[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 6/19/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

June 19, 2007

 

1.  Top Item -

 

 

 

Hearings to address smelt, Delta pumping

Contra Costa Times – 6/19/07

By Denis Cuff

 

A congressional panel will hold a hearing in Vallejo in two weeks on how to restore the Delta's ailing ecosystem without destabilizing California water supplies.

A recent 10-day shutdown of the state's giant Delta water pumps shows that state and federal agencies lack a sustainable plan to meet California's water needs and protect its environment, federal lawmakers said.

 

Court rulings that the state failed to protect the threatened Delta smelt triggered the state pump shutdown from May 31 to June 9.

 

Federal pumps in the Delta also were turned down, but not off, to help protect the smelt.

 

"We have an emergency on our hands," Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, said Monday in announcing the July 2 hearings in Vallejo. "State and federal agencies are lurching from crisis to crisis without a sustainable plan that can protect our Delta environment and manage our water supplies."

 

Miller and Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, are among six Bay Area lawmakers to call for the hearing by the water and power subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee.

 

Miller, a member of the subcommittee, said he is frustrated that inadequate protections for the smelt cast a cloud of uncertainty over California water supplies this spring.

 

Operators of state and federal water pumps in the Delta have increased pumping in the past few days, but pumping levels still are roughly half of normal for June, said Sue Sims, spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources. Pumping may resume to normal by the end of the week if the smelt are out of danger, she added.

State and federal pump operators cut back pumping for fear of sucking up and killing small Delta smelt before they migrate west into cooler, brackish water in and near the Suisun Marsh.

 

"We think the crux of the smelt have moved out of harm's way," said Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a water delivery agency.

Meanwhile, environmentalists and a sport fisherman filed a lawsuit Monday accusing a state water pollution board of illegally allowing Central Valley farmers to release pollution that could kill or harm Delta smelt.

 

The lawsuit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court argues that the Central Valley Regional Water Board wrongly approved conditional waivers in July that permitted agricultural discharges into thousands of miles of streams, rivers and the Delta.

 

The Baykeeper and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance filed the lawsuit.

 

A House Natural Resources subcommittee will hold a hearing on the Delta ecosystem at 9 a.m. July 2 at Vallejo City Hall, 555 Santa Clara St. Top state and federal water managers and regulators will be invited.

 

The hearing will focus on two issues:

  What is the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary, and what is causing declines in fish, including the threatened Delta smelt?

  What are state and federal water and wildlife agencies doing to help restore the Delta environment?#

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_6176380?nclick_check=1