Making Way for Salmon
Fish passage barriers removed from streams

In 2001, a small miracle occurred in a stream south of the city of Arcata: the salmon came back. Lots of them. The stream, called Morrison Gulch, flows into Jacoby Creek, which empties into Humboldt Bay. Biologists knew it had once been spawning ground for salmon, because for several years they had counted hundreds trying to make their way upstream to mate--600 in one winter alone.

But an old culvert under Quarry Road blocked the way; not one fish could make the jump into it from the pool below. Faced with such a barrier, some fish will try to find other places to spawn; others will die of exhaustion from their futile attempt to reach historic spawning grounds.

Then, in August 2001, the County replaced the Quarry Road culvert with a wider one and regraded the stream above and below to raise the channel, allowing the fish to move freely through the new culvert. With the barrier gone, the salmon moved right back into the stream. That winter, biologists counted 70 coho returning to spawn, and the following winter they observed 238 adults and 116 redds (spawning nests).

What happened in the Jacoby Creek watershed is happening, or beginning to happen, in many watersheds along the coast from Del Norte County to Monterey. In the past ten years, through collaborative efforts by counties, state and federal agencies, private landowners, and nonprofit organizations, almost 300 miles of streams have been reopened to salmon and restored to conditions favorable to the fishes’ survival. At a time when everything else seems to be going wrong for West Coast salmon, this achievement is a ray of sunshine.

Culverts and other small stream barriers may seem trivial compared to the large and intractable difficulties salmon face--drought, water diversions, hydropower dams, changes in ocean productivity--but there are so many of them that they have effectively locked fish out of huge areas of spawning habitat. A 2004 report by the Coastal Conservancy identified more than 19,000 barriers in California’s coastal watersheds, at least 1,400 of them severe or impassable.

Even obstacles that are not completely impassable to adult salmon can exhaust the fish before they reach spawning grounds, or keep juveniles, which can’t jump as high as adults, from reaching tributaries that serve as safe havens during floods. “It’s a huge problem,” said Tom Weseloh, North Coast manager for California Trout. “If you’ve got a barrier at the mouth of a watershed, the whole watershed is impaired.”

Long before people knew about the life cycles of anadromous fish, they understood that salmon needed to be able to move freely up- and downstream. In his 2003 book King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, geologist David R. Montgomery wrote of a 12th-century English statute requiring that English rivers “be kept free of obstructions so that a well-fed three-year-old pig could stand sideways in the stream without touching either side.” Pigs were not at issue; the purpose was to protect salmon.

Despite many such laws and restrictions over the centuries, the needs of fish have rarely been considered when roads and other structures were built, until recently. In California’s early days, many coastal roads were cut right next to creeks for the logging industry, and streams were constricted and blocked by pipes and culverts. In 1935, federal fisheries biologists surveying streams in the Klamath and Shasta National Forests reported that culverts were cutting off salmon from the Klamath River and other main streams, and recommended that small bridges be used instead. They were ignored.

Those roads, usually built quickly and cheaply, have eroded over the years, spilling sediment into the creeks and causing creekbanks to fail. During heavy rains, the old culverts block water and sediment flow, causing floods. But quick fixes cost less up front than bringing back a more natural streamflow, and because there are so many barriers, removing any one of them seemed a waste of time and money--until 1996 and 1997, when coho salmon on the North and Central Coasts were listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

North Coast counties, remembering the economic and social turmoil that followed the spotted owl listing in 1990 and nervous about their vulnerability to lawsuits, moved first. Shortly after the North Coast ESA listing in 1997, Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity, Siskiyou, and Mendocino Counties agreed to work together on watershed-wide strategies to help save the fish.

That same year, they created the Five Counties Salmonid Conservation Program (5C) to focus on county land-use policies, general plans, and roads projects that would provide immediate benefits to salmon. In the past 12 years these counties have removed or modified 53 barriers--about 45 percent of their high-priority sites--opening up 130 miles of stream. Morrison Gulch was one of the first four projects completed.

“The 5C program largely pioneered the field of fish passage improvement in California, particularly in coastal watersheds and on county roads,” said Michael Bowen, the Coastal Conservancy’s North Coast project manager.

In 1998, Bay Area and Central Coast county supervisors established FishNet 4C in response to federal listings of their own coho and steelhead runs. Bringing together Sonoma, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties, and part of southern Mendocino County, FishNet 4C has to date helped remove 58 barriers, opening 162 miles of stream.

In 2002, federal, state, and local watershed restoration partners in Santa Cruz County, including the Coastal Conservancy, established the Integrated Watershed Restoration Program (IWRP) to help prioritize restoration projects and provide funding and technical advice for project designs. In addition, the group helps coordinate permits and approvals, and negotiates with public and private landholders. Since then projects have moved more swiftly, allowing 67 fish barriers to be removed in Santa Cruz County, with 14 more projects ready for construction. IWRP is helping to coordinate projects in San Mateo and Monterey Counties as well.

All along the North and Central Coasts, the counties and IWRP have been doing more than remove fish barriers. They have worked to reduce runoff from roads into streams and wetlands, to restore marsh habitat, and have trained county road crews in fish-friendly construction and maintenance practices. “We have people on our road crews now who are red-legged frog experts,” said Kallie Kull, senior planner for Marin County Department of Public Works’ Fish Passage Program.

The Coastal Conservancy has been a key source of assistance in all these coastal areas, funding not only construction but also project design and permitting, which other agencies and organizations typically have been reluctant to do. The Conservancy also compiled the first comprehensive inventory of passage barriers along the coast, a key step in helping counties determine which should be fixed first.

“The counties love these programs now,” said Weseloh, “because they have so many benefits.” When stream flow is restored for salmon, counties also save money on road maintenance and flood control. The projects also bring some jobs and new business opportunities to rural areas. “There are tremendous benefits, a lot of them things you don’t see,” said Mark Lancaster, program director of 5C. “And at an average [cost] of $110,000 per mile of habitat restored, it’s some of the cheapest habitat restoration out there.”

Private landowners have been increasingly interested in participating. “The demand far exceeds the resources we have,” said Karen Christensen, executive director of Santa Cruz’s Resource Conservation District and a founder of IWRP. “People see fish in the streams on their land and get excited,” said Weseloh. “They want to know if they can get help fixing their driveway culvert.” Part of what gets people so excited is that “It’s instant gratification. Whenever you remove a barrier, you generally see fish upstream in the first season.”

Despite the success and cost effectiveness of the barrier removal programs, their future is uncertain during the current severe recession. Many barrier-removal projects are funded by voter-approved State bonds, which were frozen in December 2008 (see Coast & Ocean, Winter 2008-2009 ). Although many bond-funded projects that were under way before the freeze can now be restarted, there is no guarantee they will get all the funds needed to finish construction. No bond funds will be available for new projects for at least another year.

Despite an unpromising future, many people who have been working on these projects are trying to forge ahead because they care deeply about salmon. The 5C program on the North Coast, once under the aegis of Trinity County, has shifted to nonprofit status to allow it to compete more effectively for grants. Central Coast and Bay Area counties are also searching for new funding sources.

“The 5C success is as much about the huge dedication of my two coworkers as anything else--the quiet, heroic work of the people who care enough to make it happen,” said Mark Lancaster. “I admire them every day.” At one point Lancaster stopped cashing his paychecks to make sure the organization would have cash on hand.

Times are even worse for the salmon than for their helpers, and global warming is likely to bring only more bad news. Lancaster, however, chooses to focus on the progress that has been made. “The good news is that we’ve opened up habitat, including some places where fish had never been recorded,” he said. With all the challenges that salmon have to overcome, “it’s important to open as much habitat as possible, to allow them to move as much as possible.”#

Shasta Dam Story

You don’t go out fishing on the Sacramento River above Red Bluff without “a cushion for your tush,” according to the locals. The water floating your raft or rowboat is too darn cold, especially when the salmon are spawning. This mid-summer chill isn’t natural in a river you could once walk all the way across in warm shallows, or swim through without turning blue. But then, not much is natural about the way water flows out of the mountains down into California’s Central Valley anymore.

Ever since workers poured 6.5 million cubic yards of concrete into a canyon above the town of Redding, backing up the waters of the Sacramento, Pit, and McCloud Rivers for 35 miles behind Shasta Dam, Californians have been less thirsty and freer of floods. It’s dams like this that Buford Holt, a biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, says have “made possible a bounty of food production and kept us functioning as a state, because obviously we don’t have any rain for six months out of the year.”

His agency runs the world’s largest water development and management system: the Central Valley Project, with 20 dams, 11 power plants, and 500 miles of canals. Shasta is one of California’s five large foothill dams around the Central Valley that help control floods and store snowmelt for water customers up and down the state (the others are Oroville, Folsom, New Melones, and Friant); hundreds of smaller, private dams criss-cross rivers up in the mountains, built long ago by miners, private landowners, PG&E, and various public entities.

Standing on the top, looking down the sheer, streaked face of the 602-foot-high dam, you cannot help but feel a wave of vertigo. Everything around the dam seems small and far away--snow-topped Mount Shasta in the distance, the other end of the green-blue lake created by the dam, the specks of ducks bobbing in the light chop, the pin-sized pines along the river at the bottom of this massive edifice.

Inside the dam lie some hollow galleries, but it’s mostly solid. Touring these inner hallways, visitors will see swastikas imprinted on some pipes, evidence that those ordering plumbing supplies during the dam’s construction (1938 to 1945) got some from Germany before World War II broke out. Newer hardware includes a device that enables operators to withdraw and release water from different lake depths--selecting the coldest bottom water, rather than the warmer upper layers, so that the eggs of spawning salmon stuck below the dam won’t die in the river. That’s why you need a cushion to boat on the river.

Before the dam got in their way, salmon spawned in the 187 miles of snow-chilled streams of the upper watershed. The dam brought with it a constellation of new facilities, including a hydroelectric power plant, a connection to the Coast Range’s Trinity River via a tunnel and Whiskeytown Reservoir, and a smaller dam, Keswick, nine miles downstream. Spawning salmon that make it as far upriver as Keswick are trapped and trucked to a fish hatchery at the mouth of nearby Battle Creek.

Keswick also serves as what is known in water engineering lingo as an “afterbay,” a place where the powerful flows released from Shasta for maximum power and revenue generation can be stored temporarily, then meted out slowly to the river. This way, the water level downstream doesn’t change too dramatically.

The Central Valley and State Water Projects smooth out the dramatic seasonal swings in drainage across the 42 percent of California’s landscape that is the watershed of San Francisco Bay. These projects collect, store, and release fresh water so that it fills irrigation ditches and city faucets when needed. Before the projects were built, Central Valley inhabitants had a lot more water than they needed in winter.

Flow gauges placed in the Sacramento River in the early 1900s confirmed that the river sometimes rose from its normal flow of 5,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 600,000 cfs in a matter of days--an amount that could never be contained within its natural banks. Even today, a train of storms can cause a very rapid rise in valley rivers; one former water manager remembers the reservoir coming up 16 feet in 24 hours. “You’ve got a kind of martini glass shape, so the lower the water level in the reservoir, the faster it can rise in a short period of time,” explains Holt.

The geography of the Central Valley is also unusually conducive to flooding. Its rivers drop quickly out of the mountains onto a vast flat basin, unlike the Mississippi River Valley, for example, whose waters gather and flow over half the continent. In his 1988 book Battling the Inland Sea, historian Robert Kelley described the scene before European settlement, after winter storms and spring snowmelt: “The Sacramento River and its tributaries rose like a vast taking in of breath to flow out over their banks onto the wide Valley floor, there to produce terrifying floods. On that remarkably level expanse the spreading waters then stilled and ponded to form an immense, quiet inland sea a hundred miles long. . . . Not until the late spring and summer months would it drain away downstream.”

Native Americans warned early settlers of the inland flooding, but the newcomers went ahead and built on the riverbanks anyway. Whereas the natives migrated between winter and summer villages to accommodate seasonal changes and collect different foods, the settlers weren’t so flexible. In the 1860s, the fledgling towns of Sacramento and Marysville spent months at a time underwater, and more than 80 years of ineffectual levee-building ensued.

Shasta Dam put a stop to such widespread flooding. But this year, the danger of any abundance of water is low. Listening to the chitchat on the streets of Redding, you hear talk of the size of the bathtub ring around the lake, and arguments about whether it looks worse or better than the droughts of ‘76 or ‘91. The ring is a pretty red color from the underlying sandstone, and a very rare plant called the Shasta snow wreath grows right above this sometimes wet, sometimes dry zone.

The white-flowered shrub, like the salmon and everything else in California, will have to try to adapt to a new climate-changed hydrography in which snow melts sooner and rain comes later, and in which a higher dam may expand the bathtub ring into the shrub’s habitat. These are ecological challenges that more concrete may or may not be able to meet.

Ariel Rubissow Okamoto lives in San Francisco, writes on water issues, manages an organic vineyard, and is bringing up two daughters not to flush, not to run the tap while doing dishes, and to think of recycling not as an option, but as a way of life.#

Sac River plan unveiled

A proposal supporters contend will equally protect endangered species and landowners of more than 77,000 acres along the Sacramento River was published in the Federal Register this week.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is seeking public comment on the Safe Harbor Agreement, a voluntary program that allows property owners within the boundaries of the Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum — from Keswick Dam above Redding to the Feather River confluence at Verona in Sutter County — to establish a population base for a number of threatened and endangered species on their properties.

Bev Anderson, executive director of the Forum, said the program essentially targets nonprofit groups such as the Nature Conservancy and their work to enhance the native riparian habitat along the river. However, any landowner — including government agencies — can sign up for the program.

Of the 77,200 acres in the area, 28,000 acres are owned by the federal and state governments, and conservation groups such as the Nature Conservancy, Anderson reported. Not all of that land is in an active restoration program.

The idea is to establish base populations of such creatures as the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, giant garter snake, the state-protected western pond turtle, Swainson's hawk, bank swallow, willow flycatcher and western yellow-billed cuckoo.

Then, whatever work is done on the land — whether it be riparian restoration or farming — would not be subject to endangered species laws as long as those populations are not injured to the point of going below the base populations.

Anderson said one of the real benefits of the program is that neighbors who are potentially impacted by what the protected landowners do, can also sign up under a less formal permitting process that allows them to keep their lands in their current conditions, and remove potential habitat for the endangered species without penalty.

In other words, a row crop farmer would not have to worry about damaging future yellow-billed cuckoo habitat that did not exist prior to signing the agreement.

Al Donner, an assistant field supervisor for Fish & Wildlife Service in Sacramento said the hope is that any landowner who joins the Safe Harbor program will do more than just enjoy the status quo.

The ultimate design of the program, he said, is that private landowners will enhance the habitat of the threatened or endangered species in conjunction with their current land uses.

There are time limits established in the program. A landowner who signs up at the 2010 base, for example, cannot expect that base population protection if the changes he makes to his land comes too far ahead in the future, Donner said.

Moreover, any significant change in land use or zoning would trigger the normal environmental reviews, he said.

If the property is sold, the new owner can opt to continue the existing agreement, write up his own or opt out entirely.

Donner said there is no cost to the property owner, nor does the federal government pay the property owners to sign the Safe Harbor Agreement. The public comment period of a similar agreement worked out by the Cattlemen's Association in Glenn County recently closed, and the final documents are being prepared, Donner said. That Safe Harbor program targets such things as vernal pools and fairy shrimp in pasture lands.

The new proposal takes in properties stretching 222 miles along the Sacramento River, the largest proposal of its kind, Donner said.#

Feds commit to more active role in Delta protection

Federal officials on Tuesday released a plan of action to help California deal with water supply and environmental problems in the Delta.

The Department of Interior plan fulfills a promise by the Obama administration in September to resume a more active role in California's water woes. It results from a memorandum of understanding signed between a number of federal agencies that deal with water, wildlife and farming activities.

The 23-page plan commits the federal government to a more active role in the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, an effort by the state to improve habitat and waterworks in the Delta. It includes a controversial water canal or tunnel to divert a portion of the Sacramento River's flow out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Federal officials described the plan released Tuesday as an evolving document that will change as conditions warrant in the year ahead.

"The Obama administration is committed to robust re-engagement in restoring the Bay-Delta ecosystem and addressing California's water needs," Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement.

Other commitments in the plan include building an intertie between state and federal canals that drain the Delta, and further study of the so-called Two Gates Project, which would involve building new water control gates in the Central Delta.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will also study water quality in the Delta, possibly including new limits on pesticides, and will work with the state to consider new water quality standards for the estuary. Another possibility is an inspection program for recreational boats in the Delta to control invasive species, akin to programs already in place at Lake Tahoe, Clear Lake and other water bodies.

Additional federal assistance for California farms is also planned, including programs to improve water conservation and to investigate carbon storage projects on Delta islands.#

Sacramento River group plans January forum

With the state of California in a budget crunch, funding for the Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum had been frozen for about nine months.

The group, established as a nonprofit in 1986, is a place where property owners, interested citizens and government agencies get together to talk about various issues along the Sacramento River.

In October, the group regained funding and manager Beverly Anderson-Abbs is back on board to regroup.

Anderson-Abbs explained that right now she is in the process of reconnecting with board members and getting new board members more acquainted with the history of the group.

A forum will be held Jan. 27-28 in Williams at Granzella's banquet room.

Speakers will include Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, who wrote the legislation that created the Sacramento River Conservation Forum. Mark Cowin, of the Department of Water Resources, will also present information.

On Jan. 27, the forum takes place from 3-6 p.m., with a dinner to follow. This will be the part most interesting to the public, she said.

The group meets again Jan. 28 for a meeting of the board.

The cost is $40. For more information, call Anderson-Abbs at 528-7411 or banderson@water.ca.gov.#

Agreement aims to help endangered wildlife

A new habitat protection plan aims to help endangered wildlife along 222 miles of the Sacramento River by encouraging rural property owners to lend a hand.

The so-called "safe harbor" agreement covers a huge stretch of California's largest river from the Red Bluff Diversion Dam south to Verona, just north of Sacramento's Natomas basin.

It is likely the largest program of its kind in the United States in terms of river miles covered, said Al Donner, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which brokered the agreement.

The Sacramento River has lost about 95 percent of its riparian - or riverside - habitat over the past century due to land development and flood-control projects. A goal of the safe harbor program is to reverse that decline with help from private property owners, who control most of the land along the river.

"The habitat that's left is in bits and pieces, so connecting those pieces becomes very important," said Greg Werner, Sacramento River project director for the Nature Conservancy, which also owns land along the river.

The agreement is designed to eliminate an unfortunate conundrum that often confronts rural landowners.

A farmer, for instance, may want to plant trees as a windbreak for his crops, or shrubs to control erosion. That new vegetation later might become habitat for an endangered species, such as the Swainson's hawk or the valley elderberry longhorn beetle.

If the farmer then needs to remove those plants to enlarge his fields, he could be prevented from doing so - or punished for destroying protected habitat if he does remove them - under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The safe harbor agreement assures participating landowners will not be punished. They can remove those plants, without special permits or penalties, as long as they don't take out more habitat than existed under "baseline" conditions at the start of the program.

Thus, it encourages landowners to create habitat now rather than do nothing out of fear their options to manage their own land will be restricted in the future.

The agreement targets seven species native to the Sacramento River that are protected by the Endangered Species Act: Swainson's hawk, valley elderberry longhorn beetle, giant garter snake, western pond turtle, bank swallow, yellow-billed cuckoo and willow flycatcher.

The nonprofit Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum, based in Red Bluff, will manage the program and serve as a buffer between landowners and the federal wildlife agency.

"This agreement says, 'Go ahead and plant that riparian habitat,'" said Beverley Anderson- Abbs, manager of the conservation forum. "You've done something good. You've helped bring a species back. So we're not going to come after you if something goes wrong."

Another benefit is that if property owners improve habitat on their land and an endangered species makes a home there, the safe harbor agreement protects neighboring landowners if the protected species expands next door.

This potential conflict causes friction between property owners today, especially whena land owner like the Nature Conservancy has habitat improvement as its primary function.

The group owns a number of parcels along the river and has deeded others to public agencies after acquiring them in the public interest to protect wildlife habitat.

"I don't think it's been anobstacle, but I think it's been a concern to neighbors,"

Werner said. "Safe harbor can allow an adjoining owner to feel more comfortable that they're not going to be negatively affected."

The program has a term of 30 years, and participation is voluntary. Details were published Monday in the Federal Register, and after a public comment period, the program is expected to take effect Jan. 21.#

Smith’s Chinook numbers are the highest in decades

The Smith River and its tributaries are seeing one of the largest runs of Chinook salmon in decades.

The basin’s rivers and creeks are so full that in some spots it seems like a dexterous person could walk across the backs of fish from one side to the other.

The spectacle was at its best at the Rowdy Creek Fish Hatchery early Tuesday evening.

As the sun set, huge salmon sporting the dark skin and white patches indicative of the end of their life cycle were hurling themselves out of the water trying to make it over a 6-foot concrete apron that dams the creek in front of the hatchery.

The resounding smack of their bodies hitting the concrete at the top of the apron left little doubt as to why running upstream to spawn ends up being the last major effort of their long traveling lives.

“I think this is the best year since the hatchery’s been open,” said Fish Technician Steve McCown. “We’ve been breaking records right and left.”

And McCown would know.

Each year the hatchery counts nearly 95 percent of the fish that forge their way up the Smith River’s Rowdy Creek tributary, and this year’s numbers are astronomically higher than any year in decades.

According to the hatchery’s running totals, the difference between last year’s numbers and this year’s is staggering, said hatchery director Andy Van Scoyk.

“Last year we had 52 adult males, 44 adult females and 154 jacks (2-year olds),” Van Scoyk said. “This year we’ve counted 879 males, 902 females and 545 jacks.”

Rowdy Creek isn’t the only Smith River tributary to see unusually high returns.

Rod McCleod, a fisheries biologist who currently monitors Mill Creek, said that the returns this year are the highest Mill Creek has seen since record-keeping began nearly 17 years ago.

“We are 40 percent higher right now than we’ve ever seen for a whole season,” McCleod said. “And the season isn’t over, we’re going to be getting a lot more fish.”

The reason more fish are on the way is due to nearly two weeks of dry and extremely cold weather early in the month, that dropped river flow rates to the point where it stranded large amounts of spawning salmon in lower holes of both the Smith and its tributaries.

“Despite the dry spell, there was enough rain early in the run that a good number of fish were able to make it into the tributaries to spawn,” McCleod said. “There’s so many that there’s more than enough to seed the system.”

McCleod said that it’s hard to know what caused the sudden jump in numbers, due to all the variables involved, but he felt that a major contributing factor was favorable ocean conditions.

“Fishery management is definitely helping,” McCleod said. “But mostly it has to do with favorable ocean conditions. You can assume that because there are just so many fish.”

Normally salmon run in cycles, a number of bad years followed by years of higher returns.

The difference this year is that the numbers are so much higher, which leads McCleod to believe that this isn’t just a cyclically based jump in numbers.

According to Van Scoyk, local fishermen have been taking advantage of the larger numbers and prolonged season.

“Some guys are pulling nearly 10 or 15 fish a day out of some of those holes,” Van Scoyk said. “Most of them aren’t a good color though, so they aren’t good for eating.”

The Smith River Basin’s success story did not extend to the Klamath this year, according to local guide Jim Burn.

“The Klamath was pretty good this year but nothing like the Smith,” Burn said. “There was some good fishing, but we are pulling a ton more fish each day on the Smith than we did on the Klamath.”#

Feds look at protections for dozens of species

Federal biologists will review 67 plants and animals from around the Southwest to determine whether they warrant possible protection under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday.

The agency decided to conduct status reviews for the species—found in 16 states and Mexico—in response to a mass petition filed in 2007 by WildEarth Guardians, a conservation group that has sought protections for hundreds of species from the West Coast to the Great Plains.

In all, the agency has promised to review 110 species as a result of the group's petitions.

Biologists with the agency's Southwest region will be responsible for most of the reviews. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley said some reviews could be finished by late 2010 but others will likely take more time given the agency's limited staff and funding.

"It will be a number of years before the whole group that has been determined as warranting a review gets addressed," he said.

Conservationists are encouraged the Fish and Wildlife Service is taking on so many reviews, but they argue that the agency needs to ask Congress for more money to get the job done sooner.

WildEarth Guardians estimates the agency receives 10 percent of the funding it needs each year for threatened and endangered species listing work. The agency's listing budget averages around $15 million a year.

"What this adds up to in our mind is a clear picture that the current list of endangered and threatened species is far short of the amount of species in this country that need federal protection. We need them to be realistic about the scope of the problem," said Nicole Rosmarino, WildEarth Guardians' wildlife program director.

The 67 species the agency will consider for possible protections include: the Arizona striped whiptail, a lizard found only in a small area in southeastern Arizona; four salamanders found only in Texas; a pupfish on White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico; a cave scorpion that lives at Grand Canyon National Park; several shrubs and flowering plants in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas; and more than a dozen snails, including one that lives among two rock slides on Cook's Peak in New Mexico.

Threats facing the species range from development and water depletion to pollution and climate change, conservationists said.

Many aquatic species in the region are particularly vulnerable because of changing precipitation patterns, lingering drought and water management, Rosmarino said.

In Wednesday's finding, the Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that 125 of the species in WildEarth Guardians' petition did not warrant review.

However, Rosmarino considers the effort a success because it will mark one of the most significant status reviews by the Southwest region.

"That was the whole purpose of this—to pressure the Fish and Wildlife Service to make the choices on which species deserve protection. We may disagree with them on a handful of species but the whole purpose was for them to do their job," she said.#

Forest Service rewriting Bush logging rule

The U.S. Forest Service is rewriting the basic planning rule that balances logging against wildlife, clean water, and other benefits of the national forests.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced from Washington, D.C., on Thursday that work is starting on an environmental impact statement to take the place of one produced by the Bush administration that was struck down by a federal judge.

Vilsack says this is a chance to adopt a modern rule that takes into account factors like clean water and climate change.

Intent on boosting logging, the Bush administration had scrapped the old rule requiring national forests to maintain viable populations of so-called indicator species, such as the spotted owl.#

East Sand Slough mess makes meal

The banks of the river along the East Sand Slough will be home to a couple hundred goats and sheep for the next few weeks as they clear the area of invasive vegetation.

The goats will be eating the invasive plants, including Himalayan blackberries, in the area as part of a plan to turn the area back into its natural state and create a place for people to enjoy, said Tom McCubbins, Tehama County Resource Conservation District's projects manager.

Aside from abandoned transient camps and fishermen going through the area to get to the river, the area has been untouched, with invasive plants growing wild and smothering native plants. Some of the invasive plants are wild, while others were transported to the area either by people or other means.

The project will not only get rid of invasive plants, but it will also reestablish the native habitat in the area. Getting rid of the invasive will help the natural plants thrive.

Clearing the brush is just one of the baby steps in the larger plan to turn the area back into a place people can use and enjoy, McCubbins said. There are plans to develop trails and turn the area into a recreational and educational use area after it is cleared.

The area, north of Antelope Bridge and to the East of I-5, was recently donated to the city by the Durango RV Park.

This is just one of the many projects that will help with the city's long-term goal of creating a recreation area. The idea is to have a wild area that is maintained in a natural state, McCubbins said.

The project is funded by a grant through the US Forest Service and the Tehama County Resource Advisory Committee. It will cost an estimated $34,000, which includes the cost of the goats and labor.

In a separate phase of the project, an integrated vegetation management plan is being developed for the East Sand Slough area including the southern part that runs on Forest Service land to the Sacramento River Discovery Center. The plan will address ways to control and suppress invasive plants such as Arundo and Tree of Heaven.

In the end, a developed plan will make it more cost efficient, McCubbins said.

"It's important to develop this management plan otherwise we'll just be running willy-nilly trying to get rid of invasive plants as they appear," McCubbins said.

An plan would help with getting grants and other funds for many of the projects that will make up for the loss of Lake Red Bluff.

The Conservation District, Forest Service and the Discovery Center will collaborate on the management plan.#

Clock ticking on Klamath dam deal signing

By John Driscoll

The deadline to sign the agreements to tear out the Klamath River's four main dams is only a month away. A few groups are still holding out and one has announced outright opposition.

The two draft agreements were released in September, the result of months of negotiations by 28 parties over the fate of the four dams owned by Portland, Ore-based Pacificorp. Since then, a number of the parties, including Humboldt County and three of four Klamath River tribes, have voted to endorse the agreement, along with a parallel $1 billion deal to restore habitat for fish and shore up water for farms.

Both the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Northcoast Environmental Center have voiced concerns about the agreement, and on Monday the NEC announced it was bailing out.

The hydropower deal has too many preconditions and opportunities for parties to pull out, the NEC said in a statement.

”Nothing in the deal places a limit on the number of annual license renewals Pacificorp can obtain without obtaining clean water certification,” said NEC Klamath Campaign Coordinator Jay Wright.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering reissuing a 30- to 50-year license for the dams.

The NEC said it is working to push a legislative package with a number of other environmental groups that it believes would lead to dam removal prior to the 2020 timeline in the Klamath River Hydropower Agreement.

A number of other major conservation and fishing groups -- including American Rivers, Trout Unlimited and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations -- have opted to support the agreements.

The dam removal agreement would require that the U.S. Interior Department determine by 2012 whether the project will restore salmon runs and be in the public interest.

Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2, and J.C. Boyle dams would begin to come out in 2020, paid for with up to $450 million from dam owner Pacificorp's ratepayers and a California water bond. A 2010 bond is set to come before Californians, but the $11.1 billion measure is seen by many as far too expensive in the fiscally plagued state and some are concerned provisions in it could threaten the Trinity River.

The dam removal deal would be signed along with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, a $1 billion effort to restore fish and wildlife habitat, provide more water for fish and more certain water deliveries for irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin.

The Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes have been championing the agreements, saying they represent the most sure-fire means of removing the dams and shifting management of water on the river in favor of salmon and other fisheries.

Karuk Tribe Klamath Coordinator Craig Tucker said that the NEC's decision to oppose the deals drains energy from supporters' efforts to get dam removal skeptics like Siskiyou County to shift their positions in favor of the river's restoration. But he said that the NEC's opposition is unlikely to pose a problem moving forward with the deals.

”I do not think they will stand in the way of progress,” Tucker said.#

County issues ‘negotiating points’ on Klamath hydro agreement

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors approved a list of 12 “negotiating points” regarding the pending Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) at this week’s board meeting.

The supervisors believe that the negotiating points could become major obstacles to any approval of the hydroelectric agreement by the county.

“These 12 points are key to Siskiyou County giving any consideration to the document at all,” said board chair Michael Kobseff. “This is huge. They are asking us to sign a document that would have us breaking the law.”

Kobseff was referring to the demand that the county sign the agreement by Jan. 14, before the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) are complied with or studied.

The settlement agreement requires that the county also sign the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) as a prerequisite to participation in the hydro agreement. The county has presented many objections to the KBRA over the past year. One negotiating point asks that the parties agree that the county does not have to sign the KBRA.

“They require us to sign the KBRA and there’s still not even a final document,” said Kobseff.

The list of negotiating points was prepared by County Counsel Thomas Guarino. The board directed that copies be sent to participating agencies of the state and federal governments and to various elected and non-elected officials.

Accompanying letters were also approved for mailing to Gov. Arnold Swarzenegger, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman.

Other negotiating points include:

•The potential effects and possible replacement of the city of Yreka’s water supply;

•A renewable energy source equal in capacity to the hydroelectric dams must be identified and funded prior to dam removal and the county not be required to advocate for rate increases;

• The secretary of the interior must direct his staff to fulfill the coordination obligations to the county;

• $2.5 million must be provided to the county for participation in and evaluation of the underlying environmental, economic and social studies to be utilized by the secretary of interior to make his determination of whether or not to proceed with dam removal;

•Environmental studies must include a review of all possible contaminants in the sediment released by dam removal, including dioxin;

• Along with economic studies outlining impacts to the county, the cumulative impacts of federal policies and programs on the county must be included in the CEQA and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews;

• Rights of the Shasta Tribe must not be infringed upon, including impacts on burial grounds or allowing other tribes to infringe on the Shasta’s fishing areas;

• President Obama’s statement on scientific integrity must be incorporated as a benchmark standard;

• Full funding for all impacts identified through the NEPA and CEQA processes must be provided; lakeshores, lake beds and riverbanks must be restored to their natural state; and

•?Allowable Timber Sale Quantity (ASQ) in the Northwest Forest Plan must be met.

The motion to approve the negotiating points was made by Kobseff and was seconded by Supervisor Grace Bennett. It passed 5-0.

Later in the meeting, a discussion took place concerning the proposed rate increase by Pacific Power. The board voted 5-0 to oppose the increase and selected Supervisor Marcia Armstrong to represent the county at the hearing.

County Administrator Brian McDermott was instructed to assist in preparation of a list of potential earmarks for Sen. Diane Feinstein. Supervisor Jim Cook made a request that a new sewage sludge treatment facility be included on the list. The motion passed 5-0.

Supervisor Ed Valenzuela made a motion to award a contract of approximately $2.3 million to Timberworks for the construction of the Wagon Creek Arm Pedestrian Bridge on the Lake Shastina Trail project.

Timberworks was the low bidder out of six bids received. Valenzuela’s motion passed 5-0. Of the total amount of the contract, $1.2 million was provided by an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant.#

New fish ladder to cost $3 to $4 million

The Sonoma County Water Agency must replace a fish ladder near Forestville to provide better protection for juvenile fish heading downstream in order to meet federal guidelines.

The fish ladder is expected to cost $3 million to $4 million and will be paid for by local ratepayers and state and federal funds.

“The screen itself does not pass National Marine Fisheries requirements,” said Dave Manning, a senior environment specialist. “There is throughout the country, in particular in California, an effort to design facilities to prevent fish from being injured or sucked into the pumps.”

The requirement is part of a far-reaching National Marine Fisheries order using Environmental Protection Administration rules to protect endangered coho and threatened Chinook and steelhead in the Russian River.

The Sonoma County Water Agency is expected to spend $500 million over the next 20 years to meet the orders.

The orders affect how much water the agency can take from the Russian River for its 600,000 customers in the major cities from Windsor to Petaluma, and the Valley of the Moon, Marin Municipal and North Marin water districts.

It also regulates the flows in and requires rehabilitation of Dry Creek, the Water Agency's pipeline to Lake Sonoma, and requires a change in the way the agency breaches the sandbar at the mouth of the river at Jenner.

The agency now has two fish ladders in the Russian River near Forestville, where it also has an inflatable rubber-bladder dam to pool water for its pumping operations.

Both were built in 1970s, but only the westside ladder is near the intake pumps and needs to be replaced. according to a Water Agency feasibility study released Wednesday.

It now has screens and a rotating drum to let fish pass by the dam to move upstream.

The downstream juvenile fish, which are swimming to the ocean to feed before returning to spawn, now must go over the rubber dam, but can also be injured against the fish screens that are protecting the pumps or be sucked into the pumps themselves.

The present ladder will be replaced with a flat, wider inclined slot to let fish swim through both ways, with the water flow redirected so it provides a slower current.

There will also be cameras to count the fish moving up and downstream, and a viewing platform into the ladder that will be open to public tours.#

Mokelumne Fish Hatchery works to rebuild battered salmon population

By Jordan Guinn

It's not likely to be confused with Pike Place Market in Seattle, but the Mokelumne Fish Hatchery at the base of Camanche Dam shares the scenery of recently killed salmon being thrown across the room with that famous tourist destination.

While it may seem macabre to some, the process of artificially spawning Chinook salmon plays a key role in maintaining and improving salmon populations.

The population of Chinook salmon in California has dwindled by staggering amounts in recent years — rattling biologists, environmentalists and fisherman alike.

Their shrinking numbers have forced regulators to cancel the commercial salmon season, and there is no definitive prediction or estimate on when it will return.

"There are a lot of variables," said Bill Smith, Mokelumne Fish Hatchery manager, which is managed by the Department of Fish and Game and East Bay Municipal Utility District. He said the weather, river levels and ocean conditions all play into the salmon's population numbers.

Last year, the hatchery only fertilized 300,000 eggs. He said the workers stayed busy by doing a lot of cleaning and maintenance. Smith said the Mokelumne Hatchery has fertilized more than 2 million eggs this year. The hatchery's goal is to reach 9 million eggs in future years. While it won't approach the figure this year, it's a vast improvement over previous salmon seasons.

To build the egg count, the Mokelumne Hatchery participates in the Coded-Wire Tagging Program that fits Chinook salmon with instruments designating the hatchery at which they were spawned and raised.

The program helps ensure each hatchery gets the eggs it's entitled to from the salmon that spawned there. The Mokelumne Hatchery is working with the Department of Fish and Game to scan the fish earlier and get the egg results in real time.

"We really want to get as many eggs as possible," said Jose Setka, supervising fisheries and wildlife biologist for EBMUD.

Even though the tags are barely larger than a millimeter, workers can determine which fish are tagged through experience and understanding the tell-tale sign: The adipose fin, fatty tissue located between the dorsal fin and tail, is removed when the tags are installed, making it easier for workers to spot and sort them.

In order to reach their final destination and purpose in life, the salmon climb the ladders — wooden separators that force them to jump level to level — before reaching the crowder. The crowder is the stage before the adults are brought inside and harvested. It's a motorized contraption equipped with metal bars spaced closely together, to prevent fish from getting through, and runs the length of a small channel where the salmon are stored.

As the crowder makes its methodical march towards the salmon, they are forced to a lift gate which brings them into the fish loader inside the main building. From there, the salmon are given an electrical shock to stun them and make them easier to sort. Jacks, or males, go on one side, while Jills, or females, are sent to the other.

"We're getting a lot of Jacks," said Setka. "It's a good sign for next year."

He said it's a good sign because it shows a high survival rate, and the salmon, in the second year of their three-year life cycle, should return next year in bigger numbers.

Setka said there are no guarantees the salmon population will grow to the point that commercial anglers could fish them again next year, but said the improvement is reason for optimism.

The dazed fish are bashed on the head with a orange mallet before another worker sprays water through the females' gills to wash blood out prior to the removal of their eggs. To prevent eggs from being wasted or discharged too early, small pieces of foam similar to earplugs are wedged in a small opening in the females' lower stomachs.

The stomach is cut open with a hooked plastic knife and hundreds of tangerine-colored eggs dump out into a white tub. Another worker picks up a male salmon and squeezes its belly until sperm, or milt, is forced out.

Milt is shot into the tub before and as eggs are removed from the female's belly.

Then the tub is agitated and taken to a station where the eggs are disinfected with a water and iodine mixture.

Smith said it's safe to use the diluted iodine because it doesn't negatively affect the eggs.

After the salmon are killed, they are thrown into one of two large containers. One is for salmon fitted with a coded-wire tag in their snout, informing where the fish hatched from. The other is for fish without tags. The heads will be removed from the tagged fish and logged by the Department of Fish and Game.

Although harvested for their eggs and milt, the salmon carcasses are not wasted. They are either donated to local food banks or used as fertilizer in area farms and vineyards.

The eggs are moved to hatching jars after the fertilization and sanitation process. The hatching jars are where the eggs sit in running water for 30 days. Salmon sac-fry take 30 days to absorb their yolks and develop into fingerlings.

When the eggs hatch, salmon are kept in troughs for at least 12 weeks before being moved to the raceways, where they are fed four to eight times a day with crumb-sized pellets.

Smith said there are about 45 fingerling salmon per one pound when they are released.

The eggs spawned now will generate fish, which will be released into the wild around mid-May, Smith said. Other salmon spawned in October will find themselves on their own in April after they are trucked to a designated location.

"They go to the San Joaquin River, below the mouth of the Mokelumne," said Smith. "It's far enough down to avoid pumping stations but close enough for them to find their way back."#

How can state salmon populations be saved?

Tina Swanson is the executive director of The Bay Institute, an organization that has developed research, advocacy programs and education for the watershed that feeds into the San Francisco Bay for 28 years. She was appointed to the position in 2008 and was a researcher for eight years at University of California, Davis. She recently discussed California's salmon crisis in a telephone interview with the Lodi News-Sentinel.

Q: How did this happen to the salmon population?

A: Fifty years ago, dams were built that blocked spawning grounds. They were replaced by hatcheries in which salmon were collected and released.

Q: Can the salmon population in California ever return to what it was?

A: It can. The No. 1 reason is because salmon are resilient. As long as we understand the river and understand what the salmon need, it can happen. But we need good conditions in the river, the estuary and the ocean. We can improve conditions in the river, and there is an opportunity to improve conditions in the estuary and ocean.

Q: What can be done in the rivers?

A: The problems with the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds are dams blocking salmon from their historic spawning spots. The flows in the river are insufficient, or insufficient for incubating eggs. If flow conditions are improved, it improves water quality. Although resilient, salmon are sensitive to warm temperatures. They are also sensitive to contaminants and low river levels decrease their ability to survive.

Q: What can be done in the estuary?

A: It's many of the same problems. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta levels are generally too low. Salmon are sucked into export pumps in the south Delta, or get eaten by predatory fish like largemouth bass. Reducing the water pump rate could help the salmon, but the physical alteration of the Delta is a problem as well. The export of water forces San Joaquin salmon closer to the pumps. Water flows need to vary with the seasons.

Q: What are some steps that can be taken to show immediate, or quick, results?

It can be as easy as flipping a switch in some cases. Adjustments can be made in days and there needs to be continuous monitoring. We also need to improve the habitat and restore the flood plain. In the longer term, we need to restore the tidal marsh. However, it takes years to become a functional ecosystem again.

Q: When can we expect to see a commercial salmon season again?

A: It's likely this year's season will be severely curtailed or even closed. It's going to be on a year-by-year basis. The salmon have a three-year life cycle, and we are looking at the ocean and surveying it. We will see how many are returning and how many 2-year-olds are in the ocean. If ocean conditions are favorable, we could have huge increases like we did in the late-1990s.

Q: Are hatcheries part of the solution?

A: So far the evidence is mixed. In the last 10 to 20 years, we've learned that hatcheries are not the most effective mitigation strategy. There needs to be greater scrutiny. There needs to be a better job of managing genetics to prevent creating an inbreeding problem. The fish raised in tanks or raceways in the hatchery are not as competent as their wild cousins. They don't know how to hunt or avoid a predator.#

Grape growers face restrictions on stream-water use

A showdown is looming between grape growers and the agency tasked with protecting fish in the Russian River.

Russian River grape growers are collecting data to counter a nearing state decision on how to protect endangered fish from the impacts of water pumping for frost protection.

The state Water Resources Control Board is contemplating new regulations along the river after federal fish managers declared that water diversions for frost protection have harmed salmon and steelhead.

Three environmental groups are pressuring the state to adopt strict rules. Last month, the groups formally notified the water board of their intent to sue the state under the federal Endangered Species Act.

A spokesman for one of the three environmental groups said the fish will remain at risk of extinction unless the state takes decisive action and rejects the idea of self-regulation by growers.

“We don’t really have time to sit around and spend 10 years discussing half measures that may or may not work,” said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The other two environmental groups are Northern California River Watch and Coast Action Group.

Farm leaders in Sonoma and Mendocino counties counter that since the federal regulators brought the issue to the forefront in 2008, they have made great strides to reduce impacts on salmon and steelhead. That includes the construction of new reservoirs near Hopland, the site of fish strandings in 2008.

“We’re here to protect fish as well, but it can’t be done by eliminating the viticulture industry in Mendocino and Sonoma County,” said Devon Jones, executive director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau.

On freezing nights in spring, many growers spray water over their vineyards to protect the vines from damage. The irrigation water freezes and encapsulates the green buds in ice, keeping the plant tissue safe at a constant 32-degree temperature.

But the National Marine Fisheries Service has called for limits on the diversion of stream water after frost protection stranded and killed fish in 2008. The strandings affected endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead, and occurred again last spring.

“Based on the information that we have, it appears that frost protection has a significant impact on ESA-listed species,” said Steve Edmondson, the service’s Northern California habitat manager based in Santa Rosa.

Five grower meetings will occur from Jan. 6 to 14 in the river basin in Sonoma County.

“It is really critical that all growers get involved with this,” said Nick Frey, president of the 1,800-member Sonoma County Wine Grape Commission.

This spring “there’s a risk of not everyone having water for frost protection,” Frey said.

The water board could take action as early as Jan. 5, although an agenda for that meeting has yet to be released. Several observers said the board appears ready to put new rules in place before frost protection begins in March.

Before the water board’s January meeting, farm leaders are scrambling to collect data on surface water use along three tributaries of special concern: Mark West, Maacama and Green Valley creeks. As well, they hope to inform farmers of recent developments and to urge those on the river’s tributaries to adopt more fish-friendly practices.

“Let’s get the diversions out of the creeks, and let’s get the water stored in ponds,” said Pete Opatz, a viticulturist overseeing vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties for Silverado Premium Properties.#

Hope for steelhead recovery

This week marks not only the start of Advent but also a time of hope — perhaps even prayer — for many California fishermen. I'm talking about the opening of steelhead season.

Steelhead are a form of rainbow trout that have adapted, like salmon, to spending most of their lives in the ocean, then returning to freshwater streams to spawn. For sportsmen, steelhead returning to our local streams in the winter is a welcome sign, like swallows coming back to San Juan Capistrano or deer coming down from the high country with the onset of snow.

Steelhead are an iconic fish among freshwater anglers. They are similar to salmon in size and power, and famously difficult to "bring to hand." What's more, fishing for steelhead requires the patience and stoicism of a monk. Classic steelhead fishing conditions are cold rainy weather and a river running high and dirty — and frequently dozens of fellow anglers doing penance at the same fishing hole.

Growing up in Carmel Valley in the 1960s and '70s, my brother and I eagerly awaited the opening of steelhead season. Our favorite fishing spot was just upstream of the bridge at Robinson Canyon Road.

In those days, anglers lined the banks of the Carmel River elbow-to-elbow and more than 1,000 adult steelhead would make it all the way to the base of San Clemente Dam each winter.

Now, there are fewer adult steelhead, a lot fewer, in the river. In fact, steelhead runs in most California rivers have been in decline for decades, to the extent that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed steelhead in most regions of California as threatened. In coastal rivers south of Point Concepcion, steelhead are listed as endangered, meaning they are in imminent danger of extermination.

The decline is blamed primarily on "human competition" for the high-quality water the fish require and "alteration of the landscapes," said native fishes expert Peter Moyle of the University of California-Davis.

Periodic drought conditions play a role, too. Historical counts of adult steelhead at the San Clemente Dam fish ladder on the Carmel River suggest a strong relationship between fish returns and levels of rainfall.

Actually, steelhead in the Carmel River might be gone altogether if not for the efforts of a remarkable partnership.

A group of sportsmen-volunteers called the Carmel River Steelhead Association has been working with the Department of Fish and Game and the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District since 1974.

Every summer, as stream flows subside, the association conducts fish rescues that move juvenile steelhead to other parts of the drainage, the lagoon, or the ocean so that they will have a chance to mature and spawn.

In 2009, the association rescued some 6,000 steelhead. That may sound like a lot, but the group's average annual rescue is more than 10,000 fish, and in good years (like 2008) it may rescue more than 25,000. The rescue of that many fish is required to keep alive a run of steelhead that, last winter, returned only 95 adult fish to San Clemente Dam.

Some people blame steelhead, and all the legal obligations to preserve them, for the water shortage on the Peninsula. But even if there were no at-risk species in the Carmel River, and we could divert more water, there wouldn't be enough to meet our cumulative human needs.

Fish conservation and sufficient water supply are not mutually exclusive. For example, on the San Joaquin River, water managers, fish agencies, farmers and environmentalists are now committed to the twin goals of developing a reliable water supply and restoring salmon and steelhead.

Other factors also give me hope. These include a recovery plan for Central Coastal steelhead recently completed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a new commitment to removing the decrepit San Clemente Dam, and new legislation, H.R. 4040, by Rep. Sam Farr that will better protect steelhead spawning habitat in the upper Carmel, Salinas and Little Sur river watersheds.

As I gear up for steelhead fishing this season, I humbly petition the powers-that-be for plenty of rain and prepare to show my 11-year-old son how to engage this awesome fish and how to let it go unharmed, the way dozens of gruff gentlemen on the river unwittingly showed me 40 years ago.#

Sam Davidson, who lives in Aromas, is field director for Trout Unlimited.

Time to end the occupation of Yosemite

As three of the former superintendents of Yosemite National Park, we are thrilled that the recent documentary series on PBS, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," brought home to millions of Americans the extraordinary value and beauty of Yosemite National Park. Alas, the series also shed light on an environmental travesty that the people of San Francisco now have the opportunity to correct: the destruction of Hetch Hetchy Valley.

For 90 years, the Hetch Hetchy Valley has been used to store San Francisco's water. Situated within Yosemite National Park, this remarkable glacial valley was described by John Muir as "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples." The Hetch Hetchy Valley ecosystem was once one of the most diverse systems in the world - and can be again.

As society faces the dual challenge of mitigating climate change and improving our national parks, we can think of no more important campaign than to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Restoring this valley will result in the recreation of 9 miles of the wild and scenic Tuolumne River, the regeneration of miles of extraordinary wilderness and the restoration of habitat.

Restoration will not mean a loss of water rights for San Francisco - the city will continue to draw water from and produce energy along the Tuolumne River. Seven studies have been undertaken by a broad spectrum of organizations to determine if San Francisco's interests would be harmed if the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir were drained and the water stored elsewhere. All have concluded that restoration is feasible without damaging the interests of San Francisco. No studies exist suggesting otherwise.

Restoration will, however, require San Francisco to do a better job with the water it has. The Hetch Hetchy system was innovative when it was built in the early 20th century but the abundance of federally subsidized water has precluded city leaders from investing in a more environmentally friendly water system.

For example, San Francisco produces just 1 million gallons per day of recycled water - comparatively, Los Angeles produces 189 million gallons per day. In 1930, San Francisco utilized 14.5 millions of gallons per day of local groundwater compared with just 2.5 millions of gallons today.

Furthermore, San Francisco receives on average 55,000 acre feet of rainwater each year (or 44 millions or gallons of water per day), the vast majority of which is deliberately prevented from seeping into the aquifer and recharging the groundwater supplies.

Justifiably, San Francisco is proud of the strides it has made in reducing the city's impact on the environment but until it takes the lead on bringing the Hetch Hetchy Valley back to life it cannot claim to be "green."

As former stewards and lifelong admirers of Yosemite National Park, we urge San Franciscans to contact their city leaders and ask them to end the "occupation" of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. By investing in state-of-the-art recycling, conservation and groundwater systems, the city can eliminate the need to continue to use Yosemite National Park as a water storage facility.#

Dave Mihalic served as superintendent of Yosemite National Park from 1999 to 2003, Barbara Jo Griffin served from 1995 to 1997 and Bob Binnewies served from 1979 to 1986. All three are members of the National Advisory Board of Restore Hetch Hetchy.

Pacifica rancher in trouble for filling creek with construction debris

By Julia Scott

A ranch owner has run afoul of city, state and federal laws by building several horse structures without permits and endangering wildlife habitat by illegally filling a creek with construction debris, according to officials.

Millard Tong founded Millwood Ranch four years ago, a 166-acre horse boarding and riding facility tucked into the hills behind Pacifica's Linda Mar neighborhood. In the past year and a half, he has received five stop-work orders from Pacifica building officials for illegal construction work, from July 2008 to November. Tong finally halted his construction work Nov. 4 after city officials arrived with police officers, according to city officials.

The most serious violation at Millwood Ranch involved the illegal dumping of soil in an 85-foot stretch of sensitive creek bed in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. This prompted a cease-and-desist order from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late October and could make Tong liable for major fines and cleanup requirements.

Other work on the ranch involved grading a hillside, constructing roads, and moving vast amounts of earth without a permit, according to local and state officials. These and other problems have resulted in a flurry of site visits and enforcement letters from the California Department of Fish and Game and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The Water Quality Control Board sent Tong a cleanup and abatement

order this week that requires Tong to remove the soil and restore the creek bed, a tributary of San Pedro Creek. The Army Corp's order mandates similar actions, and officials from both agencies say Tong also piled 500 cubic yards of soil and concrete on sensitive wetland vegetation lining the sides of the creek. The threatened California red-legged frog is generally found in creek beds in the area, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"This is upstream from San Pedro Creek, which has a lot of steelhead restoration activities going on," said Dyan Whyte, assistant executive officer with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. "The upper parts of these watersheds are important in that they deliver nutrients downstream and they have wildlife habitat. If you cut off the top of it, or clog it up with sediment, it's just going to wash downstream and hurt the fish."

Tong hasn't faced any fines so far and the San Mateo County District Attorney's office is not talking about filing charges at this time, preferring to wait and see whether Tong will comply with the cleanup and permitting requirements that would legalize some of his construction work after the fact.

The city of Pacifica and other agencies have been monitoring Millwood Ranch for more than a year but found it difficult to get Tong to comply with stop-work orders, according to Elizabeth Claycomb, management analyst with Pacifica's planning department.

Even Chuck Finney, deputy district attorney in San Mateo County's Consumer & Environmental Protection Unit, said he talked to Tong and his consultant a year ago about unlawful activity on the ranch, only to learn several months later that Tong had once again started moving large quantities of dirt without a permit.

City officials say Tong has erected horse paddocks and nearly finished putting a large roof on a horse arena propped up by large steel beams and a poured concrete foundation this year without a permit.

The remote location of the ranch made it difficult to catch the construction work in action, which could have resulted in stronger enforcement efforts earlier on, said Claycomb.

"Each time we go out to conduct a site inspection, there's new horse paddocks and corrals, there are new roads there. There's changes. We're trying to figure out what else happened in the past year — he hadn't stopped in order for us to assess what's transpired and kept doing more and more (grading) — it's convoluted our ability to assess what types of earth moving permits are required for legalizing that work."

Tong has since submitted plans, the first step in a permit review process, for construction work already done on the horse arena roof and some roadwork. Claycomb said the plans are incomplete. Tong also submitted plans to the Department of Fish and Game last spring to fix problems associated with putting soil in a streambed. Those plans are also incomplete, according to Richard Fitzgerald, coastal habitat conservation supervisor with the Department of Fish and Game.

Tong admits he erred in not seeking a permit for the horse arena work and the sediment loads in the creek bed, but he maintains that he stopped the work when he was told to.

"My impression was that a lot of structures we put up, like fencing and shelter for horses, were part the business of being on agricultural land. I was mistaken, so we stopped work and the city is reviewing the plans... (And) from the first time that the Water Quality Control Board came out and told me that pushing dirt in the creek was not legal, I stopped."

Tong continues to believe that he should not have to apply for permits for activities like road maintenance and grading, which he says are part of the everyday duties of managing a ranch.

"There's a lot of other work — cleaning the pastures, maintaining the fences, which are part of our work here. This ranch is not just a couple acres. There's a lot of fire roads that have to be repaired. I can't stop."#

Court order allows Department of Fish Game to continue the Fish Stocking Program thru January

The Fish Stocking Program of the California Department of Fish Game (DFG) will continue following weeks of negotiations and a signed court order from Sacramento Superior Court, however if you are looking to fish newly planted waters, don't delay. The Fish Stocking Program could come to an end in January.

Barring no unforeseen conditions, the week of December 6 and 13, California Region Three - Bay Delta will see "catchable size fish" from DFG's own hatcheries being stocked in "approved stocking waters".

California Region Two - North Central was scheduled for an earlier stock date. Folsom Lake's first plant at Granite Bay was to occur by December 5, and its second supply will be release at Browns Ravine during the week of December 6.

Other nearby Northern California Waters, considered in Region Four - Central, including, Don Pedro, New Melones, McClure, in addition to several more will conclude their stocking activity by December 5.

The San Joaquin River below the Friant Dam, also a part of Region Four, will see their plant in two consecutive weeks.

California currently has 21 active hatcheries in operation, eight of which raise salmon and steelhead, while the remaining are designated trout hatcheries.

A prior tentative ruling in early November would have prohibited the program to continue as written. The DFG negotiations did not go unrewarded, resulting in the program to continue with some exceptions.

The earlier ruling was a result of a lawsuit in which DFG was blamed for the provision of fish plants for more than a century without conducting an Environmental Impact Report.

DFG underwent the multimillion dollar process, however the report was not completed in the allotted time line, requiring a Judge to order new terms to be agreed upon if stocking was to continue.

The deadline for the report has been pushed back to January 2010 and stocking may resume until that time.#

Yellowstone a petri dish for climate change

Roy Renkin is a biologist by training but a detective by inclination, and something about the willows was nagging him.

The shrubs flanking a creek in Yellowstone's Blacktail drainage had never grown so tall and lush. But why?

Many of the park's scientists theorized it was related to the successful reintroduction of wolves, which might have pushed elk out of the area, putting an end to the constant nibbling that stunted willows' growth.

But this summer, Renkin and a colleague arrived at their own theory: climate change.

Warmer temperatures have extended the park's growing season for plants by up to 30%. Renkin found that given the additional growing time, willows produced powerful defensive compounds that made them unpalatable to wildlife, enabling some to grow more than twice as high.

The tentative findings are a small piece of a much larger climate puzzle whose effects are making themselves known at national parks across the country. In some cases, the changes are imperiling the very features that define some of the nation's most-beloved parks.

The ice fields at Glacier National Park in Montana are quickly fading and may be gone by the end of the decade. In California, the namesake plants at Joshua Tree National Park are disappearing, as are the big trees at Redwood. Increasing hurricane frequency and intensity is destroying the Everglades in Florida.

But, because of a number of unique factors, all eyes are on Yellowstone to lead the way in understanding climate change.

Yellowstone's 2.2-million carefully managed acres are among the few places left in North America to retain a virtually intact ecosystem, in a landscape where the hand of man remains light. The park's strict federal protections have maintained a refugium -- a kind of Noah's Ark of plants and animals whose lives are largely unmolested by localized industrial pollution.

"We are fortunate here to have a natural laboratory that is mostly in its original state," said Kerry Murphy, a Yellowstone wildlife biologist. "It's one of the few places in the United States where natural processes are allowed to operate."

That approach has support in Washington from newly installed park service Director Jon Jarvis. "Climate change is going to be the most significant challenge to the fundamental premise and foundational management of our national parks that we have ever faced," he said.

As more and more climate research originates in the park, subtle changes are coming into focus. Yellowstone officials are quick to say that not all of the unexplained transformations here have a direct link with climate change. Scores of effects have yet to be extensively studied, they say. But park managers point to a host of worrisome changes.

With food sources and hospitable weather lingering well into fall, Yellowstone's grizzly bears are retiring to their dens later than ever before. In September, a federal judge ordered the region’s grizzlies back on the endangered species list, in part because of climate change.

Aided by warmer weather and the easy pickings of drought-stricken trees, beetles are ravaging the park's pines; a 50% mortality rate among mature trees is destroying grizzlies' most important food source.

The population crash of pikas, small rabbit-like mammals that have historically lived in the park's rocky alpine slopes, has led to their being considered for inclusion on the endangered species list, the first animal in the lower 48 states whose extinction threat is pegged to climate change.

The number of heat-loving invasive plants and weeds has doubled in the last two decades, out-competing native flora that are crucial to overall ecosystem health.

Yellowstone's complex water network also shows signs it has been thrown out of kilter, initiating a host of concerns about rippling effects as the course of the park's lifeblood is altered. Many of the park's dwindling creeks and rivers are no longer draining into Yellowstone Lake, cutting off native fish from their spawning grounds.

Yellowstone's kettle ponds, formed by retreating glaciers, have been shrinking at an alarming rate. This has reduced the population of trumpeter swans, which rely on the bodies of water not just for nesting but also as a refuge from predators.

The park's iconic Old Faithful is also at risk. Park officials worry that receding groundwater levels -- which regulate Old Faithful and hundreds of Yellowstone's other geysers -- could soon diminish their dramatic displays.

Not long ago it was impolitic for scientists in the National Park Service to consider climate change in their analysis of park problems.

"We were advised not to use 'climate' and 'change' in the same sentence," said Tom Olliff, chief of the Yellowstone Center for Resources. But the Obama administration has made climate-change science a priority, Olliff said, so now the issue is at the forefront of staff discussions about resource protection.

Experts outside the park service are converging here to chart even minute changes, following their significance in the entire 20-million acre ecosystem that runs along the spine of the northern Rockies.

The park is one of 20 U.S. sites selected to be part of the National Ecological Observatory Network. The observatory in Yellowstone will gather extensive ecological and climate data, which will be collated with information from sites around the continent and used for detailing and forecasting wide-scale ecological and climate shifts.

Some consequences of climate change are obvious to any visitor. Yellowstone's insect-infested pine forests stand in rusty brown relief against the park's meadows and green mountains. What's not obvious is the desperate drama that accompanies an infestation. Trees already distressed by drought are more likely to be set upon by mountain pine beetles.

Carrying a short-handled ax, Renkin approached a dying pine and after a quick chop, revealed the anatomy of an attack. Swarms of the bugs -- each an eighth of an inch -- girdled the tree, boring through the outer bark. Females scrape out "nuptial chamber" troughs in which their eggs are laid. When all is ready, the females produce a pheromone that calls male beetles to the tree.

Once the young hatch, they eat their way out of the tree, creating meandering, intricate "galleries" that look like delicate shallow carvings.

The pine tree has little defense against such an insect barrage. A healthy tree will attempt to expel the beetles by secreting resin, or pitch, which pushes out through the insect's bore hole. Infested trees are easy to identify by "pitch tubes" leaking all over their trunks. However, the effort to rid itself of the pests expends energy, water and nutrient stores. The struggling tree may starve itself in order to defend itself.

Climate change is spurring a handful of similar developments throughout the park, amplifying existing problems and, in some cases, creating new ones. Trees are growing in Yellowstone's mountain meadows, filling open areas that are crucial to the livelihoods of some wildlife.

Olliff said that in recent years a season's entire wolf pup production was lost to canine distemper or parvo. Park scientists have noted an increase in the spread of the disease as temperatures rise, he said, but right now climate change is only a theoretical culprit.

"We have species that have very narrow habitats -- wolverine, pika, cutthroat trout," said Glenn Plumb, Yellowstone's chief of resources, adding that those animals are already stressed by invasive species of plants and animals.

"What if climate change is a catalyst that gives an invasive species an edge over the native, beyond what they already have?" he asked. "Now you have the potential of a devastating one-two punch."#

Humboldt County supervisors on Tuesday voted to conditionally support the draft agreements meant to tear out the Klamath River's four main dams and resolve the thorniest fish and water issues in the basin.

The county Department of Public Works recommended the action, saying the two agreements behind the massive dam removal project were technically sound and politically supported. While the Klamath River Hydropower Agreement envisions the dams beginning to come out in 2020, Environmental Services Manager Hank Seeman said the timeline would allow state and federal environmental reviews of the complex project to be complete and legally defensible.

Yurok Tribe Policy Analyst Troy Fletcher said that the agreements are the best means to restore the struggling fisheries of the Klamath River and resolve long-standing disputes. There is no other credible alternative, he said.

”If not these agreements, what are the concrete, achievable alternatives?” Fletcher said.

The draft dam removal agreement among 28 parties in the basin and dam owner Pacificorp calls for the U.S. Interior Department to determine by 2012 whether the project will restore salmon runs and be in the public interest. Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2, and J.C. Boyle dams would begin to come out in 2020, paid for with up to $450 million from dam owner Pacificorp's ratepayers and a California water bond. One such bond is coming before Californians in 2010, though the $11.1 billion measure may

face lukewarm support in a debt-ridden state and could threaten the Trinity River.

The dam removal deal would be signed along with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, a $1 billion effort to restore fish and wildlife habitat, provide more water for fish and more certain water deliveries for irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin.

While broadly supported among the negotiating parties, the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Northcoast Environmental Center have been critical. Jay Wright with the NEC said that the agreements have too many off-ramps for parties, which could scuttle the project, and that the 2020 deadline isn't secure. He said that the dam removal pact and the restoration deal should not be tied together.

”We feel that the issues between dam removal and restoration are logically separate issues,” Wright said.

But Klamath River advocate Dr. Denver Nelson said that the NEC has never consulted many of its lifelong members. The Board of Supervisors shouldn't view the NEC as a significant player like the Yurok Tribe, Nelson said, adding that the organization's deceased former leader Tim McKay would not agree with the NEC's position.

”I don't think Tim McKay would approve of their position,” Nelson said.

Fifth District Supervisor Jill Duffy said that the county earns a place at the negotiating table by approving the draft deals, enabling it to continue expressing its concerns as the complicated process unfolds in the coming years.

”The heavy lifting is going to be done after the agreements are signed,” Duffy said.

While 3rd District Supervisor Mark Lovelace expressed the need for some critics' concerns to be addressed, he said the alternatives to the deals proposed so far are only speculative.

The board voted to endorse the deals 5-0.

Duffy will travel to Portland, Ore., next week to take part in helping to finalize the agreements, which each organization would bring back to its governing body for final approval. A deadline of Jan. 14 is set for all parties to sign or oppose the agreements.#

Little-known Honcut Creek is the one place where imperiled California salmon might be able to make a comeback.

It's also where new logging rules soon will restrict how many trees can be cut on private land along this Feather River tributary, even though there aren't any salmon in its forested reaches.

The goal is to protect potential salmon habitat by preserving shade along the creek – to keep the water cool – and to prevent erosion that could destroy spawning gravels downstream.

The new logging rules were approved last month by the California Board of Forestry in a rare unanimous vote.

The rules are full of new language asserting the duty of landowners to protect salmon and their habitat at all times – a major difference from old rules in which lumber production was the primary concern.

"This is a sea change," said George Gentry, executive officer of the Board of Forestry. "We are absolutely putting forward stewardship as a primary principle."

Starting Jan. 1, private landowners in the Sierra Nevada will not be allowed to cut down trees within 30 feet of streams known to provide habitat for salmon and steelhead.

In a second zone, 30 to 70 feet from streams, only 30 percent of the tree canopy can be removed. The seven largest trees on every acre must also be left standing. Slightly different buffer zones apply in coastal forests.

It's a major change from old rules, which allowed landowners to remove half the tree canopy right to the waterline.

The Soper-Wheeler Co. owns about 320 acres bracketing Honcut Creek near the town of Brownsville in Yuba County. On a recent visit, company forester Paul Violett stood beside the creek and contemplated the rules.

Violett estimates his company will be unable to harvest about 10 percent of the trees on this property because of the new rules. The company planted many of the conifers along the creek years ago as seedlings specifically to cut them down later to sell as lumber.

In other words, he said, the new salmon protections cost the company at least 10 percent of its investment.

"That cedar is a very valuable tree, and it's not available for harvest under these rules," Violett said, noting a 5-foot thick tree within 30 feet of the creek. Then he pointed out five more big trees nearby that also must be left standing. "Taken in its total, there's going to be an impact on our long-term yield. It's not insignificant by any stretch."

A similar assessment comes from Sierra Pacific Industries, considered the largest private forest owner in California. Spokesman Mark Pawlicki estimates the salmon protections will restrict logging on 8,000 acres of company land in the Sierra Nevada, plus an additional 20,000 acres on its coastal properties.

"We don't think our forest practices have any limiting effect at all on salmon," Pawlicki said. "But since the rules are now going into effect, we will comply with them."

Honcut Creek, small enough to jump across, is clear and deeply shaded at midday by a canopy of trees on its banks. This is what the rules are designed to preserve: cold water, free of erosion.

Small changes in small watersheds like this could help bring back Central Valley salmon, which are so depleted that commercial salmon fishing is banned for a second straight year in California and most of Oregon.

Salmon are known to use Honcut Creek downstream near its confluence with the Feather River. Boosting that spawning run by improving water quality in the creek could help the entire state.

Brian Williams, a downstream resident, is glad to see the new rules.

A consulting biologist who works with a number of logging companies, Williams bought a home along the creek eight years ago and began researching its history. He said the creek is named after an Indian tribe that had a large camp on its banks – probably because a vigorous salmon run provided food.

Williams said local residents report having seen salmon in the 1970s as far upstream as his property, near Honcut Road, even though there are two small dams in between.#

Think before you sip that Russian River Pinot Noir: environmentalists are warning that its production could be contributing to the death of threatened fish species.

That's according to three environmental groups, who announced Tuesday that they intend to sue a state board over its allowance of water diversions from two North Coast watersheds.

The groups contend that water is being taken from the Russian River and Gualala River watersheds to irrigate vineyards and also protect them against frost during the cold winter months.

The groups contend that pumping drys up riverbeds, stranding and killing coho salmon, chinook salmon and steelhead trout, and accuse the state of violating the endangered species act.

The notice was filed with the California State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates water quality in the state. The Center for Biological Diversity, Northern California River Watch and Coast Action Group are threatening the suit.#

The Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum is back to work after a ninemonth hiatus resulting from state budget cuts in January.

Refunding allows staff to resume working to protect the private landowners along the river, while helping to see the river's health protected and enhanced for Northern California.

It's good to be back, said Beverley Anderson, executive director. "We are anxious to meet our new board members and renew acquiaintences with our existing members."

The board is made up of landowners and public interest representatives from seven counties Tehama, Butte, Shasta, Yolo, Colusa, Glenn and Sutter and agency representatives from the Resources Agency, Department of Fish and Game, Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, Central Valley Flood Protection Board, US Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Water Resources.

Through careful planning that hears and addresses the concerns of neighboring landowners, the forum is working to meet the needs of the river ecosystem and local agriculture.

It offers a process that includes all stakeholders in guiding and planning activities along the river.

"We are currently providing input to the Central Valley Flood Protection Program and moving the Kopta Slough Woodson Bridge project forward.

We're also working with USACE to protect vital bank swallow habitat while providing necessary flood protection along the river," Anderson said.#

A few years ago, my son and I walked along the American River at Sailor Bar, throwing rocks into the green water. He was still small enough to need my hand walking over uneven ground.

We sat on the cobblestones and tossed hunks of granite while gulls and mallards turned in the air over our heads.

"There's a bird, Daddy!" my son yelled. I smiled and told him that bird had a funny name. He tried to say it, savoring the last syllable like I had, "Mer-gan-zzzerrr."

We had come in December, like so many Californians do, to see the salmon migration. Their long journey, in from the Pacific, through the Delta and up the Sacramento and American rivers, ends here each autumn.

Many lay their eggs in the gravel beds around Sailor Bar. We could see them, their fins breaking the surface now and then as they guarded their eggs.

The weak ones, close to death, lay on their sides in the shallows, barely moving. The bodies of others had been hauled ashore by fishers or curious people like us. The stench of their decay filled the air.

Harsh, yes – but I wanted my son to learn this story. I wanted him to see the return of the salmon as one of the totems of life here, an ancient story that ties us to this land and gives a sense of permanence in an ever-changing world, and evidence of forces beyond us.

I also want my son to know a place, his place, the land under his feet each day as he grows up, the unique rhythms and species and cycles of the American River watershed where he has spent nearly every day of his life.

Living by this river is a gift, but that gift is fading.

The 2008 Chinook salmon run, just 66,000 fish, was the lowest in recorded history. Government agencies imposed almost total bans on fishing of these salmon in an effort to preserve the species.

Biologists believe many factors are responsible for this decline, most of them, unfortunately, caused by humans: loss of habitat, pollution, invasive species, water diversions and climate change.

UC Davis fisheries expert Peter Moyle, in a 2008 report, said, "If present trends continue, California will have only 'museum' populations or runs of most salmonids, maintained with very high effort for display purposes, to remind people what has been lost."

This is not an isolated problem. Scientists have long warned of a new, planet-wide age of extinctions. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson warns that "humanity is in a final struggle with the rest of life," and believes that unless we change our ways, half the species on Earth will be gone by the end of the 21st century, gone into what he calls "the dawnless night of extinction."

We already see the economic poverty of such an age, with fishing boats idle in harbors and San Joaquin farmers struggling without enough water.

But what I fear is an inner loss, a poverty of the mind and soul in a biologically depleted world. As author Rebecca Solnit writes, "Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech."

We have looked to the story of salmon for wisdom for millennia. These fish were painted onto the walls of caves 10,000 years ago.

The Makah, Haida and Tlingit tribes of the Pacific Northwest await the first salmon of the season, marking the occasion with a religious ceremony.

In Celtic mythology, the folk hero Fionn accidently tastes a salmon he caught in Fec's Pool and receives the power of prophecy and the gift of poetry.

And from the book of Job: "But ask the animals, and they will teach you … let the fish of the sea inform you."

And one windswept December day this father walked with his son on the banks of a river, hoping to show him something about the world. The stones shifted under our feet and the birds squawked over our heads.

Lessons learned this way, through all the senses, may not always be happy or comfortable, but they lodge within us somewhere beyond memory, and last a lifetime.

Will my son bring his children to this river? Will he be able to use the salmon's struggle to teach them something about life and death? Will there still be fins flashing in the sunset, or only dark water?

Today, Californians are discussing important issues – water, agriculture, and endangered species – in opinion pages, legislative meetings and pickup trucks parked beside dry fields. We are discussing our needs and nature's needs and how to balance them before it is too late.

I don't pretend to know what the answers will be, but I do know something about the needs of the spirit, to feel a part of the larger world and to pass on those gifts to our children. Please let that be a part of our discussion.#

David Martin Olson, a former river guide, is a writer and photographer who lives in Sacramento.

Beginning Monday, anglers get a limited shot at catching king salmon fresh from the ocean on the Sacramento River.

Fishing for late-fall king salmon will run through Dec. 31. The stretch of river open to fishing extends from 150 feet below the Lower Red Bluff (Sycamore) Boat Ramp to the Highway 113 bridge at Knights Landing.

But why make this exemption for the second year in a row when there's been a general two-year ban on river and ocean fishing? Why this stretch of river? Why this specific time frame?

Well, one salmon population – the late-fall run – has remained healthy even as the early fall, spring and winter runs have collapsed amid drastic modifications to their Delta and river environments. This stretch of river was chosen because the California Department of Fish and Game is confident that the salmon here will be from the late-fall run.

Officials studied more than 1,000 marked fish here during this period last year and found only one that was not from the late fall run.

If you go out, don't expect fast fishing. While the run is stable and healthy, anglers are targeting a population of fish less than one-tenth the size of the fall king salmon run – at least in the not-so-long-ago "good old days."

Bob Boucke, owner of Johnson's Bait and Tackle in Yuba City, points out that late-fall salmon are fast- moving, seldom settling into one spot for very long.

"We have to sit there until more fish come through," he said. "Fishing one day might be fabulous and the next be lousy. We're at their mercy."

About 200 salmon had entered the holding pond at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery by late Monday morning, according to DFG spokesman Harry Morse. The first egg take was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. today.

Morse said that reports from hatcheries on the Feather and Mokelumne rivers suggest that while salmon numbers are not back to normal, they appear to be sufficient for egg quotas to be met.

The daily bag and possession limit is one salmon. Anglers may practice catch-and-release up until the point that they keep a salmon. They may not continue to fish for salmon after taking their daily limit.

Further, anglers may not fillet their catch before returning to the boat ramp so that DFG has the opportunity to collect data and look for wire-coded tags.

A favored strategy is anchoring in a slot with a sardine-wrapped Kwikfish or FlatFish or a large spinner like a No. 6 Mepps Silvertron or Blue Fox spinner working in the current behind the boat, held close to the bottom by a weight attached to a spreader.

While late-fall salmon don't linger in any one spot for very long, they do tend to tarry toward one side of the river or the other in deep depressions.

Other anglers choose to work slowly upstream or downstream using the same kind of lure and weight setup at the business end as when anchoring. They cover more water that way and allow more anglers to have a shot at prime spots.

Even though fishing for late-fall kings is often best at midday or in the afternoon, it's become increasingly important to get on the water early.

Being stealthy is key to success.

"Fish smart, fish quiet, and keep fresh meat on the lure," is how longtime guide Dave Jacobs of Professional Guide Service puts it. "If you are not quiet, you are not going to catch fish."

He cautioned against running over one hole after another looking for fish using electronics, as he's seen many anglers do. Flows in the Sacramento River are typically low this time of year, and the fish are spooky.

Instead, he recommends finding what he calls a runway – a deep run with shallower water at both ends. He moves very slowly downstream using the kicker motor with a sardine-wrapped Kwikfish or FlatFish.

The days of having long stretches of river to yourself during late fall are gone. This is one of the few shots that California anglers have at catching a salmon these days. The Trinity and Klamath river runs to the north are four to eight hours away and are about finished.

Expect heavy crowds, particularly around Knights Landing, Tisdale and Hamilton City near boat ramps.

Late-fall kings are coveted for their qualities as willing biters, hard fighters and prime table fare. These fish often are barely distinguishable from ocean-caught salmon, mirror-bright with rich, deep orange meat.

They can get big, too, such as the giant 56-pounder caught by Bill Patterson last season a short distance downstream from Grimes Boat Landing. More typically, late-fall kings range from 15 to 25 pounds.

Salmon are most easily caught from a boat, because anglers can keep their lures right in front of a fish's nose, whereas the lure presented by an angler casting from shore appears only momentarily within the strike zone. And when a strike does occasionally occur, the shore angler must carry on the fight from a single spot.

For those who don't have access to a boat and cannot afford a guide (highly recommended for both bankies and boaters just learning the ropes), Boucke suggests that anglers might have a shot at hooking a salmon from the bank between Grimes and the new Tisdale Boat Ramp by casting a heavy No. 6 Mepps or Blue Fox spinner and letting it swing deeply through a run.

Boaters aren't home free, though. Navigating the Sacramento River can be hazardous in the typically low flows this time of year.#

The West Coast's largest commercial fishermen's organization announced on Monday its support for an agreement to tear out four Klamath River dams.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations is also supporting a major salmon restoration agreement meant to go with the dam removal deal. The endorsement of the agreements is preliminary, the PCFFA said, and depends on the completion, release and final review of the package.

”These may not be the best conceivable agreements, but I believe they are the best agreements we could have gotten in the less-than-perfect world we live in,” said PCFFA President Dave Bitts. “During the 12 years I spent on the Klamath Basin Task Force, we accomplished many good things in the Klamath's tributaries, but we were never able to address the two big mainstem Klamath issues: water quality and flows. These agreements deal with both.”

The draft dam removal pact was released for public review in September, after negotiators with tribes, agencies, fishing groups and conservation organizations had wrangled with it for months. It calls for Pacificorp's Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle dams to be removed beginning in 2020, provided a U.S. Interior Department analysis finds the massive project to be in the public interest.

The dams were put in beginning in 1916, and have blocked salmon from reaching hundreds of miles of spawning grounds since then. They also contribute to severe water

quality problems on the river.

The Oregon Legislature has approved the creation of a fund into which $200 million from Pacificorp rate increases would be collected. The dam agreement also calls for a California water bond of $250 million. The pact caps the amount to remove the dams at $450 million.

Illustrating a conflict dam removal advocates must consider, PCFFA voted not to support an $11.1 billion state water bond, which includes the Klamath money. The association said that the bond -- to go before voters in November 2010 -- would lead to new storage and water conveyance measures that could hurt salmon in other rivers. PCFFA said that the state should find other ways to fund the project.

Humboldt County supervisors are scheduled to hear presentations regarding the dam removal agreement at its meeting today. The matter is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at the Board of Supervisors chambers.#

Authorities are investigating a hazardous material fuel spill in the Sacramento River up river from the Diestelhorst Bridge in Redding.

Authorities received a report about 4:35 p.m. from two men walking across the bridge of a 20- to 25-foot wide spill of a possible petroleum product going downstream.

A California Highway Patrol helicopter flew reconnaissance over the river in an attempt to find the source of the small slick.

Redding Fire Department crews went to the Diestelhorst Bridge and Middle Creek Road to investigate while California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection units went to Keswick Dam.

Authorities were in the process of notifying the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Emergency Services and state Department of Fish and Game.#

By John Driscoll

Agency, tribal, fishing, farming and environmental representatives will outline a draft agreement to remove the Klamath River's dams

at the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.

Released to the public in September, the agreement calls for the removal of four dams on the river beginning in 2020, an enormous restoration project meant to revive the river's salmon runs. The result of talks between 28 parties and dam owner Pacificorp, the draft plan is making the rounds to governing bodies for support.

The four dams block access for salmon to hundreds of miles of habitat, and their reservoirs cause water quality problems and generate massive seasonal algae blooms. The deal calls for a federal investigation into whether removing the dams is in the public interest, and if it is, allowing for the dams to be transferred to an entity charged with their removal.

The cost to remove the dams is capped at $450 million under the deal, with $200 million to come from rate increases for Pacificorp customers and $250 million from a California water bond. The agreement would be tied to another $1 billion deal that proponents say will shore up water supplies for fish and farms and embark on major restoration efforts. The draft restoration agreement was reviewed and conditionally approved by the Board of Supervisors in February 2008, according to a county public works staff report.

At the meeting Tuesday, supervisors will hear a number of presentations on the dam removal deal and take public comment. A date in December will be set for further discussion and possible approval or opposition to the deal.

The matter is set to begin at 10:30 a.m.

The Community Services Department is asking that the board approve an amendment to the Headwaters Fund Revolving Loan Agreement with the Arcata Economic Development Corporation. The amendment would increase the revolving loan agreement from $1.5 million to $2.25 million.

Two public hearings are scheduled for the afternoon session beginning at 1:30 p.m. The first is on the Town of Scotia Co.'s application for a general plan amendment to reclassify the timber town's zoning. Community Development Services staff is recommending that the board certify an environmental impact report on the company's proposal to rezone about 450 acres.

The other matter is consideration of a general plan amendment petition for the Southern Humboldt Community Park.

The regular meeting begins at 9 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors chambers.#

By Dylan Darling

Leonard "Spam" Ferris has stretched a gill net into the waters of the Trinity River near his home on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation for about 50 years.

After starting as his grandpa's helper when he was 7 years old, Ferris, now 57, says he catches as many as 700 salmon a year using gill nets. So far this year, he's caught 400 and expects to keep filling his smokehouse.

"It's a late run so they are still coming," he said.

While Ferris, a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, said he hasn't seen more gill nets this year along the river through the reservation than in a typical year, upstream salmon guides charge that an increase in tribal gill nets is decimating the fish's fall run.

"We are just not seeing the fish we should be seeing," said Steve Huber, 43, a fishing guide in Weaverville.

While the two tribes on the lower stretches of the rivers - the Yurok and the Hoopa Valley tribes - report that they've hauled in almost 28,000 fish, close to this year's allotment, Huber and other guides said very few salmon are making it past the tribal waters and into areas where they can catch them.

The angry anglers are airing their concerns on the Internet.

Mike Aughney, 48, of Petaluma, who started www.usafishing.com in 1995, has launched an Internet campaign against gill netting on the Trinity, warning that tribal nets, particularly those on the Hoopa Reservation, are wiping out the Trinity River run.

"Because of the gill nets, we are seeing almost no return," said Aughney, who says he's fished in the north state for 40 years.

Allie Hostler, the Hoopa Valley Tribe's spokeswoman, said her tribe aims to protect the fish on the Trinity and American Indian gill netters are unfairly targeted.

"I feel like this is a witch hunt to blame the (Hoopa Valley Tribe) for something," she said.

To fuel his online argument, Aughney points to low numbers reported by state scientists at a weir - a submerged fence used to collect migrating salmon - near Willow Creek. The data shows nine salmon the week of Oct. 22 and 16 salmon the week of Oct. 29. The guides and anglers say the counts should be in the hundreds.

But Wade Sinnen, the associate fishery biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game in Arcata in charge of the project, said the numbers don't mean that there is a problem with the fish population.

"It is not a crash situation," he said. "... there has been misinterpretation of that data."

While there are weirs that channel fish so they'll pass by video cameras or other tools to create a count, the Willow Creek weir corrals salmon into a trap where they are marked by scientists, Sinnen said. The percentage of marked fish that then show up at the Trinity River Hatchery in Lewiston is part of the formula used to create a population estimate.

Data collected on the runs since 1977 show the numbers can vary widely, he said. The hatchery returns range from a low of 1,551 in 1993 to a high of 30,386 in 2003, Sinnen said. The natural returns range from 5,249 in 1991 to 113,007 in 1986.

He said it is too early to tell what this year's total run will be, but all indications so far are that it won't be a large one.

"The bottom line is the Trinity River is going to have an OK run," Sinnen said, "but not a real robust one."

Aughney said he thinks tribal members are using more gill nets as a result of the ongoing ban of commercial salmon fishing on the California coast. As the commercial salmon supply available drops, prices have shot up.

He said 20,000 pounds of salmon - about 2,000 fish worth $60,000 - from the Trinity caught by members of the Hoopa Valley Tribe ended up for sale at the San Francisco fish market and he questioned whether that was legal.

Dan Torquemada, assistant special agent in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement in Santa Rosa, said he received an anonymous tip about the salmon, but no laws were broken by tribal members. He said the tribe is allowed to sell some of the fish caught along the Trinity River.

"Currently, we have no evidence that the Hoopa fishermen are using their nets in an illegal manner," he said. "They are operating under the direction of the Hoopa tribal authorities."

The Hoopa and Yurok tribes work with the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal entity regulating sport and commercial fishing on the West Coast, to set salmon catch allotments for the river and the ocean, said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff officer for the council.

This year's allotment is 30,900 fish each for non-American Indian anglers and the American Indian fishery on the Klamath and Trinity rivers.

Huber said sport anglers will be lucky to catch 4,500 on the rivers - about 15 percent of their allotment - because of a diminished Trinity run.

Gill netting has long been controversial in Northern California, especially along the lower Klamath River, said Tracy, salmon staff officer for the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

"It's a pretty consistent fishery," he said. "It's pretty intense."

The state outlaws gill nets on rivers, but they are allowed on waters running through the Yurok and Hoopa Valley reservations that are governed by the separate tribes.

Flanking 44 river miles from the mouth of the Klamath at the Pacific Ocean to the river's confluence with the Trinity River, the Yurok Reservation is centered on the river. Just upstream from the Yurok Reservation, the Hoopa Valley Reservation is a 12-mile-by-12-mile square - 144 square miles in all. It is similarly river-driven.

Gill nets allow a salmon to swim partway through their mesh. Cinching around the fish's body, the nets trigger a salmon's instinct to swim backward when they encounter an obstacle. When they do that, they become ensnared in the net by their gills.

The technique is a traditional one, used for centuries by American Indians along the rivers, said Hostler, the spokeswoman for the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

"We used to make them out of iris twine," she said.

Today, the nets are made of thick, braided synthetic fishing line and held afloat by plastic foam. Hostler said the nets in the river on the reservation are usually 50- or 100-feet wide and tribal laws restrict them from covering more than a third of the river.

Tradition dictates placement of the nets, said Hoopa gill netter Ferris - whose uncle jokingly said he felt like a can of Spam when he was a newborn baby, giving him a nickname that stuck.

"Everyone knows your spot and protects your spot," Ferris said.

He said today he takes his grandchildren fishing and the fish they catch go to his large family and elders in the tribe.

Hostler said tribal fishery officials and law enforcement officers also police the river, making sure those using gill nets are following tribal laws.

Leaders from the two tribes meet each year to set a division of the tribal allotment. This split is 80 percent to the Yurok and 20 percent Hoopa, reflecting the larger size of the Yurok tribe, Hostler said. The Yurok have 5,500 members and the Hoopa 2,500 members.

This year, the members of the Hoopa Valley Tribe have caught about 4,000 fish of their 6,128 allotment, said Mike Orcutt, who heads the Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Department.

The Yurok have caught 24,000 salmon, only 720 fish short of this year's allotment, said Troy Fletcher, a policy analyst for the tribe.

"We are pretty close to the end of the season," Fletcher said.

Upriver on the Hoopa Valley Tribe Reservation, the run continues.

Orcutt said on a busy day there are as many as 50 gill nets in the water on the reservation, but he said there hasn't been an increase in the number of nets this year.

He said he has seen reports on angling Web sites questioning whether the tribe is exceeding its allotment this year.

"Our answer is we are in our harvest objectives; we haven't gone over our harvest objectives," Orcutt said.

The issue boils down to a racial divide, said Fletcher, the Yurok official.

"There has always been a tension over the tribal fishery," he said.

Fletcher said the Yurok Tribe has the most monitoring and law enforcement on the river, but nontribal members don't trust the American Indian because there is no state or federal oversight.

However, he insists the tribe is focused on protecting the salmon and improving its stocks on the Klamath, of which the Trinity is a tributary.

"That is our river," Fletcher said. "Those are our fish. And we manage those fish in a responsible way."

Aughney said he plans to continue his online criticism and his concerns are not motivated by race, but by the type of fishing he said he sees crippling the salmon run.

"I am not an Indian hater," he said. "I hate gill nets."#

By Geoff Johnson

In a decision so late it was not advertised on the agenda, the Tehama County Board of Supervisors voted to send a letter to the Legislature protesting a pending State Senate bill that could impose stricter groundwater monitoring requirements on the county.

"Could" is at the crux of the issue for the board.

Supervisor Bob Williams, who frequently reports to the board on state matters, said he remains unclear on just what groundwater monitoring requirements for counties would be under Senate Bill X7 6.

What is clear is that, under the latest version of the bill available to Williams, the state could withhold state and federal funding if new groundwater monitoring requirements are not met.

In Tehama County much, if not all, of the county's groundwater monitoring is done through state funding and with the cooperation of the Department of Water Resources, Williams said.

In the worst-case scenario, the county would be required to extend its groundwater monitoring to all of its county basins, he said, while simultaneously taking on more of the cost itself.

Even if the county's groundwater monitoring approach is consistent with new state guidelines, the bill would represent a "one-size-fits-all" mandate to counties, according to letters from the Regional Council of Rural Counties. The bill has also earned the objection of the Northern California Water Association.

The bill will be subject to change even as the

Senate reconvenes, although Williams said he has been told Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has the votes to pass it in its existing form.

The bill may also be subject to additional revisions as it enters the Assembly, which is already circulating a stack of proposed amendments almost as large as the original bill.

"It is convoluted, is the polite way to put it," Williams said.

Although not addressed in the letter issued by the board, a separate section of the SB 7x package, which could establish an independent board to control ground and surface water that flows into the Delta, has met with protest from Williams.

At least one version of the bill would grant the board the ability declare a water emergency in California, allowing it to ignore area of origin water rights and control water rationing, he said.#

S.F. Chronicle-10/27/09

The federal government wants California water regulators to extend its water permits on the Trinity River until it finds uses for the water.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is asking the state Water Resources Control Board to approve a petition originally filed in 1985 that would extend its water rights on the river until 2030.

State law mandates that water permit holders use it or lose it. But the bureau says more time is needed to determine how much water will be diverted from the river for completed construction projects.

River advocates say the bureau's request doesn't address a 2000 Interior Department decision to reduce diversions from the Trinity to protect salmon. Large water diversions reduce the amount of cold water available to struggling fish populations.#

Eureka Times-Standard-10/27/09
By John Driscoll

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is asking for a decades-long extension of state water permits on the Trinity River to give it more time to find uses for the water -- a move river advocates say could threaten the water available for salmon and steelhead.

The petition to the State Water Resources Control Board was first filed in 1985, but the bureau never acted further on it. Reclamation has revived the application for an extension of its water rights on the Trinity and other Central Valley rivers until 2030, but didn't identify in the application what water projects are on tap that would allow it to use the water.

The request also does not include the 2000 U.S. Interior Department's decision to reduce diversions to the Sacramento River from the Trinity River to aid salmon. It has led some conservationists to voice concern that Reclamation might continue to divert large amounts of water from Trinity Lake reservoir and risk the availability of cold water for fish.

”I think what it shows is the bureau is not really serious about protecting the Trinity River fishery,” said Tom Stokely with the California Water Impact Network.

The network and Trinity County are among the parties protesting the petition.

The Trinity River, like most rivers in California, has more water rights attached to it than it has water. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation holds rights to some 16 million acre feet of Trinity water -- enough to cover 16 million acres to the depth

of one foot -- even though the annual runoff into the river averages less than 1.4 million acre feet.

Applying the full allocation of Reclamation's water rights, wrote Trinity County in its protests, could deplete cold water needed for fish and prevent development of local water projects. The watershed would suffer “grave harm” if Trinity River water is used to fill in the huge deficit of water in the Central Valley Project, into which Trinity River water is diverted.

Reclamation's Deputy Regional Resources Manager Richard Stevenson said that the larger project is declared “integrated” by Congress, and that the Trinity permits and their proposed extensions can't be separated from the permits and extensions of the other elements of the project.

The extensions are being requested because the extent of the larger project hasn't yet been realized, Stevenson said, and can't yet be put forward for licensing.

”We're not ready because we don't think the usage of the Central Valley Project as a whole has been developed and defined,” Stevenson said.

State water law is based on the use-it-or-lose it concept. In Reclamation's request, it holds that construction of projects to put the full amount of water to use is complete, but also said that it's unable to determine what the ultimate diversions from the Central Valley Project will be. Permitting, conservation plans and requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act all make such a prediction uncertain, Reclamation said.

State Water Resources Control Board spokesman Dave Clegern said that extensions are granted if the applicant has been diligent in trying to find uses for the water, if progress has been delayed due to circumstances beyond its control and whether it can provide a detailed road map of how it intends to use the water in the near future.

Diversions from Trinity Lake last fall and winter lowered the amount of water to about half the reservoir's capacity. Spring rains improved the situation slightly. Reclamation has begun diverting water to the Sacramento River, lowering an already low reservoir, with the expectation that the past three dry years will be the last of a drought and that winter rains will replenish the reservoir.

That same strategy last year was in part what pushed the reservoir so low this summer. The bureau must make sure that the water it releases down the river is around 50 degrees to protect salmon and steelhead.

But when the lake level drops, water at the surface is too warm to send downstream, and it must look to the diversion's lowermost outlet to tap cold water, bypassing the project's power plant. Trinity River water is also used to keep temperatures down in the Sacramento River.

While Reclamation has to confer with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when the lake gets that low, there is no strict procedure in place to handle the issue. That's led critics to claim there is no plan to deal with extended drought, and question whether water for salmon could be sacrificed in extreme circumstances.

Mike Orcutt, senior fisheries biologist with the Hoopa Valley Tribe, said that Reclamation is betting on a good water year to refill the reservoir.

”Nobody has a crystal ball to predict that,” Orcutt said.

Because of that, the California Water Impact Network and Trinity County want to see the interior secretary's 2000 decision included in Reclamation's water rights extension. Trinity County holds that Reclamation also shouldn't be allowed to continue to hold onto water rights for water it cannot prove it will use in the future.#

S.F. Chronicle-10/27/09
Editorial

The sweeping legislative package to preserve the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta - and thus the water supply for about 24 million Californians - is the epitome of a compromise that makes just about everyone involved semi-pleased and semi-anxious.

What is remarkable about this deal, fine-tuned in weeks of negotiations between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and other key leaders, is that it did not ignite an open revolt when it was rolled out in the State Capitol on Monday. "There's never going to be complete consensus on an issue this big and with this much history," Steinberg said in a phone interview. "But we're getting close."

The grudging acceptance of this package reflects the growing concern that the health of the delta is deteriorating even as the demands on its water continue to intensify and the stresses of drought and climate change threaten to further degrade its viability.

Perhaps the most significant element of this package is the creation of a seven-member Delta Stewardship Council that would have broad authority over its dual mission: to protect the environment and to assure water delivery.

Four members would be appointed by the governor, two by the Legislature and one would be chair of the Delta Protection Commission. Today, delta decisions are divided among dozens of state and federal agencies - assuring constant warfare over water allocation and an absence of vision or accountability for the big picture even with a billion-dollar investment.

On two of the most contentious issues - whether to build dams and whether to build a "junior peripheral canal" to divert fresh water around the delta for a southbound aqueduct- the deal seems to reach a reasonable compromise. Such projects can be considered, but they will have to compete with other, more environmentally friendly alternatives. Also, any public money going into dams would have to be matched by at least a 50 percent private contribution.

The bills being presented to the Legislature also would reduce statewide water consumption 20 percent by 2020, crack down on illegal diversions and manage groundwater more efficiently.

The status quo at the delta is not working for anyone. It has brought fish to the brink of extinction while urban users and agriculture try to outmaneuver each other for a precious resource.

The framework of this deal is sound. There will be further battles over details, but Steinberg and Schwarzenegger have each shown a willingness to make tough concessions on an issue that is critical to this state's future in so many ways.#

Sacramento Bee-10/23/09

The Delta Cross Channel Gates near Walnut Grove will close at 10 a.m. today to protect young salmon migrating out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

When open, the gates divert Sacramento River water into the Mokelumne River, which then improves freshwater flow across the Delta to state and federal diversion pumps near Tracy.

The gates, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, also provide a useful shortcut for boaters moving north and south across the Delta.

Research has shown that salmon drawn through the gates are more likely to be killed by predators in the maze of channels in the interior Delta. New federal rules imposed this year require the gates to be closed whenever young salmon are present in the Sacramento River, so they have an easier migration to the sea.

The gates will remain closed for at least three days, and possibly longer if salmon are still present in the area.

Boaters and others for whom the gates are important are advised to monitor status reports at www.usbr.gov/mp/cvo/.#

Chico Enterprise-Record-10/23/09
By Heather Hacking

How to save endangered local fish is the daunting task of a recovery plan in its early stages by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Two workshops were held in Chico Tuesday and two more in Sacramento Wednesday, to gather public input.

The three imperiled fish in this area include the Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, the threatened Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon, and the threatened Central Valley steelhead.

All are on the endangered species list, thus triggering the requirement for the recovery plan.

Howard Brown, Sacramento River Basin branch chief for NOAA, explained to an audience of about 45 people Tuesday that the plan is long-term, with the goal of preserving the species.

"Abundance can't be completely recaptured," he said. But there are goals that can be achieved, he continued.

The goal is to get fish populations to the point where they can be taken off the ESA list.

Many men in their 50s and 60s in the audience had stories about when fish were plentiful, and tales from their fathers about being able to see the fish in mass along rivers and streams. Brian Ellrott, a fishery biologist, explained the San Joaquin River once had abundant spring-run salmon, but the fish run in that branch has been lost.

The three main populations remain in Mill Creek, Deer Creek and Butte Creek, and populations have decreased in these waterways over recent years.

Historically steelhead were throughout the Sacramento Valley.

When numbers plummeted, steelhead are now born in hatcheries, and now the number of hatchery fish outnumbers wild fish, he said.

A dramatic decline occurred in winter-run salmon in the late 1960s and early '70s, Ellrott said.

The key threats to this fish is loss of spawning habitat, dams on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and other tributaries, "thousands of water diversions," reduced water flows and predators, Ellrott said.

Climate change is another big hit. As juvenile fish reach the ocean, they need food. In 2004 and 2005, there was very little forage, Ellrott said. Then in 2007 and 2008 when those fish were due to return, there were very few.

Predictions of more rainfall and less snow will also affect water temperatures higher in the river systems, which is needed for fish health, he said.

Historically, big rivers like the Sacramento would flood, creating a flood plain in the valley. Now agriculture has moved near the river and waterways are contained. Studies show that fish that spend time in flood plains grow larger and can more easily resist predators, he said.

Water quality in the Delta is another factor.

All of these problems for fish make the job difficult for folks trying to plan recovery of the species.

The plan will be in the works for a while, and the current push is to get members of the public to comment on what has been mapped out so far.

Naseem Alston, also a fish biologist, said recovery of the fish will take many partnerships, and a lot of hard work.

During the public comment period, a few people talked about sea lions and how the animals have made their way up the Sacramento River. Sea lions are known to nibble on 12 salmon a day, they said.

Also, commercial salmon fishing has been closed for two years, but other countries continue to harvest fish in the ocean, one man noted.

Jim Brobeck of the Butte Environmental Council urged fish managers to look at groundwater depletion and how this takes water away from streams.

Chuck Kutz, of the Butte Creek Watershed Conservancy, said he would like to see a fish tagging program reinstated on Butte Creek, especially after floods in 1997 created much more fish habitat.#

Public comments and information relevant to this recovery plan must be received no later than 5 p.m. Dec. 7. They can be e-mailed to CentralValleyPlan.SWR@noaa.gov. Include in the subject line "Comments on Central Valley Salmon and Steelhead Draft Plan."

Chico Enterprise-Record-10/21/09
By Barbara Arrigoni

After all the effort spent battling to get upstream, for this year's Chinook salmon population, the end of the life cycle is near.

It's the spawning season, which will peak and then die down over the next few weeks, leaving thousands of eggs, but also many carcasses.

For the past few weeks, fishery technicians with the state Department of Water Resources have been carefully surveying miles of the Feather River for signs that spawning is under way and counting those signs, called redds.

Department of Water Resources fishery technician Katy Lentz explained that redds are depressions in the river bottom that female salmon make for depositing eggs. The females use their tails, cleaning off rocks and moving those around to form teardrop-shaped "bowls."

On average, a redd is about three feet wide, four feet long and four to five inches deep. The females deposit an average of 6,000 eggs in each redd.

To find the redds, technicians are walking riffles, where water is moving faster and where the channel narrows.

Lentz said pool areas aren't surveyed because salmon need a certain water velocity and suitable gravel to form the redds and deposit their eggs.

For the survey, technicians are counting the number of redds and measuring data such as the depth, the velocity of water and the different size rocks and gravel in the redd.

The survey is one of several studies under way for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing of Oroville Dam.

DWR plans to add gravel to the river in hopes of improving the salmon habitat.

Lentz said the current redd survey, a yearly undertaking since about 2006, gives officials a good "before" picture of where salmon are spawning and the rocks and gravel they use for the redds.

After the new gravel is added, the fish will be studied further to see if they're expanding the spawning area or sticking to the same areas.

Lentz said the fish should utilize more of the river with the better gravel that will be available for spawning.

One reason the survey is important is because officials need to know what they can do to improve the conditions in the river so that the salmon population will increase.

Lentz said the population has been declining all over the state, and the Central Valley has especially seen a dramatic drop in the last few years.

"Our job is to see what salmon are doing and if there are ways we can better the habitat, and if the way we're managing them now is helping or hurting," Lentz said.

This year's redd survey began about three weeks ago and will last about through mid- or late November.

The survey area covers the river from the Oroville Fish Hatchery downstream to the Thermalito Afterbay outlet. Lentz said technicians have observed the highest density of redds near the fish hatchery and seen "hundreds of redds" near Oroville Municipal Auditorium.

She added there is less spawning farther downstream.

After the redd survey is completed, officials will conduct what they call the carcass survey, which gives an estimate of how many salmon were in the river this year. That survey will continue until December.

Beginning the first week of November, officials will also check what are called rotary screw traps to catch juvenile salmon, to see how many emerged this year.

Lentz noted that Chinook salmon spend about two to five years in the ocean before coming back to the river. Chinook return to the river only once and die after they've spawned.

She added that steelhead go back and forth from the ocean to the river multiple times and don't die off after spawning.#

Redding Record Searchlight-10/20/09
By Dylan Darling

Fall's chinook salmon run on Battle Creek could produce even fewer fish than the dismal returns that last year blocked commercial salmon fishing.

As of Oct. 12, federal scientists had counted about 5,800 salmon caught on video by cameras submerged in the creek, said Jim Smith, project leader at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Red Bluff office.

"Last year at the same time we'd counted 9,800," he said. "So far this is not encouraging."

Scientists have about five days' worth of data to sort through, but Smith said the run is about half over and typically finishes near the end of month. The creek leads to Coleman National Fish Hatchery, the National Fish and Wildlife Service's main salmon hatchery in the state.

For the past two years, low salmon runs on the Sacramento River have prompted the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal entity regulating sport and commercial fishing, to ban commercial fishing in California and severely limit sport fishing.

After evaluating run counts from along the West Coast, the council will decide whether there will be fishing next year, said Jennifer Gilden, spokeswoman for the council. The commercial salmon season usually opens in March and sport salmon fishing usually begins in June.

The run on Battle Creek is one of the key numbers the council will consider, said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff officer for the council.

He said some runs are just beginning, so few numbers, including those for the Klamath River in far Northern California, aren't in yet.

"We really don't know where we are at yet," Tracy said.

Seven years ago - the first year records were kept on Battle Creek - 400,000 salmon returned. In recent years, the numbers have been dropping and they haven't topped 100,000 since 2005.

Tracy said the low numbers have likely been because of poor ocean food conditions for salmon in recent years.

Poor water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta also could be harming young salmon as they swim to the ocean, so for the past two springs federal scientists have hauled millions of smolts by truck from Coleman to San Pablo Bay.

Those fish, which were marked with tiny metal tags, likely will start returning next year.

Last year, about 15,000 salmon made the swim back from the Pacific Ocean to Battle Creek.

The returns so far this year are lower than scientists expected, Smith said.

"We didn't expect any great gangbusters for fish returns," he said.#

Redding Record Searchlight-10/20/09
By Dylan Darling

Heavy rains over the past two weeks washed dirt from relatively new burn areas and an old mining site into the Sacramento River, turning the water a chocolatey brown as it flowed through Redding.

"There are areas that we just got bombed with rain," said Don Reck, environmental and natural resources division chief for the Bureau of Reclamation at Shasta Dam.

Especially hard-hit was Iron Mountain Mine, the former heavy metals mine that is now an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site.

Muddy runoff from wildland burned by fire in 2008 clouds the Spring Creek Arm of Keswick Reservoir over the weekend. Heavy rains in the past two weeks have caused the runoff.Photo Courtesy Jim Pedri, assistant executive officer for the state's Regional Water Quality Control Board's Redding office

In six hours early last week, 14 inches of rain poured down on Iron Mountain, said Rick Sugarek, cleanup project manager for the EPA.

"It was short," he said, "but very intense."

More rain - as much as 3 inches in an hour - came down during Sunday's thunderstorm.

The result has been a very muddy Sacramento River.

As a fishing guide on the Sacramento River for 16 years, Barry Foster of Redding said he has seen the river muddied by storm runoff before, but not as bad as last week.

He said he's concerned about the impact of the mud on salmon, which are at the peak of their fall run in the north state.

"You couldn't pick a worse time," Foster said.

Curious about the source of the muddy waters, Foster said he followed them up to the Spring Creek Arm of Keswick Lake along the river. A dam on the creek holds back sediment from Iron Mountain Mine upstream.

Concerned about the possible impacts of the sediment on fish in the river, Foster posted a video of what he saw on YouTube.

While the EPA has spent millions on the cleanup of Iron Mountain Mine, which scientists say once leached the worst water on earth into the Sacramento, he said the recent runoff isn't a toxic danger for the river.

"It's not something to be concerned about in that regard," he said.

Most of the runoff washed down from wildland on the 2,800-acre mine property that burned in the Motion Fire last year. The 28,000-acre fire was part of the onslaught of lightning-caused blazes that burned throughout the north state.

As part of the Iron Mountain Mine clean-up, the EPA started dredging heavy metal-laced sediment from the Spring Creek Arm of Keswick Lake earlier this month. Sugarek said the dredging didn't cause any of the recent river cloudiness.

As part of the project, the EPA put up a silt-blocking curtain around the waters being dredged. During the recent heavy runoff, that curtain kept the muddy water out rather than in, Reck with the Bureau of Reclamation said.

While the runoff made for dark water, Jim Pedri, the top official at the Regional Water Quality Control Board's Redding office, said he is hopeful it didn't have a lasting impact on fish in the river.

Pedri's agency issues fines for pollution throughout the north state, but won't in this case. He said it was a natural event, compounded by land laid bare by fire and long-ago mining.

"There is nobody to fine," he said.#

Sacramento Bee-10/18/09
By Leonard Masten
Opinion

As chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, I was sadly struck by the reality of Rex Rabin's Oct. 6 political cartoon depicting one dying salmon telling another, "Dams on the Klamath are coming down! Pass it on."

This scene of mass salmon death in the water-starved Klamath River and its largest tributary, the Trinity River, could be a recollection of the 2002 fish kill of 68,000 spawning salmon that did not get enough water. The cartoon also could predict the future if the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement announced by Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Sept. 30 is implemented as written.

The Bee's Oct. 4 editorial, "Klamath pact could be a start toward peace," said the agreement will, "simultaneously help fish and farmers." I disagree. This agreement has so many loopholes and delays that naturally spawning salmon in the Klamath and Trinity rivers may be dead before one brick is removed from the dams.

The agreement proclaims good goals, but gives the owners of the dams, PacifiCorp, more time to devise legal and legislative plans to stall the removal of the dams until they are exonerated from liability and paid generously by taxpayers. The years of Klamath settlement talks came only after PacifiCorp realized they were on the verge of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's order to put expensive fish ladders at the four turn-of-last-century dams.

Our reservation has the Klamath and Trinity rivers flowing through it. We hope the agreement will help the salmon, but although we have been part of the negotiations we must dissent until more salmon protections are incorporated in the agreement.

No other tribe has spent more time and money defending the Trinity River. The other "environmental" negotiators in the settlement who have embraced this agreement should focus less on the desirability of agreement, and more on objective, good science for the rivers. Agreement should come only after the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement can protect fish in these rivers. We must fight, if even alone, because this is our home and our culture.

The Bee's editorial noted that "critics are missing the big picture." When it comes to the big picture our tribe has given decades and millions of dollars to river restoration. We have fished salmon from the Trinity River for thousands of years. The river and the fish are part of us. We don't have another ancestral homeland to move to. The salmon do not have another river to spawn in.#

Zach Whitten's ties to Tehama County go back generations. Ninety years ago, his family started a little farm west of town, and he lives next door with his wife and children.

But when it comes to what should be done about the loss of Lake Red Bluff, he opposes dwelling on the past and supports preparing for the future.

"Now's the time to start planning when we have about two years ahead of us when we still have the lake," Whitten said. "The main thing is to try to get people talking."

Whitten, 31, will share his ideas at 7 p.m. Thursday, when the Sacramento River Discovery Center launches its monthly program series for the year with "Life Without Lake Red Bluff."

Legal challenges to the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, which over decades has annually diverted water for irrigation while forming a temporary lake, have culminated in its planned replacement by a pumping station scheduled for completion in 2013. A popular Memorial Day drag boat event has been one of the casualties, and the city has estimated that losing the lake means a $4 million hit each year.

But Whitten believes discussion about the problem has been too narrow, focusing too much on past mistakes. He'd like to see a series of workshops that come together in a conference with economic, recreational, environmental and quality-of-life issues addressed.

"We'd like to solicit as many different ideas and voices in the community to really get people talking about how we take advantage of these new opportunities, rather than bemoan what was lost," he said.

When he's not working at Whittenberg Farms, which sells pasture-raised pork and lamb, Whitten is substitute teaching, directing summer camps at the center where he began as an intern in 1996, and leading the youth group at his church.

"This is really the first time I'm putting it out there," he said of Thursday's talk. "It's helpful to try to bring the disparate conversations under one roof."

The nonprofit discovery center offers numerous educational programs and sits within Mendocino National Forest's Red Bluff Recreation Area, with support from 48 government agencies and private groups.

"Lake Red Bluff affects everybody," said Carlene Cramer, the center's manager.#

Redding Record Searchlight-10/8/09
By Scott Mobley

A plan to restore endangered chinook salmon and threatened steelhead to Central Valley streams asks Californians to cut their water consumption by 20 percent over the next decade.

The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday released a draft of the plan, which would cost up to $1 billion over the next five years and $10.4 billion over a half-century.

Salmon and steelhead populations have shrunk since at least the 1960s, according to the report. Central Valley fisheries could see full recovery in 50 to 100 years, should officials follow through, the report said.

The recovery plan calls for flooding the Sacramento River one week each spring and moving the Coleman National Fish Hatchery to help wild fish populations flourish.

But the report dismisses Redding-area tributaries of the Sacramento as too developed for meaningful salmon and steelhead habitat restoration.

Federal officials, working with state and local officials and experts, would reintroduce salmon and steelhead to the Little Sacramento and McCloud rivers, and Battle and Clear Creeks, among other Northern California streams.

The report singles out Battle Creek in the far southern Cascades as particularly promising for salmon and steelhead recovery, thanks to its persistently strong cold water flows.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation has already launched plans to remove some of the five dams on Battle Creek as part of a long-term effort to restore that fishery. Crews are slated to begin dismantling the Wildcat Diversion Dam on the creek's north fork next month.

The Central Valley recovery plan calls for installing fish ladders at any of the dams remaining on Battle Creek and stepping up cold water releases.

The plan also suggests conducting a study of moving or at least modifying Coleman Hatchery operations to spare wild salmon in Battle Creek.

Clear Creek also has high salmon and steelhead recovery potential, thanks in part to restoration efforts begun nearly a decade ago with the McCormack-Saeltzer Dam removal, according to the report.

The Whiskeytown Dam upstream has contributed to improving fish habitat, the report suggests, which calls for boosting cold water releases from the lake to keep water temperatures below 65 degrees year-round. The plan calls for water temperatures in Clear Creek down to 56 degrees in late summer.

On the main stem Sacramento below Keswick Dam, the plan urges restoring the river's "meanderbelt," or shifting stream channel, between Keswick and Colusa. The report also suggests inundating the river's flood plain for at least seven days each spring in two out of three years.

The billions needed to carry out the Central Valley fisheries recovery plan should be considered an investment, according to the report.

"Because of their direct and indirect economic value as a resource for fishing, recreation- and tourism-related activities, each dollar spent on salmon recovery may generate thousands of dollars for local, state, federal and tribal economies," the report states.

A National Marine Fisheries Service spokesman was unavailable for comment Wednesday afternoon.#

Siskiyou Daily News-10/6/09
By Charlie Unkefer

Concerns over the fate of an estimated 1,500 Chinook salmon congregating in the mouth of the Shasta River have slackened somewhat over the last week.

Fish and Game biologist Mark Pisano reported that an increase in river flow levels over the weekend of Sept. 26 and 27 has helped create more favorable conditions for the migrating salmon.

Pisano also noted that recent drops in air temperatures also factor in favorably, as they contribute to river cooling, as well.

“The fish are still in the pools,” said Pisano, referring specifically to a handful of key pools, roughly in the vicinity of Pioneer Bridge, that contain several hundred fish each.

Through radio telemetry and a fish counting weir, biologists have been able to determine the location and overall number of the fish in the river system.

The recent influx in water to the system is due to an effort by some irrigators to forego their allotted water rights for this last week of the irrigation season.

Adriane Garayolde of the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District said that beginning Sept. 25, her organization has made an effort to put the word out about the situation, encouraging irrigators to reduce their water take if possible.

Shasta River Watermaster Ira Alexander, who is entrusted with the task of overseeing the water apportionment process for the California Department of Water Resources, reported that he knew of six irrigators who were foregoing their diversions in an effort to help provide the additional flow.

Alexander emphasized that it is his job to enforce the Shasta Decree, and that he has no authority to regulate the flow.

“We can, however, talk with Fish and Game about who to talk to and (give them information) about who is diverting,” said Alexander, expressing his hope that the extra “slug” of water released would assist the stalled salmon.

Amy Hoss of the Nature Conservancy reported that Big Spring Ranch had shuoff its irrigation, contributing an estimated 13 cfs to the depleted river.

RCD representative Garayolde applauded the efforts of the irrigators who had agreed to curtail or cease their irrigation.

She noted that because of recently installed variable speed irrigation pumps, an RCD project, it is now possible for some irrigation districts to reduce their take. “It used to be a matter of just being on or off,” she said.

Fish and Game fisheries biologist Morgan Knechtle reported that the Shasta River Chinook run has come earlier and stronger this year.

Knechtle reported that the numbers have been consistant with projections for the entire Klamath system, which he said is forecasted to be over 130,000 returning salmon.

As a regional Klamath Project coordinator, Knechtle monitors the fish counting program in the middle Klamath tributaries, which includes the weir at the mouth of the Shasta.

Knechtle and his crew have been monitoring the salmon build-up since the fish first started appearing on Sept. 4.

“We are concerned about the fish and the conditions that they are being subject to,” he said, noting that as they maintain their holding pattern in the lower canyon and the school grows in numbers, they are more susceptible to disease.

“If the densities (of fish) go up, the chance of spreading ich or columnaris increases,” he said, referring to two common fish diseases. “These were what affected the salmon in the main stem fish kill incident in ’02,” he continued, referencing the massive fish kill that resulted in the death of an estimated 60,000 salmon.

Knechtle and his crew have kept their eye on fish numbers and location, as well as water temperatures, as the canyon build-up has unfolded.

“The river has been warm but not critically warm,” he said last week. He said the 71F is high but not unusual.

“We have been observing an additional 80 to 150 fish entering the system every day,” he added.

Wading the river to inspect one of the fish-packed holes, Knechtle stopped to sample a dead fish.

Spawning mortality, he noted, is a natural occurrence, something that occurs with any salmon migration. He said that his crews had recovered a handful of dead salmon and that this is well within the parameters of a natural run.

Upon locating the fish, Knechtle took measurements of the 12-to 15-pound Chinook, as well as extracting a sample of the fish’s odilith bone (located in the inner ear).

“This bone is like rings on a tree,” he explained. “It will tell you how old the fish is and each ring also provides information about the water quality… We are looking for chemical signatures,” he said, saying that these signatures help biologists understand migration patterns and other useful information about the fish.

The past month has seen several record low river flows on both the Shasta and the Scott Rivers, prompting concern by agency officials and environmental groups.#

Capital Press-10/5/09

Solar power is delivering water to cattle on a farm near Arlington (WA) and keeping the animals and their waste out of a salmon stream.

A pump run by a battery and solar panel sends water from Eagle Creek into troughs for 50 cattle belonging to Vernon Beach. Fences keep the cattle out of the creek, which runs into the Stillaguamish River.

The Snohomish Conservation District used a federal grant to set up the system.

Beach said the solar panel has been working fine so far, even in cool and cloudy weather, but he's waiting to see how it does in cold weather.#

S.F. Chronicle-10/1/09
By Garance Burke (Associated Press)

Cold water gushed from behind a central California dam Thursday to meet its old, dry riverbed, marking the first step in a federal plan to reawaken the state's second-largest river so salmon can flourish again.

The San Joaquin River, whose waters course from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean, carried the continent's southernmost salmon run until the 1940s, when the government dammed it to nurture croplands below.

That captured snowmelt allowed the state's agricultural economy to thrive, but Friant Dam also dried up portions of the river downstream where salmon once spawned.

The surges of water released Thursday marked the beginning of a major restoration effort, the result of a decades-long legal tussle between environmentalists, farmers and the federal government.

"Having water flow down the San Joaquin is an important first milestone on the way to having a living river again," said Monty Schmitt, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed a lawsuit in 1988 stemming from the opening of Friant Dam.

After years of negotiations, all parties agreed to a legal settlement in 2006 to return water to two dry stretches of the river and bring back native Chinook salmon by 2012.

President Obama signed a bill implementing the agreement in March, and on Thursday, the Bureau of Reclamation released the first test flows into the dry riverbed, where officials hope it will revive parts of the river that are now choked with weeds.

Over the coming months, scientists plan to monitor the flows' impact on the dry riverbed, surrounding croplands and potential spawning habitat for salmon.

"You will see more flow coming out of a few needle valves at the dam, and for the next several weeks you'll notice the river will slowly move downstream," said Jason Phillips, program manager for the bureau's restoration program.

"But it will take decades before you see a fully realized salmon population."#

Redding Record Searchlight-10/1/09
By Jeff Barnard (Associated Press)

A deal to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River will require California lawmakers and voters to approve $250 million in bonds to help cover the cost.

PacifiCorp, a Portland, Ore.-based power company, the states of California and Oregon, American Indian tribes, federal agencies, irrigators and conservation groups announced the draft agreement Wednesday. It is expected to be signed by the end of the year.

"This agreement marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Klamath River and for the communities whose health and way of life depend on it," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "Hats off to all the stakeholders who have worked so hard to find common ground on one of the most challenging water issues of our time."

The Klamath River backs up behind Iron Gate Dam on Aug. 21 near Hornbrook. PacifiCorp has agreed to terms for the removal of four dams on the Klamath River to make way for struggling salmon runs.

Removal of the dams is not scheduled to start until 2020 and depends on funding, a federal determination that it will help salmon and is in the public's interest, and authorization from Congress.

Critics of the agreement say the deal doesn't guarantee that the dams will be removed and won't move swiftly enough to remedy problems currently affecting salmon. Running through northern Siskiyou County, the Klamath once had the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast.

"They have really postponed making a decision whether or not these dams will be removed," said Bob Hunter, staff attorney for WaterWatch, a Portland-based conservation group.

PacifiCorp will not bear the estimated $450 million cost of removing the dams. Oregon has approved $180 million in surcharges on state ratepayers. Another $250 million depends on California approving general obligation bonds.

Those bonds will require approval by legislators in Sacramento and voters at the polls, said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Department of Finance.

There are still some "hurdles" that have to be cleared before the dams will removed, and getting bonds approved by Californians is one of them, said Dean S. Brockbank, vice president and general counsel of PacifiCorp. He said the company isn't normally in the business of removing dams, but "the Klamath Basin crisis is a unique situation."

"The state and federal governments have made it clear that they want these dams out," he said.

PacifiCorp serves 1.6 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, and is owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Warren Buffett's Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The four dams - J.C. Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate - together produce enough electricity for 70,000 customers.

"When the Klamath dams come down, it will be the biggest dam removal project the world has ever seen," Steve Rothert, California director for the conservation group American Rivers, said in a statement.#

Chico Enterprise-Record-10/1/09
By Jeff Barnard (Associated Press)

The turning point toward removing four Klamath River dams in Oregon and California to restore struggling salmon runs came in the little Shenandoah Valley town of Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Michael Bogert, an aide to then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorn, summoned representatives of PacifiCorp and the governors of Oregon and California to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Conservation Training Center there in May 2008. They would find a way to peace in the Klamath after decades of battling over water, fish, power and farming.

"We relicense our hydro projects — that's the regular course of business," PacifiCorp Vice President and General Counsel Dean Brockbank recalled Wednesday after the Portland-based utility announced it had agreed to terms for removing the dams.

"In this case, Gov. (Ted) Kulongoski, Gov. (Arnold) Schwarzenegger, and at that time Secretary Kempthorn made it very clear from a public policy point of view that they did not want these dams relicensed. They wanted the dams removed as part of a larger (Klamath) basin settlement and restoration program.

"Once that became abundantly clear, we shifted our framework from relicensing to settlement involving a possible dam removal framework."

Kempthorn said from Washington, D.C., that he did not initially want the dams removed, but President George W. Bush wanted a resolution to the long-standing water crisis, and he was determined to find an agreement that would be a good business decision for PacifiCorp.

"I think that was an attitude change, maybe a game-changer," he said.

A key element was the federal government agreeing that some other entity besides PacifiCorp would take out the dams, Brockbank said.

"Up until that point, people talked aspirationally about taking dams out," he said. "But PacifiCorp was not going to take the dams out. One of our fundamental negotiating principles was someone else has got to take that burden on."

PacifiCorp has agreed to terms for removing four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath that produce enough power for 70,000 customers. If they actually come out sometime after 2020, it will open some 300 miles of river to salmon for the first time in a century. Conservation groups have characterized it as the biggest river restoration effort ever.

The utility, a unit of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is expected to sign the draft agreement by the end of the year.

The deal sets a cap of $450 million for dam removal. Oregon has agreed to a surcharge of $180 million on Oregon customers of PacifiCorp. California must still approve bonds to cover the rest. Meanwhile, PacifiCorp has agreed to spend $500,000 a year for the next 10 years on restoration of coho salmon habitat in California tributaries of the Klamath River.

The focus now shifts to getting farmers, American Indian tribes, salmon fishermen, conservation groups and others to sign onto a $1 billion proposal for restoring the Klamath Basin.

The draft agreement includes water and power assurances for irrigators in the upper basin, as well as continued farming on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath national wildlife refuges — terms that have angered some conservation groups worried that they will limit water for fish and block the restoration of wetlands critical to improving water quality.

Charles Bonham, California director of Oregon Trout, said the support of everyone in the community is necessary for restoration to work.

"We want salmon to be met in Klamath Falls with open arms, not pitchforks," he said.

Federal marshals had to be called to Klamath Falls in 2001 to keep farmers from opening floodgates to the Klamath Reclamation Project, which had been closed so scarce water could be devoted to threatened salmon during a drought.

When the Bush administration restored irrigation the next year, tens of thousands of adult salmon died in the lower river, stranded by low water in warm pools where they were vulnerable to disease.

In 2006, poor returns to the Klamath forced authorities to practically shut down salmon fishing in the ocean off California and Oregon, triggering appropriations from Congress for millions of dollars in disaster assistance to fishermen.

"Society has been incurring great costs already outside the basin for these unresolved issues within the basin," said Mike Carrier, policy director for Kulongoski, the Democratic Oregon governor.

Not all tribes and conservation groups are happy with the way things are going.

"The (agreement) allows PacifiCorp to stall dam removal until a date when all naturally spawning salmon in the river could be dead," Hoopa Tribal Chairman Leonard Master said in a statement. "We cannot afford to wait that long."

Oregon Wild is fighting the deal's link to assurances of steady water supplies for a federal irrigation project and continued farming on two national wildlife refuges.#

N.Y. Times-10/1/09
By Jesse McKinley

A draft plan to remove four aging dams along the Klamath River in Oregon and California was released Wednesday, a long-awaited step toward ending a protracted dispute over the waterway.

The Klamath dams, built from 1918 to 1961 along an upstream stretch of the river, are owned by PacifiCorp, which uses them to generate electricity. But they have angered Indian tribes along the river, as well as fishermen and environmentalists, who blamed them for a decline in salmon populations and subsequent economic hardships.

Last year, federal and other officials announced a nonbinding agreement to remove the dams, and Wednesday’s draft plan added a specific, nuts-and-bolts dimension to that agreement. In releasing the draft plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the Klamath “one of the most challenging water issues of our time.”

Competing interests have long debated how to manage the Klamath, a river whose salmon populations once rivaled any in the world. Environmentalists argue that the fish populations have declined because of the dams preventing upstream spawning, while farmers have pleaded for more water for irrigation and others for more electric power.

The federal government has often played the unhappy role of referee. In 2002, environmentalists asserted that a significant die-off of fish had resulted from a diversion of water to farmers that was ordered by the Interior Department. Four years later, fishermen complained when low levels of salmon in the river led to government restrictions on commercial fishing.

The draft plan, which was developed by representatives from about two dozen federal, state and tribal agencies, environmental groups and irrigators in discussions with officials from PacifiCorp, will go to stakeholders and the public for review.

Kirk Miller, the deputy secretary and chief counsel of California Natural Resources Agency, which represented the state in negotiations, said he hoped for approval by year’s end.

Under the agreement, the Interior Department would study the cost and environmental impact of removing the dams, including the effect on fish populations and downstream river conditions, to help Mr. Salazar make what he called “a full informed decision.” In a nod to PacifiCorp, the company would continue to operate the dams until their removal and would not be liable for any effects of the demolition.

Greg Abel, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement that “this is a balanced and reasonable outcome that best protects the interests of our customers,” as well as “helping to peacefully resolve numerous conflicts in the Klamath basin.”

About $200 million of the estimated $450 million cost of removing the dams would be covered by a small surcharge on PacifiCorp’s customers, most of whom reside in Oregon. The rest of the money would come from the company’s customers in California and the sale of bonds there.

The federal government would be required to prepare timetables for the dams’ removal and plans to reduce cost overruns and dispose of sediment and debris.

“The agreement calls on each of us to do our part,” said Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon, where lawmakers have approved the PacifiCorp surcharge.

Mr. Salazar has until March 2012 to decide whether to go forward with the plan. If approved, removal of the dams would begin in 2020.

“We haven’t seen salmon in our country for 90 years,” said Jeff Mitchell, a council member for the Klamath Tribes of Oregon. “This agreement represents our best chance of finally bringing the salmon home.”#

Sacramento Bee-10/1/09
By Jim Downing

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries on Wednesday evening announced the nation's largest forest carbon-offset project, meant to keep millions of tons of climate-warming gases out of the atmosphere over the next century.

Forestry and some conservation groups said the deal shows the state's new rules on forest offsets, adopted last week by the Air Resources Board, will be attractive to landowners.

But some environmental advocates said it's a sign that the timber industry is poised to capitalize on a provision that allows clear-cutting on land enrolled in carbon-offset programs.

"This is the thing we were worried about," said Michael Endicott, resource sustainability advocate at Sierra Club California.

The deal coincides with a high-profile international climate summit Schwarzenegger is hosting in Los Angeles this week.

On four plots totaling 60,000 acres in Tuolumne, Tehama, Shasta and Siskiyou counties, Sierra Pacific is committing to timber management strategies that should store more carbon compared with "business as usual."

"We can still manage our forests, but we have to meet or exceed the baseline conditions," said Mark Pawlicki, a spokesman for the company.

Over the next five years, Sierra Pacific expects the new management practices will keep 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide stored in the trees and soil that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. That's equivalent to what's generated by burning 170 million gallons of gasoline.

Additional carbon would be stored in subsequent years, with the deal constraining what Sierra Pacific can do with the land for 100 years.

That stored carbon could likely be purchased as an "offset" by industrial polluters or electricity generators needing to reduce emissions under the state's "cap and trade" system. That program is slated to take effect in 2012, though details have yet to be finalized.

Clear-cutting, or removing all the trees in a plot, is allowed on sections of up to 40 acres on private land in California. The offset policy doesn't change that.

Land registered for a forest-offset program could be clear-cut if that represented an improvement over how the land would have been managed otherwise. For instance, a forest in an area that has been cleared every 40 years might instead be allowed to grow for 80 years before logging, a cycle that would likely store more carbon.

Groups like the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity oppose clear-cutting mainly because it can damage wildlife habitat, erode forest soils and pollute waterways. By making carbon-offset revenue available only for lands logged less invasively ? by cutting some trees but leaving others, for instance ? the state could have discouraged clear-cutting, they argue.

But other groups like the Nature Conservancy support the new rules and say they balance the need to have a program that is attractive to landowners while still maintaining environmental standards.

"There's a fine line with how far you should go with additional (environmental) requirements," said Michelle Passero, the group's senior climate policy adviser, who helped craft the rules approved last week.#

L.A. Times-10/1/09
By Eric Bailey

The state's largest timber company Wednesday announced a groundbreaking agreement to begin marketing its vast forests as a weapon in the fight against global warming.

Sierra Pacific Industries' announcement comes less than a week after the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed through new rules that allow the firm to sell its trees' ability to absorb harmful carbon dioxide from the air.

Environmental groups immediately raised questions about the timing, so soon after the administration pressed the California Air Resources Board to approve the new protocols. "There obviously was a backroom deal going on that helped drive approval of those protocols," said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Promoters of Sierra Pacific's new pact said such criticisms miss the mark and that the new effort is blazing a trail in the battle against global warming.

"This deal is really marking the way not just for California, but for the global carbon market," said Eron Bloomgarden of Equator, a private equity fund for natural resource projects that will work with Sierra Pacific to find buyers for its carbon credits.

Schwarzenegger, who on Wednesday launched a three-day climate summit in Los Angeles, had originally planned to announce the agreement at an evening news conference but canceled it at the last minute and released a short statement heralding the deal.

"This agreement and the partnerships formed at this summit will help people around the world reduce the 20% of global warming emissions that come from deforestation," the governor said.

Sierra Pacific will, over the next five years, manage 60,000 acres of its forests to boost the amount of carbon dioxide the trees absorb by 1.5 million tons. The company will offer this "offset" for sale to smokestack industries to help compensate for their polluting emissions.

The offsets could be worth $10 million or more at current prices.

The first project involves a plan to permanently declare 20,000 young conifers -- giant sequoias ranging from seedlings to trees 30 years old -- off limits to logging forever.

"They would have been harvested over time -- now they won't," declared Mark Pawlicki of Sierra Pacific.

Other changes could include slowing the harvest of trees or clearing brush and other debris, providing more light and space for trees. That can speed the growth of conifers, increasing their absorption of gases that trap heat.

Pawlicki said the air board's new rules provide abundant reviews by regulators to ensure that forests are absorbing more carbon than they otherwise would be.

Opponents of Sierra Pacific's logging practices say the agreement so far seems to simply promise a big payday to the firm for managing its forest much as it would have anyway. Preserving the sequoias would not increase carbon absorption in the short term, they said.

They also questioned efforts by administration officials to press for approval of the new forest protocols in time for the governor's summit on climate change.

"The deal . . . smacks of insider trading by the Schwarzenegger administration," said Jeff Shellito, an environmental consultant and former legislative staffer on natural resource issues.

Dan Pellissier, Schwarzenegger's deputy Cabinet secretary for energy and the environment, said such arguments are "specious," the product of longtime foes who had hoped to stop Sierra Pacific's practice of clear-cutting.

Opposition to clear-cutting "is like a religion to some folks," he said. "There is no amount of science that will undercut their beliefs."#