrote key documents and sought to curtail the size of protected areas.

The red-legged frog's critical habitat will be reviewed "as funding is made available," the Fish and Wildlife Service's acting director advised the House Natural Resources Committee. Guided by MacDonald, the agency last year reduced the frog's critical habitat to 450,288 acres from the 4.1 million acres originally proposed.

Critical habitat is the land considered essential for survival and recovery of a species. It does not directly impose new regulations on private property, but federal agencies must take the species into account when issuing permits or making other decisions.

Considerable dispute remains over the real-world impact of critical habitat designation. Critics of the current environmental law, including Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, suggest critical habitat effectively lowers property values. Others consider it a valuable tool.

Most agree perpetual ambiguity is a problem. Federal officials, for instance, began considering protection for the California red-legged frog in February 1994.

They have been buffeted by competing interests from the outset.

"We'd like more direction, on all sides; whether you're a rancher, or you love the frogs, or just love jumping the frogs," Galloway said.

Although the original home to Mark Twain's celebrated jumping frog, Calaveras County was not among the 20 California counties with land included in the red-legged frog's final critical habitat designated last year.

The designated land includes 12,176 acres in southwestern Merced County, west of San Luis Reservoir.

This could all change in the new review, as a new frog population has since been found in the Valley Springs area of western Calaveras County.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, moreover, may eventually be forced by a court to move faster.

Last year, court orders or lawsuit settlements compelled the Fish and Wildlife Service to complete actions on 110 different protected species. More court action is on the way.

The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity is in the midst of filing multiple federal lawsuits designed to force new protections for 55 species, including nearly two dozen in California.

The series of lawsuits due to be filed by the end of the year will cover decisions for animals ranging from the red-legged frog to the California tiger salamander to a fish known as the Sacramento splittail. #

Grass Valley Union – 11/29/07
By Laura Brown, staff writer

Scientists are scratching their heads this year as fish return to the Yuba River and Central Valley in mysterious ways.

"This is an interesting year all around for salmon," said James Navicky environmental scientist for California Department of Fish and Game.

This year, fall run Chinook salmon returned later, and in lower numbers above Daguerre Point Dam on the Lower Yuba River.

But fishermen have noticed a new phenomenon - a large number of salmon spawning below the dam and electronic surveying equipment.

"These fish have decided there's no need to go up river," said Navicky. Less than 400 salmon have been tracked electronically as they passed the survey site at the dam, Navicky said. That's similar to November numbers in 2004, but down from last year which soared at 3,457.

"You can see the kind of variability," Navicky said.

Scientists won't have a final tally of fall spawners above and below the dam until the end of the year when they finish collecting data from carcass surveys, Navicky said.

While fall counts of salmon are down throughout the Central Valley, healthy comebacks of steelhead, spring run Chinook and late fall run Chinook are surprising scientists.

Last year, only 150 steelhead returned up river while more than 500 of the lively fish came back this year.

The overlooked late fall run Chinook - the largest growing king salmon in the Central Valley at over 3 feet long and weighing more than 20 pounds - returned in large numbers in February.

"The late fall run have rebounded ecstatically. It's really exciting to see them return in numbers that they did," said Navicky.

In February, 113 fish returned, compared to 22 in 2006, 5 in 2005 and 16 in 2004.

The spring run Chinook, considered threatened by extinction in California, also showed up vigorously.

In May, 153 fish returned, compared to 2 in 2006, 113 in 2005 and 53 in 2004.

This year, several months separated the returns of spring and fall salmon, mimicking distinctive independent runs closer to historical ones, Navicky said.

"From a science perspective, that fits what we want to see," Navicky said.

The Sacramento pike minnow, which evolved with, and follows the same habitat as salmon, has also come back in higher numbers this year. As of early November, 361 fish were counted, compared to 141 in 2006, 69 in 2005 and 339 in 2004.

Scientists say huge swings in fish populations from year to year are not uncommon.

This year has been one of the driest in recent memory, and there is talk of La Nina - excessive warm waters coming up the California coast, that could postpone the three year old salmon from leaving the ocean and returning to their birth place until next year.

"Our rivers are low throughout the Central Valley, that could have something to do with it," Navicky said.

The change in fish migration patterns means fly fishermen have to rethink their tactics for catching steelhead and trout - fish that typically follow the salmon run and feed on salmon eggs.

"We have to fish on them in different ways," said Tony Dumont, owner of Nevada City Anglers.

Instead of using egg patterns - flies that look like salmon roe - anglers are using nymph patterns to mock the larval stages of insects.

"It's a little tougher," Dumont said.

WASHINGTON – A National Research Council report Wednesday supported more water being released down the Klamath River to protect salmon runs, siding with authors of a 2006 study that critics said the Bush administration tried to suppress.

Environmentalists hailed the report as "a major victory."

"The science that fish need water is becoming clearer than some people believe," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

But the research council report also found fault with two recent Klamath River scientific studies, including the one from 2006, saying they examine in detail portions of the complex river system but miss the complete picture of why it's in such crisis.

"Science is being done in bits and pieces," said University of South Carolina geography professor William L. Graf, chairman of the 13-member review committee.

The Klamath, once the third most productive salmon river on the West Coast, in recent dry years has been a battleground over water and the Endangered Species Act, pitting farmers relying on irrigation in the upper basin in Southern Oregon against salmon fishermen enduring economic hardship because of disastrous runs.

In 2001, water to irrigators was cut to provide more for fish. The next year, with irrigation supplies restored, more than 30,000 adult salmon died after being infected by pathogens thriving in the warm, shallow lower river.

Since those divisive days, the two competing reports have been released – one by the federal Bureau of Reclamation in 2005 projecting what river flows might look like if upper basin irrigation wasn't a factor, and another in 2006 sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs looking at how much water should flow down the river to keep fish healthy.

The council report found fault with both studies but felt that the conclusions of the Indian Affairs-funded study conducted by Thomas Hardy of Utah State University should be adopted anyway.

"The recommended flow regimes offer improvements over existing monthly flows," the report said.

The flows proposed by Hardy, depending on precipitation levels and time of year, could amount to as much as twice the volume of water now being released from Iron Gate Dam, the lowest of the Klamath dams.

The new report by the research council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, is not likely to result in any immediate changes by the Bureau of Reclamation, which tried to downplay its significance. "There's nothing in here that provides compelling reasons to change our operations," said bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken in Sacramento.

The report's release comes as negotiations between fishermen, irrigators, environmentalists, Indian tribes and others to strike a deal on competing Klamath water demands are in their final stages. Separate talks also are occurring with Portland-based PacifCorp, owner of the hydroelectric dams, on knocking them down and reconnecting the river.

Spain said the research council's findings were certain to be factors in the ongoing negotiations and could influence biologists' findings this spring as the 2008 irrigation season opens.

The 172-page report raises some of the same concerns of critics of the settlement talks – that important tributaries of the Klamath, particularly the Scott and Shasta rivers in Northern California where irrigation withdrawals are heavy, are being ignored.

Graf said his research team was told that the tributaries were left out of government studies for "political reasons," adding, "It was not a decision a researcher interested in science would make."

But with three branches of the Interior Department handling competing interests on the Klamath – irrigation by Reclamation, Indian fishing by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and endangered species by the Fish and Wildlife Service – Graf said his team believes that what is needed is independent and comprehensive research free from politics.

According to Spain and others, the Hardy study itself nearly fell victim to politics and Reclamation's efforts to "kill it." Hardy didn't go that far but described a convoluted process that resulted in several years of delay.

Begun in 1998, Hardy released a draft in 2002 but was not permitted to finish it. He said in a telephone interview that he was told by Reclamation that it had provided data to him that it did not have permission to use. The agency then held up giving him the money to develop replacement data.

A dozen California House members sent a letter to Gale Norton, then the Interior secretary, in 2003 demanding the release of the money and completion of the report to avoid another "catastrophic fish kill."

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who led the effort to complete the Hardy report, cheered the NRC's support of it Wednesday. "This report is further confirmation that increased water flows are a crucial element to the restoration of threatened salmon," Thompson said in a statement. #

SACRAMENTO—State and federal officials on Monday said they were investigating the death of thousands of game fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta after a federal agency drained the water around a protected island during a levee repair.

Masses of fish could be seen floating in shallow water on Prospect Island, a 1,253-acre plot next to Sacramento's Deep Water Ship Channel that is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The bureau on Monday halted drainage of the remaining water behind the levee and started removing the fish carcasses, spokesman Jeff McCracken said. He said the agency would begin adding oxygen to the water in hopes of saving some of the remaining fish.

"When we realized how many fish were there, we quit pumping," he said. "By then, we certainly, apparently, had passed the point of causing some fish loss."

The bureau had no estimate on the number of fish killed. Bob McDarif, owner of Cliff's Marina near the delta town of Freeport, estimated the number in the tens of thousands.

"It's like a disaster out there," he said.

The California Department of Fish and Game launched its own investigation Monday, focusing on how and why the fish died.

Although the fish deaths were on federal land, the striped bass, salmon, carp, bluegill and other game fish are considered public trust assets for the state. The results will be sent to state Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The levee under repair is around Prospect Island, which sits along the shipping channel about 20 miles southwest of Sacramento. The channel is the same stretch of water that served as a conduit for a pair of humpback whales that made an unlikely journey inland from San Francisco Bay last spring.

In a project that began in early October, the Bureau of Reclamation plugged two breaks in the 15-foot-high levee and repaired about 600 additional feet. The breaches occurred in January 2006.

Pumping the remaining water from behind the levee was the final step.

McCracken said the bureau received clearance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with the repairs. Fisheries officials determined heavy vegetation would make it too hard to salvage the fish, but the contractor was advised to start pumping during the lowest tide of the month, which he did, McCracken said.

"To put nets or do things, they told us it wasn't plausible," he said. "We did instruct the contractor ... to move as many fish out of the way as possible."

The Fish and Wildlife Service studied the potential effects of the drainage project on the delta smelt, which is protected under the California Endangered Species Act. That study showed the levee repair was likely to have no effect on the fish.

State Fish and Game officials said they were notified about the die-off last Wednesday and were not involved in the levee project.

"We wish they would've consulted with us beforehand," department spokesman Steve Martarano said. "We could have maybe given them some ideas on things to do."

That could have included using sport fishing groups to help reduce the fish population before the water was drained or immediately rescue some fish. It also could have meant employing special water pumps that are less harmful to fish, he said.

McDarif, the marina operator, was first to sound the alarm about the stranded fish and said he has been frustrated by the slow response.

He recruited more than 100 volunteers to try to move the dying fish to the river, but he said his efforts were thwarted by federal officials.

"If I saw some fish dying now, I would go and take them out and move them to the river," he said. "The thing is, there's all these politics, and there's no time for politics."

The Bureau of Reclamation bought the island about 12 years ago as part of a planned Army Corps of Engineers program to restore fisheries and wildlife in the delta. Funding stalled, however, and the area was never developed.

The bureau had planned to sell the property this winter. #

Associated Press – 11/16/07

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Federal licensing authorities Friday recommended keeping PacifiCorp's four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, siding with the utility and ignoring calls from fisheries agencies to build fish ladders.

The final environmental impact statement from the staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chose trapping and hauling fish around the dams rather than building expensive fish ladders and reducing power production to help salmon.

The statement described that as the best economic choice while allowing for evaluation of restoring fish to the upper Klamath Basin for the first time in a century.

FERC spokeswoman Celeste Miller acknowledged that fish ladders and other improvements required by NOAA Fisheries and other federal agencies are "generally" included in the final license, leading salmon advocates to dismiss the latest evaluation as "legally infeasible."

Meanwhile, Indian tribes hoping to restore salmon runs that once were crucial to their cultures, Klamath Basin farmers who depend on cheap power and water for irrigation, and California commercial salmon fishermen suffering dramatic cutbacks in fishing seasons from declining Klamath River salmon runs, met in Redding, Calif. They are seeking a deal to remove the dams with state and federal help.

Participants said they were near an agreement that will be taken to PacifiCorp. The utility has said it would be willing to remove the dams if it doesn't hurt its customers. It also is willing to spend $300 million on fish ladders and other required improvements to keep the dams that produce power without greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Based in Portland, PacifiCorp is owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., based in Des Moines, Iowa, and controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The utility serves 1.6 million customers in six western states.

It is seeking a new license to operate the four dams straddling the Oregon-California border on the Klamath River for the next 30 to 50 years. The dams produce enough power for 70,000 households.

When removing all four dams was evaluated against building the fish ladders and other measures required by NOAA Fisheries and other federal agencies, removing the dams came out $7 million a year cheaper -- a net power production loss of $13.2 million a year compared to $20.2 million.

Keeping the dams and trapping and hauling fish, along with conditions recommended by FERC, would produce $2 million a year in net power benefits. PacifiCorp's proposal for operating the dams, which carries the least improvements for fish, would produce net annual power benefits of $17 million.

Salmon advocates noted that removing all four dams produces the best improvements in water quality and salmon restoration, reducing obstacles that block 300 miles of spawning streams, draining reservoirs that breed toxic algae that pollute the Klamath River and eliminating conditions that promote fish diseases.

"The bottom line is they're saying removal is the best and cheapest alternative," said Glen Spain of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, a California commercial salmon fishermen's group. The FERC recommendation "is not legally feasible" without taking into account the fish ladders.

Craig Tucker, Klamath campaign director for the Karuk Tribe, added: "FERC staff is pandering to PacifiCorp's bottom line, where it is cheaper for everybody and avoids an environmental catastrophe and the destruction of tribal cultures to simply remove the dams."

"It's a schizophrenic document," said Jim McCarthy of Oregon Wild, a Portland conservation group. "It's sort of FERC sticking its head in the sand hoping somehow these mandatory conditions disappear. They will not."

PacifiCorp spokeswoman Jan Mitchell said the company had not yet seen the document. #

A study released by federal regulators Friday confirms that removing four dams on the Klamath River would be far cheaper than fitting them with fish ladders, boosting hopes among Indian tribes, fishermen and environmentalists that the dams are doomed.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released the final environmental impact study as part of its process to relicense the dams near the Oregon border, owned by Portland-based PacifiCorp. The report does not recommend dam removal, but its findings may make that more likely.

The Klamath River was once home to the third-largest salmon run on the Pacific Coast, after the ones on the Columbia and Sacramento. But dam construction, water diversions and the poor water quality that followed have played a role in endangering those runs.

The dams, built between 1917 and 1962, are relatively small power producers, serving about 70,000 customers. The dams do not yield water supplies or provide significant flood control.

Only one has any sort of fish ladder – the uppermost dam, which offers no help to salmon returning from the ocean.

Federal law requires dams to adopt adequate fish passage when relicensed. But that would be an expensive proposition for the Klamath dams; because the Klamath's canyons are narrow and confined, constructing fish ladders along the river is a complex undertaking.

When removing all four dams was evaluated against building the fish ladders and other measures required by NOAA Fisheries and other federal agencies, removing the dams came out $7 million a year cheaper – a net power production loss of $13.2 million a year compared with $20.2 million.

PacifiCorp would have to get approval to pass the greater cost of fish ladders along to ratepayers. Craig Tucker, Klamath campaign coordinator for the Karuk Tribe, said that may be a tough sell with utilities regulators.

"We're arguing, based on the fact that it's cheaper to remove the dams, they should not be able to recover the cost of dam relicensing from ratepayers," said Tucker.

Rather than build fish ladders, PacifiCorp has asked FERC to approve a "trap and haul" program, in which migrating salmon would be collected and trucked around the dams.

This proposal is estimated to have an economic benefit for ratepayers. It is also the approach favored by FERC staff, with some modifications.

"Our main concern is that the outcome must be good for our customers, good for the environment and good for the region," said PacifiCorp spokeswoman Jan Mitchell.

However, federal law requires commissioners to impose fish passage as prescribed by federal wildlife agencies. Those agencies are on record in 2006 demanding fish ladders.

The FERC report acknowledges that dam removal is the only option that provides a full slate of environmental benefits, including colder, cleaner water and better spawning habitat.

The California Energy Commission raised the stakes on Oct. 29 with a letter to public utilities commissions in California, Oregon and Washington, the three primary markets served by PacifiCorp. The commission's Executive Director B.B. Blevins urged utility officials to support cost recovery for PacifiCorp only for dam removal, not for fish ladders. #

Eureka Times Standard – 11/16/07
By John Driscoll, staff writer

Environmental groups have sued over forestry rules passed earlier this year by the California Board of Forestry, claiming they imperil protected coho salmon and were approved in violation of state laws.

The rules allow forest landowners easier approval for logging that could harm coho, and set standards for road management on timberlands. The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and the Sierra Club allege in a suit in San Francisco Superior Court Thursday that the board and the Department of Forestry didn't follow the state Forest Practices Act, the Environmental Quality Act and administrative and procedural laws.

The groups claim that the coho regulations run counter to the board's duty to protect fish and wildlife, and that the roads plan undermines existing standards and was authorized without adequate review. EPIC alleges that the board abandoned an initial proposal to add protections to the forest rules.

”However, apparently at the direction of the governor's office, that habitat protection approach was abandoned and replaced by the coho take rules at issue in this case,” the suit reads, “rules which find the board facilitating the killing of coho, rather than its protection.”

The Department of Fish and Game has yet to complete its related rule-making process.

The dispute over the rules passed in July had wide-ranging effects that left salmon restoration projects teetering in uncertainty.

Some $11.5 million in bond money was pulled from the budget in July -- apparently over concerns raised about spending money on restoration while the board passed rules environmentalists believed would harm fish. That money would have been used to match federal money for salmon projects on the North Coast.

If the bill isn't heard as part of a special water bond session soon, it will likely have to be taken up as an urgency measure in January, and the amount of funding is likely to be reduced either way.

If the suit prevails in overturning the new rules, it's unclear the exact effects on landowners.

”We're uncertain at this time if it would have any effect on our lands,” Jackie Miller of Green Diamond Resource Co.

Most of that company's lands are covered under a habitat conservation plan with its own provisions for coho protection.

California Forestry Association President Dave Bischel said he has no reason to believe the board of forestry violated any procedure, and questioned the logic behind the suit.

”Again, it seems to me that they're trying to split procedural hairs,” Bischel said.

EPIC and the Sierra Club say the board would continue to adopt rules outside of proper procedures without the legal action, and that they have no other administrative remedy.

They are asking the court to overturn the rules and make judicial determinations that the board and the department violated the law. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 11/10/07

Our view: A long tradition of public use at Kilarc should carry weight as decision-makers move forward.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials came to Shasta County this week to hear and respond to residents' comments about plans to dismantle of the Kilarc hydroelectric project near Whitmore.

For those who would like to see the family-friendly fishing hole at the Kilarc Forebay preserved, the response is not encouraging.

PG&E's decision to drop its license for Kilarc is irreversible, the company says. Any decision to transfer the dam, canal and reservoir to another operator is in the hands of the federal regulators. And the company won't keep Kilarc as a fishing pond after it removes the hydroelectric works.

You can't blame the company for that attitude. Despite the tradition of encouraging fishing, camping and picnicking around its reservoirs, the company is Pacific Gas & Electric, not Pacific Parks & Rec.

Still, a century of public use should carry weight as the power company and the decision-makers in Washington move forward.

Kilarc is being scrapped to end an outdated water diversion that harms wild fisheries. That's a fine goal, but not at the expense of local recreation.

One more thing: Whatever happens to the hydroelectric project, the vintage stone powerhouse needs to stay.

PG&E's project manager, Steve Nevares, said Thursday that the company is willing to see it preserved but would donate it only to a group that could guarantee the building's care for the long haul. Of course, there's nothing to stop PG&E from maintaining it.

Dismantling an inefficient, old hydro system might be a sound business decision. Abandoning the treasured historic powerhouse to its fate would be a crime. #

Stockton Record – 11/9/07

Members of the United States Congress have handed President Bush the first veto override of his administration.

Consequently, a $23 billion water bill that includes $1.3 billion for 54 projects in California will survive.

If the appropriations bill is fully funded, a portion of the California money - $106 million - would be spent to strengthen vulnerable earthen levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Those levee repairs are desperately needed, protecting as they do the drinking and agricultural water for about 22 million Californians as well as the fragile Delta ecosystem.

A collapse of even two of the hundreds of levees protecting the region could create a major disaster for California, which has the 10th-largest economy in the world.

The president, in vetoing the initial legislation, complained about how much it would cost.

"This bill lacks fiscal discipline," Bush said. That's puzzling. Bush hadn't vetoed a single appropriations bill until May, when he rejected legislation that included timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq.

During his six years and nine months in office, federal deficits have ballooned to record levels fueled by hundreds of billions in spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush has had plenty of opportunities to veto spending he considered excessive. Not once during the first six years of his presidency - when Republicans controlled Congress - did he do so.

He's vetoed only five bills. Compare that with the 37 vetoes of the Clinton administration or the 44 during the administration of the president's father, George H.W. Bush, or the 78 during the Ronald Reagan years. Until now, he's the first president since Lyndon Johnson not to have at least one veto rejected by Congress.

Besides, water projects aren't where the real money is being spent. Everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, understands that.

Obviously, $23 billion is a huge sum. The country's water infrastructure needs are just as huge.

In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, avoiding a catastrophe by repairing and maintaining the levee system will represent pennies on the dollar next to what it would cost if - not when - a major disaster strikes.

This was a proper and prudent override of a presidential veto. #

Associated Press – 11/9/07
By Charles Babington, staff writer

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush suffered the first veto override of his seven-year-old presidency Thursday as the Senate enacted a $23 billion water resources bill despite his protest that it was filled with unnecessary projects.

The 79-14 vote included 34 Republicans who defied the president. Enactment was a foregone conclusion, but it still marked a milestone for a president who spent his first six years with a much friendlier Congress controlled by his Republican Party.

Now he confronts a more hostile, Democratic-controlled legislature, and Thursday's vote showed that most of the Republicans will defy him on spending matters dear to their political careers.

Bush's spokeswoman portrayed the issue as a divide between a budget-conscious president and a big-spending Congress.

"The president is standing up for the taxpayers," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

"No one is surprised that this veto is overridden. We understand that members of Congress are going to support the projects in their districts. Budgeting is about making choices and defining priorities - it doesn't mean you can have everything. This bill doesn't make the difficult choices; it says we can fund every idea out there. That's not a responsible way to budget."

The bill funds hundreds of Army Corps of Engineers projects, such as dams, sewage plants and beach restoration, that are important to local communities and their representatives.

It also includes money for the hurricane-hit Gulf Coast and for Florida Everglades restoration efforts.

The House voted 361-54 to override the veto Tuesday. Both votes easily exceeded the two-thirds majority needed in each chamber to negate a presidential veto.

The last such veto override happened when Congress dealt President Clinton the second of his two overrides in February 1998.

Bush vetoed no bills during his first five years in office. He has since vetoed a stem cell research bill twice, an Iraq spending bill that set guidelines for troop withdrawals, and a children's health insurance bill. House and Senate Republicans managed to sustain those vetoes.

But they broke ranks on the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, which Bush vetoed on Nov. 2, calling it too expensive. Thirty-four Republicans voted with the 43 Democrats and two independents to override the veto. Two Democrats, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voted with 12 Republicans to sustain Bush's veto.

His supporters have noted that the Army Corps has a backlog of $58 billion worth of projects and an annual budget of about $2 billion to address them.

The bill, the first water system restoration and flood control authorization passed by Congress since 2000, would cost $11.2 billion over the next four years, and $12 billion in the 10 years after that, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Flood protection projects along the Gulf Coast, including 100-year levee protection in New Orleans, would cost about $7 billion if fully funded. The bill approves projects but does not fund them.

Some of Bush's most ardent allies argued for the override. "This bill is enormously important, and it has been a long time coming," said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., whose state was hammered by Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

The bill "is one of the few areas where we actually do something constructive," said Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss. What Bush sees as pork barrel items, Lott said, "are good, deserved, justified projects."

"Almost every president opposes this type of bill," he said.

Democrats are sure to remind such Republicans of their rejection of Bush's budgetary concerns when debate turns to several spending bills he also vows to veto.

Democrats, frustrated by their inability to force Bush's hand on Iraq and other matters, clearly enjoyed their victory Thursday.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the message to the White House was, "you can't keep rolling over us like this." #

Ventura County Star – 11/8/07
By John Krist, columnist

Earthmovers dumped the last load of dirt on Oroville Dam in 1967, completing the backbone of the State Water Project.

That same year, the fish hatchery about five miles downstream welcomed its first bewildered run of salmon.

Like their ancestors, the fish sought the upper reaches of the Feather River watershed. But instead of thrashing upstream into ever smaller creeks and rivulets to seek a mate, members of the spawning class of 1967 found themselves leaping up an aquatic staircase to an indoor holding tank. There, after being stupefied with carbon dioxide, they were killed. Hatchery workers stripped the eggs from females and squeezed milt from the males, mixed it all in a bucket and transferred the fertilized eggs to plastic trays.

Forty years later, this process continues at Oroville, as it does at hundreds of other sites throughout the West. Artificial reproduction may lack the dignity, mystery and drama of its natural analog, but it is efficient: Hatcheries, constructed mainly to offset the fish-killing propensity of modern dams, release a collective 5 billion juvenile Pacific salmon and steelhead annually.

The one at Oroville, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, produces millions of young salmon and steelhead each year from as few as 11,000 adults.

The hatchery system is based on the utilitarian premise that a fish is a fish: As long as there are enough to be caught for fun or profit, the process and the habitat that produced them are irrelevant.

New research, however, confirms what critics of the hatchery system have long argued: The process matters. Hatchery fish are not the same as wild fish, and the difference is not solely spiritual or aesthetic. Breeding fish in captivity, besides eliminating their awe-inspiring reproductive journey, reduces their fitness to survive in the wild.

The limitations of fish hatcheries, particularly those constructed as compensation for giant dams built in the middle decades of the 20th century, have been apparent for many years. Despite construction of a vast network of these fish factories — there are about 100 hatcheries in the Columbia River basin alone — every major western watershed has seen its salmonid populations dwindle, some to the point of extinction.

Those fighting to restore imperiled salmon and steelhead populations have long argued that hatchery fish are more prone to disease and less fit to survive than wild fish. In their view, hatcheries make things worse, not better, diluting the gene pool and rendering the species increasingly dependent on artificial breeding to maintain the fiction of a viable population.

Those who benefit from the water, energy and transportation services provided by dams argue that hatchery fish are

indistinguishable from wild fish and should be counted when regulators try to determine whether a species is imperiled.

Federal courts have ruled both ways, one judge declaring that hatchery fish should be counted, another one saying they should not.

Last month, however, the journal Science published a study by researchers at Oregon State University that comes down squarely on the side of those who believe captive-reared fish are fundamentally different from their wild cousins.

The research, involving steelhead on Oregon's Hood River, found that fish reared in a hatchery are nearly 40 percent less likely to produce offspring than wild fish. Hatchery-born fish whose parents also were reared in a hatchery had only half the reproductive success of wild fish. The study results were published Oct. 5.

The conclusions should not surprise anyone familiar with the concept of natural selection. The spawning journey of wild salmon and steelhead — an arduous, dangerous trip past predators, waterfalls and other obstacles — is not merely poetic in its rigor. It is a ruthlessly effective test of ecological fitness. Those that survive it produce offspring that must endure their own peril-filled journey back downstream. Only the strongest and wariest survive both ends of this migratory journey to pass along their DNA.

Hatchery fish, on the other hand, pay no price for being weak and slow-witted; food pellets fall from the sky on the robust and the wimpy alike. If held in captivity and allowed to breed, they are all equally likely to produce offspring, regardless of how well adapted they might be to life in the outside world.

Dumping the offspring of such fish into the hostile natural environment is like tossing handfuls of sardines into the seal tank at the zoo. It is no wonder that of the billions of hatchery fish released into western rivers each year, only a relative handful ever return and attempt to spawn. #

Long Beach Press Telegram – 11/7/07
By Harrison Sheppard, Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - While California voters approved $9.5 billion in bonds to improve the state's water infrastructure last year, little of that money has been allocated despite a lengthy drought and growing strains on the system.

Political infighting and bureaucratic red tape have slowed spending of the 2006 water bonds, even as state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger consider asking voters for billions of dollars in additional water bonds on next year's ballot.

Only about 14 percent of the Proposition 1E water bond approved by voters last year - and about one-third of the Proposition 84 water bond - have been committed to specific projects.

And within Proposition 84, only about 9 percent of the funds dedicated specifically to water quality and supply projects - as opposed to flood control - have been committed.

"A lot of (Southern California water agencies) are very hopeful that Proposition 84 will result in money for local projects, but so far we're still waiting for some of the legislation," said Jeff Kightlinger, CEO of the Metropolitan Water District.

"It's been a little slow getting Prop. 84 dollars out the door."

By comparison, more than 40 percent of the transportation-bond dollars approved on the same November 2006 ballot has already been allocated.

Last month, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, that would have directed spending $611 million from last year's water bonds.

In his veto, the governor said he wanted to wait until a more comprehensive solution to the state's water crisis is crafted during the current special legislative session.

In the special session, Schwarzenegger is asking lawmakers to place an additional $10 billion in water bonds on the 2008 ballot.

But that proposal has stalled in the Legislature as Democrats dispute the need to spend billions of dollars on additional dam- and water-storage projects.

Compromise offered

Schwarzenegger has recently offered to compromise by cutting about $1.5billion from his original proposal for water storage, but Democrats have not responded.

"California voters have approved more than $14billion in bonds to address water and environmental issues in the last 10 years," Schwarzenegger said. "Billions of dollars were directly aimed at projects designed to address the crisis in the delta.

"Yet the delta is in worse shape today than it was a decade ago. Throwing more money at the problem without addressing the fundamental issues to fix the delta will only allow the crisis to worsen."

Schwarzenegger said that with the risk of water rationing and rate increases on the horizon across the state, quick action is needed.

But Perata said he is frustrated that the governor's veto has stalled spending of previous bonds.

"I was very upset and I still, to this moment, do not understand why you ask voters to give approval to spend money to protect their water system, which we did with Prop. 1E, and then when we want to appropriate the money, he vetoes the bill," Perata said.

"I don't know how you go back to the voters and say: Give us more authority."

Mark Cowin, deputy director for regional water planning and management at the state Department of Water Resources, said several factors have stalled allocation of water-bond money.

"I'm sure many are as frustrated as we are that we can't move on these projects quicker," Cowin said.

Cowin said disagreements have arisen with the Legislature over spelling out how to spend the money. And he said once the Legislature passes appropriations, and the governor signs them, the department has to draft guidelines on how the money can be distributed.

Often it is spent through a competitive-grant process, meaning the department first has to draft guidelines for local agencies seeking the money. Then, the actual grant process itself takes time.

Proposition 84 was designed to provide $5.4 billion in bonds to fund water quality, flood control and resource protection projects; Proposition 1E was to provide $4.1billion for flood control and water supply projects.

But so far, just about $588 million from Proposition 1E has been committed to specific projects; and just $1.7 billion from Proposition 84.

Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at California State University, Sacramento, said voters may have a difficult time approving additional water bonds.

O'Connor said she has talked to several water agency officials who are concerned that the funds are "languishing."

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the governor's Department of Finance, said he does not believe that spending on water projects has been slow.

He said the governor already provided about $400 million in the 2007-08 general fund to jump-start flood-control projects rather than waiting for bond funds.

"We didn't want to wait for another potential flood season to get that work done," Palmer said.

But the debate over additional water bonds comes as many water agencies are struggling with dry conditions and looking ahead to an increasingly difficult future.

With traditional supplies hit by drought and strained by growing populations, most water agencies are focused on increasing conservation rather than developing new sources of imported water.

Drought and federal restrictions have severely limited the amount of water Southern California can access from the Colorado River, while the snowpack in the Sierras is far below normal this year.

Also, a court decision aimed at protecting the endangered delta smelt has restricted the amount of water that can be pumped through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The Metropolitan Water District now serves about 18million people in Southern California and expects to serve about 25million by 2030.

But the district is not anticipating importing any more water from outside sources. Instead, it is hoping to serve those additional 7million people with roughly the same amount of imported water - through increased efforts at conservation, efficiency and reclamation.

Eventually, there may also be the need for forced rationing measures and a likely increase in water rates.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has increasingly relied on conservation measures to supply a growing population.

The DWP increased its reliance on the MWD this year because of the shrinking Sierra snowpack, but also has significant supplies of groundwater in the San Fernando Valley.

Despite serving an additional 1 million customers, Los Angeles uses about the same amount of water as it did 25 years ago, thanks to conservation measures, said DWP spokesman Joe Ramallo.

But if the Sierra snowpack does not improve this winter, the DWP might look toward prohibiting more types of water uses.

Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, said he is satisfied with how the state has been allocating funds.

The state water supply is not in a desperate situation, he said, though it is getting closer.

"Water managers in Southern California are sitting on top of several million acre-feet of stored water," Quinn said.

"From a myopic perspective, their canoe is not going over the waterfall just yet. On the other hand, the canoe is at a very fast current and the waterfall is visible." #

For fishermen and biologists, fall has become a season for fretting in California.

For the second year in a row, spawning fall-run chinook salmon are not returning to the Central Valley's rivers in the numbers that anglers and experts anticipated, touching off what may be a record year for nail-biting and hand-wringing.

"Horrible. Slowest year in their lifetime. Never seen salmon fishing this bad," said Ron Howe, summing up the feelings of many salmon fishermen this fall. He has pursued the mighty chinook, also known as king salmon, in the American River for 17 years.

"Everybody's saying the same exact things. This is just unbelievable that the fishing's so poor," he said.

Hard numbers on the American River are difficult to come by until the run is over at the end of the year, said Terry West, manager of the state fish hatchery at Nimbus Dam. That's because there is no way to count natural spawners in the river.

But the 11th Annual American River Salmon Festival, held Oct. 13 and 14, offered one sad indicator. There were no salmon climbing the hatchery's fish ladder that weekend, normally the festival's star attraction.

West managed to collect just 22 fish in five hours – compared to 120 in prior years – just to put some salmon in a big tank as a display for festival-goers.

He said he has never seen so few salmon in the river at festival time.

"We're kinda lucky we caught enough," he said. "I try to always have a positive outlook on Mother Nature. So I'm going to continue that until I get all the figures in."

The most reliable running tally of spawning chinook in the Central Valley comes from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, a Sacramento River tributary in Shasta County.

Through Oct. 24, about 20,700 chinook returned to Battle Creek to spawn. That's only about 20 percent of average for that date compared to the previous four years, according to state Department of Fish and Game records.

The numbers baffle experts and laymen alike, because all indicators are that this fall should produce a vigorous salmon run.

"We just don't understand why there aren't more fish around," said Roger Thomas, who has run salmon fishing charters out of Sausalito since 1968. "We had some lean years in the 1970s, but this kinda looks like the leanest in a long, long time. All of us are seeing the same conditions and share the same concerns."

Regulations limited the commercial salmon fishing in the ocean the past two years, which should have left more fish to return upriver.

A strong, cold upwelling in the Pacific Ocean this summer also produced ample food along the California coast, resulting in a bumper crop of herring, sardine and anchovy, said Frank Schwing, director of environmental research at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, a division of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

But there's a gaping hole in that news: Schwing said the population of krill has mysteriously crashed in the ocean. This zooplankton, which resembles a tiny shrimp, is a key salmon food.

Several bird species that depend on krill have also crashed, Schwing said, such as the Cassin's auklet, a seabird that nests on the Farallone Islands. Also, whales that normally gorge on krill shifted to eating fish.

"Historically there's a strong relationship between abundance of krill and the amount of upwelling that occurs," said Schwing.

"But this year that model has broken down for some reason."

Everyone recognizes it's still early in the fall run, said Allen Grover, a biologist who monitors the ocean salmon fishery for Fish and Game. The run normally continues through December and even into January, and it's normal for the run's peak to shift each year.

"I'm concerned, but it's too early to say 'Sell your boat,' " said Grover. "Trying to correlate oceanographic events to fish survival is pretty hard to do."

A combination of plumbing problems in the Central Valley may also be hurting the run this year. State and federal water managers had to slash water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta early this summer to protect the Delta smelt, a threatened fingerling.

This put water deliveries to cities and farms behind schedule, forcing water officials to ramp up reservoir releases for most of the summer.

This, combined with a drought year, left many of the state's reservoirs with below-normal storage, including Folsom Reservoir, which feeds the American River.

A question lingers as to whether the water left behind the dam is still cold enough to trigger the salmon run. The fish need water at 60 degrees or colder to start migrating. This week, those flows are leaving Nimbus Dam at around 63 degrees, said West.

For now, anglers are hoping the best of the run is still to come. Veterans say anglers can still find salmon in the ocean and rivers: Howe hooked three and caught two in two days on the American River this week, both over 20 pounds.

But they'll need to balance their worries with fistfuls of those other fishermen's friends: luck and patience.

"Normally I would hook over 50 fish in the last two days, and I hooked three," said Howe. "And I was lucky to do that, because other guys were out there not hooking any." #

San Francisco Chronicle – 10/30/07
By Jane Lay, staff writer

This year's Central Valley fall salmon run is worrying both fishermen and biologists, who say fewer of the prized chinook are out in the ocean or making it up the rivers to spawn.

By this time, usually tens of thousands more fish are being hooked by fishermen or are swimming through the Golden Gate to the tributaries of San Francisco Bay. Upstream, the fish spawn in the same rivers where they were born, carrying on the generations of silvery king salmon.

Yet commercial fishermen who hunt for salmon in the ocean from Monterey to Bodega before the fish start their journey up the rivers report the worst salmon fishing in decades.

Fisheries biologists in Northern California who count the salmon that return up the American, Feather and Sacramento rivers are seeing a big decline in fish for this time of year. Some runs might have as few as 20 to 25 percent of the fish normally expected by this time of year, data show.

The salmon run could just be a little late this year, say state Fish and Game Department officials. On the Klamath and Trinity river systems, biologists say the salmon are about three to four weeks late, but they think the fish will come eventually.

The exact cause of the apparent drop in fall-run salmon is not yet clear, although some experts blame the way the state manages its water supply in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Rushes of fresh water can signal fish to start migrating upstream, but meager flows also can hurt the survival of baby fish that eventually will return as adults. Low levels of krill, tiny marine invertebrates that the fish eat, also could be to blame, experts said.

In tributaries like Battle Creek, an important salmon spawning ground off the Sacramento River, there is cause for concern. By now, about three-quarters of the fall run would have passed by the weir where Fish and Game officials count the fish. Usually, the creek's run is between 50,000 and 100,000 fish at this time; so far, there have only been 20,000 spawning chinook, said Randy Benthin, a senior fisheries biologist for Fish and Game.

And on the Yuba River, only 54 salmon have returned so far, down from a total of 3,842 fish in 2003. The Feather River has one-third of the fish it usually has at this time of year, according to state statistics.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, a regulatory body that sets limits on commercial fishing, had predicted a lackluster year for the Central Valley fall run. Of the four runs in the bay, the fall run is the largest. Fish and Game has set a goal of 120,000 to 180,000 spawning fish every fall, and in recent years has met that goal.

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said the low fish counts are particularly worrisome because of the extra limits placed on fishing in recent years. Those limits were specifically aimed at boosting the number of fish that return to spawn on the Klamath River.

He blamed problems with moving water around the delta. The lack of krill in the ocean may have exacerbated the meager runs, he said.

The Sonoma County Water Agency, which this summer urged growers and residents to cut water use by 20 percent due to dry conditions, issued a statement Monday decrying the dearth of salmon returning to the Russian River, which depends on flows from the Eel River.

"Right now by this time in the year, we should have about 500 fish" passing the counting equipment at Forestville. "In our best year (of record keeping), we had 2,500 at this point. Just now we're just over 100," said Sean White, a county fisheries biologist.

The water agency is concerned that people are fishing at the mouth of the Russian River, capturing the few fish that are heading up to spawn.

Seabird expert Bill Sydeman, who recently founded the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research in Petaluma, said he is working on models that link seabird health with abundance of the salmon. The fish and birds feed on krill, lots of zooplankton and young rockfish attracted by nutrient-rich waters.

The conditions that salmon face in their first and second years have a bearing on whether they live to spawn at age 3.

Krill numbers were lower in 2006 and 2005 than they had been in 2001 and 2002, for example, Sydeman said. "It's not surprising to me that there are low salmon returns in 2007."

Oceanographers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been studying ocean conditions for decades. They link good years for salmon with vigorous upwelling of cold, deep, nutrient-rich water to the ocean's surface and the influx of cold Alaskan waters that bring in krill and other sea life.

This year the upwelling and transport of cold Alaskan waters were strong. Then the mixing slowed down. The surface water has been warmer than usual in the California Current, the swath of water moving between Baja California and British Columbia, and it can hold down the upwelling, the scientists say. And scientists report a relatively poor year for California and Oregon salmon.

"We're trying to understand what's going on out there," said Frank Schwing, an oceanographer with NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla (San Diego County).

The scientists are trying to figure out whether there is a regime of cold and then warmer-water decades - or whether global warming could be throwing off the predicted regimes.

"One of the ideas is that global climate change will introduce greater extremes and much more variability into the climate. In reality, it's going to take a couple of decades. Then we can look back and see what the patterns were," Schwing said. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 10/21/07
By Ryan Sabalow, staff writer

ANDERSON -- For 4-year-old Ryder Klenk, there are few things as riveting as watching a 30-pound, hook-jawed male chinook salmon trying to lunge up a concrete fish ladder.

"It's so cool," the Anderson boy said Saturday before pressing his nose into a chain-link fence, just feet away from the struggling fish. "They keep splashing us."

Sure enough, another king-sized buck salmon slapped the water with its nearly foot-wide tail as it gave one final splashing lunge up the ladder into a calmer holding area.

"Look at how big they are," Ryder's mother, Megan Klenk, said to the boy. "Look at their large tails. Could you swim up that?"

It was a scene that repeated itself again and again Saturday at the Return of the Salmon Festival at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

Part biology lesson, part street fair, the 17th annual festival drew about 14,000 people last year.

Scott Hamelberg, the hatchery's chief administrator, said this year's event could very well match or surpass that number of attendees.

Hamelberg said the festival is designed to showcase the hatchery's mission of helping sustain salmon populations, while giving families a chance to gather together and learn more about wildlife.

Nearly 60 exhibits made mostly of nonprofit groups, area watershed organizations, wildlife activists and a handful of vendors were on display. Many offered games and activities.

Children and their families took turns learning to fly fish, played croquet, watched salmon in a portable, glass-walled tank or painted on model salmon molds.

"Fun and informative -- that's our goal," Hamelberg said.

The hatchery was built in 1942 to offset the building of Keswick and Shasta dams, which effectively blocked 200 miles of salmon-spawning habitat.

The Coleman hatchery collects nearly 15 million fall-run salmon eggs a year, and hatchery workers nurture 12 million fall-run smolts, which are released back into the Sacramento River tributary, Battle Creek. >From there, the fish travel to the Pacific Ocean.

In between three and six years, a small percentage of the salmon return to the hatchery to begin the cycle all over again.

But it's a one-way trip back for the fish, which don't eat during their long journey and die naturally after breeding.

At the hatchery, that process is expedited.

Some gasped as they watched salmon being bonked over the head by a club-wielding worker inside the hatchery's spawning room, after the fish were pulled from a carbonated tank, which anesthetizes them.

Workers then squeeze sperm-rich milt out of the dead males; others harvest eggs from the females.

The sperm and eggs are mixed in plastic tubs, and in a few weeks, baby salmon are born.

Nothing goes to waste.

The dead fish are sent to a plant in Washington, where they're processed into meat that's returned to American Indian tribes or for stores in Northern California food banks.

For 3-year-old Wyatt Bailey of Redding, the process was eye-opening, especially after his aunt, Sasha Seymore, 30, was handed one of the orangish-red eggs by a hatchery volunteer.

"That's a baby salmon right there," she said.

The boy's eyes were transfixed on the tiny life-to-be. #

Eureka Reporter – 10/28/07

The Hoopa Valley Tribe of Northern California has notified Congress and San Joaquin River restoration supporters of the tribe’s concern the plan for the San Joaquin is fiscally gluttonous and could drain restoration funds from the Trinity River, which bisects the Hoopa Valley Reservation.

“They risk killing a living river and the fish in it if the San Joaquin legislation (HR 24/S. 27) becomes a new consumer of California’s river restoration funding,” said Hoopa Valley Tribal Council Chairperson Clifford Lyle Marshall.

In an Oct. 23 letter, the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council asked 10 members of California’s congressional delegation to change the funding mechanism for the San Joaquin River restoration and support legislation authored by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. George Miller (HR 2733) to ensure the promise of restoration for the Trinity River.

In the letter, the tribe also notes federal funding shortfalls for the restoration of the Trinity River are allowing fish habitat to worsen. “Our tribal fishery is failing because of a collapse of the fish populations in the Klamath and Trinity rivers,” Marshall noted.

The Hoopa Valley Tribal Council sent the letter to key members of Congress stating, “We need your assistance to ensure that the federal government’s prior commitment and trust responsibility for Trinity restoration are not sacrificed to the San Joaquin settlement.”

Since the San Joaquin settlement was first introduced in the fall of last year, the tribe has said the legislation’s funding mechanism will be used by the administration to divert restoration monies from the Trinity River restoration program approved in December 2000.

Congressional representatives, environmental groups, water and power contractors in the Central Valley and administration officials have asked the Hoopa Valley Tribe not to oppose the San Joaquin legislation. The tribe’s letter replies the tribe can only drop opposition to the San Joaquin restoration if funding for the Trinity River restoration is assured with HR 2733.

Marshall said the federal government betrayed its promises to restore the Trinity River when administration officials refused to support HR 2733 during a Sept. 18 House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on the bill. The tribe supports HR 2733 as a way to bolster sagging federal restoration efforts on the Trinity River.

“We support river restoration throughout California, but Congress must recognize the San Joaquin restoration legislation could allow the Interior Department to create a billion-dollar vortex that will suck up available restoration funding for California rivers, including the Trinity,” Marshall said.

He said the Trinity River restoration project is underfunded by $8 million annually and is seven years behind schedule, according to estimates developed this year by the secretary of the Interior Department and the tribe. “Shifting limited funds to San Joaquin will reduce funding for Trinity River restoration further,” he said.

“Funding for the Trinity needs to be identified and confirmed now because conditions have worsened for the Trinity and Klamath rivers fishery.”

Marshall said the Trinity River is the only tributary to the Klamath River producing quantities of salmon available for local harvest.

“If the Trinity River goes down, so goes fishing for native people, sports fishermen and the commercial fishing industry for 900 miles of the Northern California and Oregon coastline. The San Joaquin will take decades to restore. Funding for the Trinity will produce immediate returns on investment and immediate benefits to the coastal communities that rely on the salmon.”

Marshall said the Hoopa Valley Tribe would like to continue talks with Sen. Dianne Feinstein about restoration of the Trinity River.

“The Senator has been a friend to the Trinity River in the past. I think she is concerned that the Bureau of Reclamation is only committing half of the money it should on the government’s promise to restore the Trinity River. Congressman Thompson’s Bill will fix the annual funding shortfall. We hope she will introduce the same bill in the Senate.”

The federal government began diverting Trinity River waters to the Central Valley in l964, but promised enough water would be retained for the river’s fish and wildlife. Since then, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has allowed up to 90 percent of the river’s water to be diverted. In the l980s, Congress recognized the diversion had caused an 80 percent reduction in salmon populations. In 1992, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act was passed to create funding for environmental restoration of California rivers harmed by commercial water users.

In 2000, a Record of Decision agreement was signed by the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the U.S. Department of Interior for meeting federal trust responsibilities to restore and maintain the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s fishery. Since then, the tribe has had to litigate against Central Valley interests opposed to giving up water for fishery restoration and fight for restoration monies from the BOR.

“The San Joaquin settlement is the latest blow to Trinity River restoration,” Marshall said. #

Marysville Appeal Democrat – 10/24/07
By Andrea Koskey, staff writer

The Lower Yuba River Accord will protect 24 miles of fish habitat, Yuba County Water Agency directors said Tuesday.

They unanimously approved the accord’s final environmental report and now await action in December by the State Water Resources Control Board.

The agreement was created to protect and enhance salmon and steelhead habitat in the river, as well as ensure water continues to be supplied to farmers, power generators and environmentalists.

“We tried to protect the wildlife and fish habitat while making water available for users,” said YCWA Chairman Don Schrader. “I think it’s a win-win process.”

The idea for the program began about eight years ago in response to the state’s attempt to control water from Englebright Dam through the Sacramento Delta.

“This is our answer to Decision 1644 lawsuits,” said agency Vice Chair John Nicoletti. “The real magic is a balance of trust. The accord is designed with each group’s trust and interest to move forward. We have quite a few miles of agreement (in this project). It’s the first time a river management group has ever had so much cooperation.”

Seventeen agencies participated in creating the accord.

Curt Aikens, the agency’s general manager, said the dispute, however, ultimately resulting in the accord, began more than two decades ago with a disagreement over water rights. Tuesday’s approval, though, marked a “major step” to the end of a long journey.

“This is a win-win to settle this issue with environmental organizations and local member units,” Aikens said. “The settlement has benefits for everyone.”

The accord includes three agreements:

• Fisheries, which requires the Water Agency to maintain instream flows to benefit native chinook salmon, steelhead and other fish and wildlife.

• Conjunctive Use, providing for coordinated use and protection of surface water and groundwater supplies in the county.

• Water Purchase, which will provide the agency with “substantial revenues” for water transferred to Calfed, the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.

In December, the agency will seek approval from the State Water Resources Control Board for a long-term transfer of up to 200,000 acre-feet of water per year. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.

During the first eight years of the agreement, starting Jan. 1, 2008, the Water Agency will transfer 60,000 acre-feet per year and will be paid $30.9 million, according to the agreement. Additional water may be made available, depending on conditions.

The water purchase agreement also notes that the Water Agency may install an intake pump below the confluence of the Yuba and Feather rivers to provide water for use in Yuba County. The agency has no plans at the moment for the Feather River Diversion Facility.

In 2001, Decision 1644 was issued by the state board, which ordered higher flows and other measures to improve fishery. Lawsuits over that decision were filed. The accord was a way for all agencies to resolve their differences.

In addition to the water flow requirements to benefit native salmon, steelhead and other fish wildlife, the accord will also protect local water supplies and improve water supply reliability for farmers.

Schrader said this project and the environmental impact report is valid through 2016 when the relicensing for Bullards Bar Reservoir comes up.

The cooperation between all agencies involved, Schrader and Nicoletti said, could play a major role in relicensing the dam.

“It shows our commitment to meeting the state’s needs for water while focusing on species and habitats,” Nicoletti said. “It shows we are able to work with a lot of players.” #

Redding Record Searchlight – 10/26/07
By Dylan Darling, staff writer

It's a sure a sign that it's autumn as workers this week are pulling the planks from the Anderson Cottonwood Irrigation District diversion dam at Caldwell Park.

The tightrope act is performed by eight lifejacket-clad workers with long poles from a catwalk above the dam and can take as many as 10 days to complete, said Stan Wangberg, ACID general manager.

"It's not a one-day thing," he said.

Along with pulling the last 360 of the close to 500, 12-foot long Douglas fir flashboards that form the dam, the workers take down the steel structure that held the planks in place as well as the catwalk, he said.

The wood and steel are hauled to a building on the south side of the Sacramento River where it will be tucked away for the winter, Wangberg said. The planks usually are put back in place in April.

While the wood and steel are removed at the end of the growing season and returned at its beginning, the concrete base of the dam stays in place, Wangberg said. The dam has held strong since it was built in 1916.

With the removal of the dam's flashboards, Lake Redding disappears, the Sacramento River drops back into its channel and a big bare bank appears on the south side. At its highest, the dam raises the river seven feet while diverting water for the 6,700 acres served by ACID from Redding to Cottonwood.

Soon anglers will be wading into the returning shallows, casting their lines for trout that cluster behind spawning salmon in hopes of dining on eggs floating downstream, said Mike Berry, environmental scientist for state Department of Fish and Game.

Anglers need to watch where they put their feet so they don't disturb salmon spawning nests called redds, he said. #

Eureka Times-Standard – 10/18/07
By John Driscoll, staff writer

Reducing landslides and ensuring stream banks are shaded may help struggling Eel River salmon and steelhead and improve water quality, a draft report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.

The recently released document, called a TMDL for Total Maximum Daily Load, looks to set limits on how muddy and warm the river should be allowed to get. The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will develop its own similar report and put measures into place to attain the goals set in the EPA report.

”The major water quality problems in the lower Eel River and tributaries in this report are reflected in the decline of salmon and steelhead populations,” the draft report reads.

The federal government first put the Eel on a list of impaired water bodies in 1992, and the state has updated the listing as recently as 2006. The state did not draft its own TMDL report, and the EPA was sued. A consent decree resulting from the suit prompted the EPA to file its report before the Dec. 31, 2007 deadline.

The lower Eel is considered to be the Larabee Creek watershed and the main river south of Shively. The upper end of this section of the watershed is dominated by ranch lands and oak woodlands. The middle section runs largely through redwood and other timberland mostly owned by the Pacific Lumber Co. The lowest section runs through the Ferndale area's bottom lands, and includes the Salt River.

The focus of the report is aimed at fish, as coho, chinook and steelhead are all listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. Rearing conditions in the main Eel River and in the Salt River have been poor for years, the report reads.

Summer temperatures are described as stressful for fish in the Eel River -- reaching higher than 70 degrees at times -- with somewhat better conditions in the river's tributaries.

”The main stem has always been hot,” said EPA project leader Janet Parrish.

Increased shade along the wide portion of the lower river is unlikely to make much of a difference, the report reads, but more trees along tributaries could significantly improve conditions there. The use of groundwater in the area, the report reads, may remove a source of cool water in some parts of the river.

The EPA report maintains that the diversion of water to the Potter Valley Project to the south does not significantly affect temperature in the river.

While less sediment may be coming into the watershed than in years past, the report reads, more is stored in the lower river than before which results in a widening channel. The amount of sediment sent into the system is roughly half natural and half from land management practices, the report says.

That's not as unevenly split toward land management as in many watersheds on the North Coast, Parrish said. One thing that's different is that while most watersheds' runoff is primarily from roads, in the lower Eel landslides and logging are the main source, she said.

The EPA's draft report sets the allowable load of sediment into the watershed at 125 percent of estimated natural levels, which is strict enough to maintain state water quality standards. Reducing the risk of landslides through improved logging practices may be the best way to meet those goals, Parrish said.

Find the whole document at: http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/tmdl/progress.html. #

Sacramento Bee – 10/14/07
By Alison Roberts, staff writer

The morning fishing report at Lake Natoma on Saturday was full of tales of ones that didn't get away.

"I catched one," said Nicholas Mayo, who is 6, as he stood patiently, rod in hand, hoping to catch another.

"I did, too," said his big brother Christian, who is 7.

"Now we've got all the boys hooked on fishing," said their mother, Angelique Mayo, who was here with her husband, Angelo, and the couple's five sons, ages 3 to 10.

The boys had an advantage as about 400 trout had been dumped into one end of the lake Saturday morning to make sure there would be lots of lucky fishing stories to take home from the 11th annual American River Salmon Festival.

The Mayo family from Fair Oaks had been happily reeled in to returning to the American River Salmon Festival, which they first attended last year. The event, at the Nimbus Hatchery and Lake Natoma, ends its weekend run today.

It is put on by the state Department of Fish and Game and the American River Natural History Association, along with many public and private organizations and hundreds of volunteers.

The guests of honor -- the salmon -- drew people to line the fish ladder as it cascaded down to the river. There were few fish that made it to their early welcome-home party, but those that did were rewarded with yelps of admiration from the audience, as they ascended with great splashes up the ladder.

"I don't get how they go up," said Dominic Davis, who is 14 and lives in Carmichael.

"There was a ginormous one," said Nick Nosal, who is 5, pointing down at the base of the ladder. The boy, who walked over to the festival with his family from their home in Fair Oaks, stretched his arms out as far as they would go to demonstrate just how big the fish was.

At the top of the ladder, a tank held several mature salmon swimming around.

The return of the salmon -- which typically doesn't get going strong until next month -- is one of the surest signs of fall in Sacramento, when the fish make their great, thrashing, final return trip home to spawn and die, leaving their aromatic remains on riverbanks.

The chinook -- also known as king salmon -- start their lives in freshwater rivers. Typically, they linger for just a few months before heading out to the ocean for three or four years before returning.

Scott Barrow, a senior biologist with the state's Department of Fish and Game, doesn't recommend holding your breath -- or your bait -- for a bodacious fall run this year.

"It's bad looking at the past two or three years -- it is significantly surprising," Barrow said.

There are weather cycles and other factors that affect population counts, which jump up and down from year to year, without necessarily hewing to a straight-line trend.

Preliminary indicators, such as counts reported for sport and commercial fishing, suggest this season's return crowd may stay below the 500,000 forecast.

"My guess is it's going to come in somewhat less than that," Barrow said.

Barrow's guess is supported by current-season figures of salmon caught in the ocean.

This year, 43,000 Chinook were reported caught for sport in the waters off the California coast; in 2006, 84,000 were caught.

For commercial fishing, the number caught was 94,000 this year, which sounds pretty good compared with the dismal total of 45,000 caught in 2006. But it doesn't seem great if you consider the 256,000 caught in 2005.

The numbers of Chinook that make it 120 miles from the San Francisco Bay to the Nimbus Hatchery each year also jumps around. Terry West, a manager at the hatchery, said the fall run of 2005 numbered 22,349; last fall there were only 8,728.

That means the humans at the salmon festival probably outnumber the number of fish that will return home this season. At least 20,000 people are expected to come to the event, according to Bruce Forman, a naturalist with the state Department of Fish and Game and festival coordinator. #

Redding Record Searchlight – 10/16/07
By Jim Schultz, staff writer

A broken sewer main Monday spilled "thousands of gallons" of untreated sewage into Jenny Creek in west Redding and into the nearby Sacramento River.

But the sewage spill into the river should not pose a threat to local public health or the environment because the water volume and velocity will flush it downstream, said John Tasello, Redding's wastewater supervisor.

"It's not going to have an impact," he said.

Nevertheless, signs have been posted near Jenny Creek urging the public to avoid the lower creek and its mouth at the Sacramento River until test results are known, he said.

The tests could take about a week to complete, he said.

The break happened about 3,400 feet from the Sacramento River, he said.

The broken sewer main, which runs through a greenbelt and is suspended on concrete pillars, was discovered about 1:15 p.m., west of Overhill Drive off Eureka Way, Tasello said.

A nearby resident reported that he heard the aboveground sewage main rupture and "we discovered it pretty early," he said.

Crews were able to stop the sewage flow -- approximately 100 gallons a minute -- about 3:40 p.m., and the sewer main was repaired about 6 p.m., he said.

Tasello said the sewer main was installed in the 1950s and was due to be replaced next year.

A variety of environmental health and other agencies, including the state Department of Fish and Game and the California Water Quality Control Board, were notified of the spill, he said. #

Fresh from a victory in securing $25 million through state water bonds, a collaborative group of city, county and tribal officials, restoration proponents and nonprofits came together in Fortuna Wednesday to hatch a strategy to secure millions more.

The North Coast Integrated Water Management Plan created the top proposal in the state, and received the $25 million through the State Water Resources Control Board in January. Water supply, water quality, fisheries projects and watershed planning were part of the collective submittal.

”We're a region that has a lot of different lifestyles and a lot of different outlooks in this large area,” said Karen Gaffney of the planning group at the River Lodge.

No one government or entity in the region has the financial or political clout that many areas in the rest of the state have, she said. But the North Coast has strong fish populations, relatively healthy watersheds, and a small -- but growing -- population, she said.

Together, the governing bodies and groups in the area can gain power, Gaffney said, as was seen by the January award.

Now there is another $37 million available, money that will be administered by the Department of Water Resources from Proposition 84. Wednesday's conference was meant to begin synchronizing the needs and efforts of the North Coast, and begin planning to use the money most efficiently. It's goal, Gaffney said, is “no county left behind.”

With the Department of Water Resources taking the administrative reins, stakeholders need to know how to design their plan to meet the agency's standards, said Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith outside the meeting.

”We're going to learn what the criteria is today and it will give us direction,” Smith said.

Not everything went swimmingly during the first round. When a state water board representative came to Humboldt County to hear concerns from supervisors regarding local entities maintaining liability for the projects, he refused to budge, a tact that angered Smith.

Smith planned to go to lunch with state water board member Gary Wolff to talk about the staff's approach.

”We're going to talk about ethics and professional treatment,” Smith said.

The conference continues today and Friday. #

California's rivers and streams are diverted to cities and farms with almost no knowledge of how this affects fish, conservation groups said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

While hundreds of requests for water rights pile up in Sacramento, the state Department of Fish and Game has failed to study how much water can safely be taken from most streams, says the California Coastkeeper Alliance, a group that includes San Francisco-based Baykeeper, a Delta watchdog.

Fish and Game's "decades of hiding from the problem has not made it go away," said Linda Sheehan, executive director of the alliance, which includes groups from San Diego to the Oregon border.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, was being reviewed Tuesday by Fish and Game, an agency spokesman said.

When an agency or individual wants to divert water from a stream, an application must be filed with the State Water Resources Control Board. Applications for San Joaquin County waterways, including the Mokelumne River, are among the hundreds that are pending.

Fish and Game is supposed to determine minimum flows for certain streams. Few of these studies have taken place, the conservationists say. They allege that the program that carried out the studies was diminished in 2003 and disbanded in 2005.

However, the program still receives funds, the lawsuit says. When agencies or people apply for water rights, they pay an $850 fee to defray the costs of the Fish and Game studies. The department has continued to receive anywhere from $11,900 to $53,550 per year from 2002 to 2006, the conservationists say.

Of the state's 116 native fish, eight have gone extinct and 15 are threatened or endangered. "California's freshwater aquatic resources have been declining for decades," says a complaint filed in court. #

At the September 20, 2007, California Watershed Forum in Sacramento, California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman announced a plan to create a statewide watershed program. Speaking to nearly 200 Watershed Forum attendees from all corners of California, Secretary Chrisman outlined his goals for the statewide program to develop partnerships to support community-based watershed stewardship. The Resources Agency program will be housed in the Department of Conservation under Director Bridgett Luther.

Following Secretary Chrisman, Director Luther offered an enthusiastic welcome to the watershed community and embraced the myriad of attending participants with her interest in building a successful program. Director Luther noted the importance to maintain the continuity established with the CALFED Watershed Program and Subcommittee. In doing so, CALFED Watershed Program Manager, John Lowrie, will be transferring to the Department of Conservation along with his team of Dan Wermiel, Casey Walsh-Cady, and Dennis Bowker. CALFED Watershed subcommittee co-chairs, Martha Davis and Robert Meacher, will serve as the co-chairs of a new Steering Committee that will help with an extensive public process by serving as liaisons between regional watershed communities and the Statewide Watershed Program.

RED BLUFF DIVERSION DAM: Guest Commentary: Saving Lake Red Bluff is a better plan compared to alternatives

The headline says what appears to be the shared belief of the majority stakeholders in the use of the Sacramento River who are in varying degrees determining the fate of the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

Were it not for the issue of endangered and threatened fish, the dam would not face the uncertain future described in the release, in late summer, of 2002 of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report (EIS/EIR) on a fish passage improvement project. The document offered many options that involve the future of the dam. Positions taken varied.

The Tehama Colusa Canal Authority (TCCA) favors construction of massive pumping facilities near Red Bluff to ensure downstream water users a year-round water supply, as was originally intended, instead of just during the four summer months when the dam gates are lowered and the lake forms behind them to provide irrigation water. Its representatives have continued to hold that position in dealings with others involved, but there are some encouraging signs that TCCA would like to reach a solution that includes use of the dam.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was favoring gates down two months a year, instead of the four months as has been the case for many years, but since the draft EIS/EIR was recirculated earlier this year, some at the Bureau reportedly are ready to press for gates out as part of an overall system-wide operations plan to move water and save fish called (Operations Criteria and Planning or OCAP). Some environmental groups favor complete removal of the dam structure itself.

The City of Red Bluff, the Red Bluff-Tehama County Chamber of Commerce and many other groups and individuals have always held that the lake should remain, at least four months a year and possibly longer if all groups work together to come up with a plan that will save threatened fish by improving the fish ladders and installing a smaller pumping plant to meet the year round demands for water.

A meeting on Sept. 19 at the offices of the Glenn Colusa Irrigation District in Hamilton City may have gone a long way toward bringing about a well-thought-out, reasoned solution that will, in great part, satisfy the divergent needs of the agencies, communities, organizations and individuals involved.

U.S. Rep. Wally Herger and his staff get much of the credit for bringing about the meeting of the various stakeholders, although various groups had been seeking such a gathering.

Representing Herger was his local field representative Dave Meurer. Others at the session included Red Bluff City Councilmen Forrest Flynn and Dan Irving, as well as City Attorney Richard Crabtree. Representing the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce were president Lynn DeFreece and board member Marshall Pike. Tehama County Supervisors George Russell and Bob Williams were there, as was Public Works Director Gary Antone.

Besides our local officials, there were representatives from the United States Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the United States National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS), GCID, Northern California Water Association (NCWA), and the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority (TCCA) were also at the meeting. The meeting was guided by a facilitator, Adam Saslow of Newfields Consensus Solutions LLC with support from John Schoonover of CH2MHILL's Redding office.

Many readers of this series of articles may recall that a similar collective was involved in discussions beginning in 1999 when the Fish Passage Improvement Project began its public process. At the table Sept. 19 were only three or four individuals who were in attendance back then, although all the same agencies were represented.

In this series, we have chronicled those areas, including the concerns about the shortcomings of the process to produce a draft EIS/EIR and the many deficiencies in the document itself. We have shown the need for greater disclosure regarding the Canal Authority's preferred alternative of an expensive, massive pumping plant to replace the already paid for Red Bluff Diversion Dam. We told the reader about the belated entry of yet another species of concern, the green sturgeon, while the draft EIS/EIR is largely concerned with the passage of salmon.

At the meeting, CH2MHILL, the planning consultants to the Canal Authority and the Bureau of Reclamation would not predict when they would have the final document with responses to the hundreds of comments they have received.

But both agencies committed to giving the community a reasonable amount of time to judge for themselves if the results are satisfactory, something Red Bluff officials have insisted on but which until the meeting they had received no assurances they would get it. The City has made no secret that it eagerly awaits the response to comments made concerning the document and will consider further actions if it perceives it and other involved groups have not been treated fairly. The City has retained the services of qualified fisheries specialists to comment on key aspects of the EIS/EIR. Rep. Herger's office was also insistent that there be adequate time for review before a Record of Decision is published.

Saving the dam is the best idea, but it is important to recognize there is the possibility a judge might rule that the dam is "taking" an endangered species without a permit. That could force the TCCA and the Bureau to end impoundment.

That's an unacceptable risk for everyone involved. Out of fear that this could happen, the prudent managers and members of the TCCA have been looking for a contingency plan. What they've come up with is the pumping facility at the Diamond Mill site as the most acceptable to fisheries people and some environmentalists.

We have argued that the plant will have its own set of problems. There is ample evidence that even well-designed plants can be fish traps. Just as the Tracy pumping plant for most of the water in the San Francisco Bay Area has been shut down, so too could the screens that replace the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

TCCA Board Chairman, Ken LaGrande, expressed his organization's position best: "We love the dam at Red Bluff and the lake that it creates. We would love to see it remain. But we can be sure that at some time in the future these fish passage problems will require new and different solutions. Because the four counties contain over 150,000 acres of farmland that must be irrigated, TCCA must plan for the worst possible case. The levels of water supply and reliability that we need are something that cannot be provided when the dam is operated for just four (let alone two) months of the year."

To retain the dam for recreation purposes must be a component of any new decision and any new funding authorization should reflect the legitimate use of the impoundment to support the recreation needs of the community and to mitigate any loss. The Bureau of Reclamation has experience in supporting the recreation development of other water related facilities in Northern California. Red Bluff should be on that list.

We have set the stage for controlling the destiny of north state water users and managing area growth. The Governor's comprehensive water infrastructure proposal, announced the same day as the September 19th meeting, calls for a significant commitment to developing and managing water resources in Northern California. The stakeholders at this meeting can and should help to shape the future.

"Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting," is an old Western saw. Instead of a fight, we see the door opened. Stakeholders can work together in a common struggle.

We may not agree on the route to get there, but the end result seems to be shared.

Make the lake and the river work to benefit the fish, the farm and the community. #

RESTORATION PROGRAMS: Wiggins introduces salmon restoration, monitoring bill

Ukiah Daily Journal – 10/8/07

North coast Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D - Santa Rosa) has introduced a bill in the Legislature's special session on water that seeks to designate nearly $5.3 million in state bond funds for salmon restoration and monitoring programs.

On September 11, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called lawmakers into special sessions on two issues areas, water and health care. Wiggins, who had considered the possibility of folding the language on salmon restoration and monitoring into an overall bill on water bonds, opted instead to introduce her own legislation, which may be heard in committee on October 8.

"While I had hoped to secure these funds during this year's regular session, the special session on water presents a real opportunity to provide resources for some very important programs," Wiggins said. "These issues are of course near and dear to many people throughout the north coast, but funding these programs will have long-term benefits for the state as a whole."

The bill seeks to appropriate $5.293 million from Prop. 84. towards the state Department of Fish and Game's Fisheries Restoration Grant Program (which includes coastal salmonid monitoring).

The Fisheries Restoration Grant Program, created by former north coast State Sen. Mike Thompson, is a collaborative effort that focuses on restoring fish habitat, with the goal of ensuring the survival and protection of salmon and steelhead trout in coastal areas of California.

In November 2006, California voters approved Proposition 84, which included $45 million for coastal salmon and steelhead fishery restoration. The Legislature initially inserted Thompson's grant program appropriation of $10.5 million from Prop. 84 into the proposed 2007-2008 state budget, but the funding was eliminated by the time the final budget package was approved.

Wiggins had another bill, SB 562, that was similar to her current legislation (SBX2 5), but the earlier measure failed to pass out of the Legislature before the 2007 regular session ended. Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D - Eureka) was a co-author of SB 562, and she is also co-author of SBX2 5.

The Senator and Assemblywoman both say they are willing to continue their efforts until salmon restoration funds are finally secured.

"We tried to get it in the budget, we tried during the regular session, and now we're trying to get it in the special session," Berg said. "We just don't plan on giving up." #

LAKE SHASTA LAKE LEVELS: Lake levels sank, but water will avoid 1992 mark

Already at a 15-year low, Lake Shasta should drop another three to five feet before it starts filling again once the rains come, a federal water manager says.

Late last week, the lake's waterline was 118 feet below what's considered full, said Larry Ball, operations chief for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Northern California Area Office.

"It's a result of less-than-normal rainfall as well as heavy demand on the water," he said.

Although the lake has dipped well beyond 100 feet below its high water mark five times since 1992, this year's drop likely will be the biggest since the water was down to almost 156 feet below that year.

Still, the low water is nowhere near the reservoir's all-time low of 230 feet below set in 1977, Ball said.

"It's not good now, but it'sbeen a lot worse," he said.

And it's a big change from last year, though, when the water dipped only to 54 feet below.

With growing season nearing its end, the amount of water headed down the Sacramento River should be down from 7,000 cubic feet per second to 4,000 cfs by the end of the month, he said. Inflow into the lake is already at 4,000 cfs, so when it starts raining, the lake level should begin to rise.

Lower water this year has made for a smaller lake and has cut access to the water, said Cheryl Adcock, assistant recreation officer for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. While the low water has left more room for parking, getting a boat into the water has been difficult because of mud.

A third of the Forest Service's six boat launches are closed, she said. Of the four that are open -- Centimudi, Jones Valley, Packer's Bay and Sugarloaf -- Packer's Bay is "launch at your own risk" and Sugarloaf is "marginal," she said.

With the lake lower than it has been in years, forest service work crews have been working hard to keep boat launches that still extend into the water clear of mud and debris.

"It's 15 years of accumulation that you are trying to clear," Adcock said.

Discouraged by the long, muddy walk to the campsites, visitors have become fewer than normal this year, said forest service technician Jeff Walsh.

Walsh said he saw a drop in boaters on the lake and suspects those who didn't show were locals.

People coming from far away likely had made reservations months in advance, he said.

"Most people aren't going to cancel just because the lake is lower," Walsh said. #

Federal court hears face-off over fish; Ag, water groups wary of environmentalists' suit over salmon, more

Fresno Bee – 10/4/07
By John Ellis, staff writer

Environmentalists on Wednesday again clashed with the federal government and state water contractors over how native fish species fit into the state's two major water projects. This time, it was about salmon and steelhead instead of delta smelt. U.S. District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger made no decision following a daylong federal court hearing, but agricultural groups and water contractors are waiting nervously. They say another ruling in favor of fish could mean further cuts in water deliveries to west side Valley farmers and urban water consumers from the Bay Area to Southern California.

In August, Wanger ordered cuts in pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect the endangered delta smelt. The state Department of Water Resources said that decision could cause 35% less water to be delivered from the delta in an average year. The delta smelt lawsuit shared many of the same legal issues -- as well as attorneys -- with Wednesday's lawsuit hearing.

That lawsuit -- filed in August 2005 -- involves several species of salmon and steelhead. It was filed by environmental and fishing organizations. At issue is a key National Marine Fisheries Service opinion on managing threatened steelhead and Coho and Chinook salmon during fall and spring runs on Northern California waterways.

Earlier this year, Wanger threw out a similar U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opinion on managing the delta smelt. But attorneys for agriculture interests and water contractors say the salmon and steelhead are not as embattled as the smelt. "The status of these fish is they're nowhere near extinction the way the delta smelt are," said Christopher Buckley Jr., an attorney representing the California Farm Bureau Federation.

But a similar strategy has surfaced in both lawsuits, with attorneys arguing Wednesday that the state's two water projects are not the sole cause of the decline in salmon and steelhead populations. In the smelt case, attorneys had argued that giant delta pumps were not solely responsible for killing off smelt.

Gregory Wilkinson, an attorney representing the State Water Contractors -- an organization representing more than two dozen agencies that buy water from the state -- said ocean fishing also takes a toll on steelhead and salmon. He noted a study that showed large takes of spring run Chinook salmon in the ocean by commercial fishing. "To pretend that doesn't exist," he said, "is ridiculous."

But Michael Sherwood, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice, outlined what he said has been a long decline in salmon and steelhead populations that can be traced to the construction on dams on California rivers such as the Sacramento and San Joaquin. The two rivers -- as well as many of their tributaries -- used to be "abundant with salmon," he said. But after dams blocked access to their historic spawning grounds, the resulting population declines have put them "on the brink of extinction."

Sherwood said part of the National Marine Fisheries Service opinion established a site on the Sacramento River where the water temperature would be 56 degrees Fahrenheit. That water temperature is conducive to salmon spawning. But, Sherwood said, the location where the temperature is measured was later moved closer to Shasta Dam. Doing so shortened the length of river that would have to maintain temperatures low enough to support spawning. As a result, less cold water was needed from Lake Shasta, which meant more water could be delivered to water contractors, he said.

In addition, Sherwood argued that a 1993 National Marine Fisheries Service opinion on the salmon and steelhead required that 1.9 million acre-feet be held in Lake Shasta, but the requirement was changed to a "target" that he said was unenforceable when the opinion was updated in 2004.

Federal government attorney Bridget Kennedy McNeil said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation continues to aim for the 1.9 million acre-feet target in Lake Shasta. As for the temperature location, moving the site closer to the dam allows the water projects to better meet cold-water requirements for all fish species, she said. #

Judge to weigh water limits in Delta to protect salmon

Contra Costa Times – 10/2/07
By Mike Taugher, staff writer

One month after a federal judge ordered sharp reductions in Delta water deliveries to protect a tiny fish, the same judge this week will consider further limits to aid salmon. Taken together, the rulings affect two permits that are supposed to spell out how fish will be protected from being killed or disrupted by the state's major dams, pumps and aqueducts.

The permits, called biological opinions, were badly flawed when they were written in 2004 and 2005. Federal regulators have been revising them since last year and plan to have new ones written in another a year or so. Environmentalists and others who said that was not good enough sued to get tighter controls on water deliveries immediately. "They weren't doing their job when they put these together," said Tina Swanson, a fisheries biologist at the Bay Institute, one of the environmental groups behind both lawsuits.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ordered restrictions on Delta pumps that water agencies say will cut farm water supplies and could force water rationing in some parts of the state. In May he struck down the biological opinion meant to protect Delta smelt. Many observers expect Wanger to toss out the second opinion - which is supposed to protect winter- run salmon, spring-run salmon and steelhead. That could further restrict water use, especially in the San Joaquin Valley.

Unlike Delta smelt, however, none of the state's major salmon runs are near extinction, so it is possible that the judge could toss out the permit but largely rely on federal regulators to come up with a better permit in the next year or so. "When your fate is in front of a judge, you're always concerned," said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which represents agricultural water districts in the San Joaquin Valley. "But we're not seeing a cause for over-alarm."

The parallel lawsuits offer interesting comparisons. The first was meant to protect Delta smelt, a pinky-size fish that smells like a cucumber but fails to generate much public sympathy. They are dangerously close to extinction. Salmon and steelhead, on the other hand, are held in higher public esteem and, in the case of salmon, taste good and support commercial and recreational fishing industries. Unlike smelt, California's imperiled salmon runs have increased substantially in recent years and represent a rare success in a state water policy largely beset by failure in recent years. Likewise, the restrictions on water operations that are most likely to help the fish also differ.

For Delta smelt, the most immediate step - the one ordered by Wanger - involved limiting water exported from the Delta. The smelt are poor swimmers and are easily trapped and killed at the pumps. For salmon, the biggest issues in play are how cold water is managed on the Sacramento River. If more water is required to keep rivers cold during the spawning season, that would mean less water for San Joaquin Valley farms in the spring and summer.

The bottom line is the same for anglers and environmentalists: They say the way to protect fish that depend on the Delta is to reduce California's dependence on Delta water. "There is just no more water to be taken out of the system," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "These guys have known that for years but they keep dancing around the truth. They don't want to acknowledge that basic truth."

Among the salmon runs, the most endangered is the winter-run, which produced fewer than 200 spawning adults on the Sacramento River in 1991. Since then, its numbers have rebounded substantially with more than 15,000 fish returning in recent years. Still, for unknown reasons this year the winter-run numbers are way down - the third-lowest since 1995, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. "It's a good reminder that we're not in a recovered population by a long shot," said Maria Rea, fisheries service supervisor at the Sacramento area office.

Rea's agency was criticized for the 2004 opinion it wrote to protect salmon and steelhead. The Department of Commerce's inspector general found deviations in agency procedures that allowed managers to issue a decision that agency scientists did not agree with. Two independent science panels also criticized the opinion's conclusions.

The decision to rewrite the opinion came after the green sturgeon, another fish species that the marine fisheries service is supposed to protect, was listed for endangered species protection. "We're real committed to following the law, following our process and following the science and see where that leads us," Rea said. "We're going to do it right this time." #