[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Items for 12/7/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

December 7, 2007

 

1.  Top Items

 

Agencies admit fish blunder; They apologize for failing to stop massive Delta kill - Stockton Record

 

Wolk calls for Delta protection agency; A recent fish kill shows fragmentation of system, she says - Sacramento Bee

 

Assemblywoman seeks 'steward' for Delta - Fairfield Daily Republic

 

 

Agencies admit fish blunder; They apologize for failing to stop massive Delta kill

Stockton Record – 12/7/07

By Hank Shaw, staff writer

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071207/A_NEWS/712070312

 

 

Wolk calls for Delta protection agency; A recent fish kill shows fragmentation of system, she says

Sacramento Bee – 12/7/07

By Ngoc Nguyen, staff writer

 

After hearing testimony Thursday about events that led up to last month's massive fish kill on Prospect Island, Assemblywoman Lois Wolk said she is convinced of the need for a single oversight body looking after the Delta.

 

"Everybody is pointing fingers," said Wolk, the Davis Democrat who chairs the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. "No one is taking responsibility for what went wrong."

 

Wolk, who convened the public hearing Thursday, said she would like to work in the next legislative session to establish a Delta oversight and stewardship body.

 

Before Thanksgiving, Bureau of Reclamation contractors repaired a breached levee, leaving a body of standing water on the island. They then began pumping water off the island, killing tens of thousands of stranded fish.

 

A local fisherman reported the dead fish, and eventually the pumping was halted.

 

John Davis, Bureau of Reclamation regional director, said Thursday that he "deeply regrets" the high loss of fish and that "fish mortality exceeded expectations."

 

The levee repair project, which cost $2.5 million, was modeled after previous efforts, Davis said.

 

A bureau evaluation found that salvaging the fish would have cost $100,000, he said.

 

The agency consulted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service about potential harm to endangered species and was told that Delta smelt would not be on Prospect Island during that time of year.

 

The bureau concluded that fish salvage was "impractical" and eliminated it from the plan, Davis said.

 

The agency notified the California Department of Fish and Game that no fish would be salvaged, and no one objected, he testified.

 

Chuck Armor, Fish and Game regional manager, did not dispute or explain Davis' testimony.

 

Armor said the bureau first consulted Fish and Game in May to get a permit required to repair the levee. Fish and Game officials did not return the Bee's phone calls seeking comment about their response to the decision not to salvage fish.

 

Armor said Fish and Game agreed with the federal wildlife agencies that the impact on Delta smelt could be lowered, depending on the season and time of day. No Delta smelt or other listed species have showed up dead, he said.

 

Armor said a formal investigation is under way, and a report is expected at the end of the month. He declined to give details.

 

"I was surprised by the number of striped bass," he said.

 

Wolk expressed disbelief that Fish and Game officials would underestimate the number of fish on the island.

 

"Fish were there because Prospect Island was the habitat it was supposed to be," the assemblywoman said. "There was a healthy fishery there, a sport fishery."

 

"It was a magnet habitat for all the fish," agreed fisherman Dan Bacher, editor of the Fish Sniffer. The island was home to many small fish that attracted big fish, he said.

 

The federal agency is working with state Fish and Game officials to remove dead fish and oxygenate the waters to improve conditions for the remaining fish. Meanwhile, about a hundred volunteers have rescued about 6,000 fish, according to state and federal officials, who said the remaining fish are in deeper waters and harder to reach.

 

Doug Lovell, director of Allied Fishing Groups, said he believes there may be great numbers of fish in those waters.

 

"The decision to not conduct a fish salvage was disappointing in light of the fact that the Delta is in such dire straits," Lovell said.

 

Future levee breaches may cause similar wildlife loss, Wolk said, expressing concern about how similar situations would be handled in the future.

 

"We have to have somebody, whose sole purpose it is to protect the Delta, make decisions about the Delta and to keep the health of the Delta as the primary goal. We don't have that," she said.

 

Without a steward that could address broader questions, Wolk said Delta stakeholders end up working at "cross purposes."

 

"No one asked the questions, 'Do we need to repair the levee? Is this a levee that can remain breached?' " she said.

 

Davis said the bureau "would handle the situation differently."

 

"We didn't go far enough," Davis acknowledged. "We should have gone the extra mile and reached out to the community.

 

"We need to get out of the island business."

 

The bureau plans to offer the island to other federal agencies, then to state, local and county agencies, and finally, to the public. #

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/550126.html

 

 

Assemblywoman seeks 'steward' for Delta

Fairfield Daily Republic – 12/6/07

By Barry Eberling, staff writer

 

RIO VISTA - Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, envisions some sort of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta governing body deciding such thorny matters as habitat restoration and flood management.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/story.php?id=101.4

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