[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 7/26/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

July 26 2007

 

1.  Top Item

 

Wildlife officials may fight corps on levee habitat; Order to cut vegetation is said to threaten state's river species

Sacramento Bee – 7/26/07

By Matt Weiser, staff writer

 

State and federal wildlife officials on Wednesday suggested they are preparing for a fight with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers if the agency applies to California a strict national rule barring vegetation on levees.

 

Wildlife officials fear "serious consequences" to the environment if levees must be stripped of vegetation that is among the final bits of animal habitat along waterways in the region.

 

The Army Corps earlier this year told California flood control agencies they must follow its blanket national policy or risk losing federal funding to rebuild levees after floods. The national policy would require all trees to be removed from the land side of levees, while nothing larger than 2 inches in diameter would be allowed on the water side.

 

This conflicts with a long-held, local corps policy that has encouraged tree planting on California levees. This year alone, thousands of trees were planted at more than 100 levee repair projects with the blessing of the corps.

 

Surveys this spring by the state Department of Water Resources found that the national policy could require trees to be stripped from 457 miles of levees in the Central Valley, while shrubs would disappear from 830 miles.

 

Because the state's levees were built close together more than 100 years ago, this vegetation is the last source of food and shelter for salmon, steelhead, Swainson's hawks, giant garter snakes and dozens of other species.

 

"There are serious consequences to anadromous fish (salmon, steelhead and sturgeon) from the blanket application of the levee vegetation policy, and it may result in some consequences under the Endangered Species Act," said Rod McInnis, regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. "The banks are necessary as riparian habitat because they are not set back. They're all the habitat these fish have."

 

His comments came Wednesday at a Society of American Military Engineers conference in Sacramento on flood issues. McInnis sat on a panel that addressed the levee vegetation conflict.

 

Eric Halpin, Corps of Engineers special assistant on dam and levee safety, offered scant hope that the corps will soften its position. An interim policy statement it released last month requires levee districts to meet existing national policy until a new national policy is finalized in a few months.

 

He said there is "very little debate" that tree roots can cause water to seep through levees. Others, however, point to numerous studies over the past 20 years that found no such seepage risk.

 

"I think there's decades of experience out there that have shown there are risks," Halpin said. "The magnitude of woody vegetation in California does make the situation out here unique."

 

He said a waiver might be possible on setback levees and "overbuilt" levees that exceed standard dimensions. But those are almost nonexistent in California.

 

McInnis said his agency has been "pushing, advising and cajoling" the corps to exempt the state from complying with the national policy.

 

"Strictly applied in California, such compliance would undo decades of conservation programs," said John McCamman, chief deputy director at the California Department of Fish and Game, which is also pressing for an exemption. "Mitigating for the loss of these critical resources will be extremely costly and perhaps ecologically impossible."

 

The panelists were asked how the Valley's levee habitat would be replaced if the corps imposes its policy. The question left them dumbfounded.

 

Mike Hoover, assistant field supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said California has already lost 95 percent to 99 percent of its riverside habitat. Government agencies, he said, have spent "several billion dollars" just trying just trying to restore what's left.

 

"If there's any major impact to the existing system ... I don't know how you fix it," he said. #

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/292327.html

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