[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 6/14/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

June 14 2007

 

1.  Top Item -

 

Farmers face off with smelt water policy

Stockton Record – 6/14/07

By Alex Breitler, staff writer

 

It's the law. The 41-page Endangered Species Act requires the government to save - "to the extent practicable" - species faced with extinction.

Sometimes, there is a steep price.

 

The silvery Delta smelt is no longer than your finger, but it temporarily silenced the export pumps that send water to 25 million Californians. Some say the smelt could cause the biggest splash in the history of the 34-year-old law.

 

On the surface at least, the smelt problem resembles the 2001 water crisis in the Klamath Basin of far Northern California and southern Oregon. Many farmers there went without water for the sake of the unappealing sucker, a bottom-feeding fish with a vacuum cleaner snout.

 

Farmers claimed they were the true endangered species. A restaurant sold "sucker sandwiches" (made of cod, actually). The sucker swims to this day, but lawsuits over the conflict are still pending.

 

The Delta smelt case may be the next big clash, said Dan Keppen, head of the Family Farm Alliance, which represents many Central Valley farmers.

"There will be plenty of angry Californians, (farmers and city dwellers), who are right now scrambling to find ways to mitigate for the lost water supplies," said Keppen, who headed the Klamath Water Users Association during the 2001 water wars.

 

Delta pumping resumed Sunday, albeit at low levels, after a 10-day interruption that resulted from record-low numbers of smelt counted in surveys this spring. No major water shortages have been reported, but even with reduced pumping, the situation could become more serious in two to three weeks, water contractors warned on Friday.

 

"If we don't fix the Delta, this is going to start happening every year," Lester Snow, head of the state Department of Water Resources, said recently.

The California Farm Bureau Federation reported that the cost of water on the open market soared fivefold after the pumps stopped. Farmers south of the Delta but upstream of San Luis Reservoir, near Los Banos, were most susceptible to shortages.

 

Even Delta farmers who divert their own water and do not rely on the pumps were asked to reduce their consumption.

"Endangered species take precedence over everything," Tracy-area walnut farmer Jim McLeod said. "Your food supply, your water supply is secondary to the Endangered Species Act. ... It's not logical."

 

The law requires the government to use all methods necessary to conserve species. Exemptions are rare and granted only through the seven-member "God Squad" committee headed by the secretary of the interior. The committee has previously sided with two other species, the snail darter and the spotted owl.

 

A long-term pump shutdown could generate political support for seeking an exemption, Keppen said.

 

But there are many differences between the Delta's situation and an endangered species battleground such as the Klamath, said Barry Nelson, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. "I really don't think it's shaping up to be that kind of fight," he said.

 

Water providers to cities have acknowledged that the smelt is in trouble, Nelson said. They see that the Delta as a whole is not stable. And they understand that other tools - like water conservation - must be used.

 

"Urban water users recognize the importance of a healthy Delta to meeting California's water needs in a reliable way," Nelson said. "The Delta smelt has served as a catalyst to advance a conversation that's already taking place."

 

What's more, the smelt is not the only species of concern in the Delta. Its loss could precede reductions in more appreciated species, such as striped bass or salmon.

Irvine-based attorney Rob Thornton, an expert on the Endangered Species Act, said the Delta smelt case has broader implications than the Klamath crisis or even the spotted owl, which pitted loggers against environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest.

 

"When you have two courts invalidate approvals of the water project that serves 25 million people, that's a big deal," he said. An Alameda County Superior Court judge earlier this year ruled that the state never got proper permits to kill fish at the state pumps, and a federal judge more recently threw out federal biological reports that said smelt would not be jeopardized at the pumps.

 

It's worth noting, Thornton said, that the Delta crisis has grown even after years of effort by CALFED, a joint state-federal team, to find solutions to California's water struggles.

 

"These issues are very tough," he said. "And getting tougher."#

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