[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 2/6/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

February 6, 2008

 

1.  Top Item

 

Fight widens over Delta; Stripers heat up the battle

Sacramento Bee – 2/6/08

By Matt Weiser, staff writer

 

The big, tasty and hard-fighting striped bass is a top prize for fishermen in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

 

For everybody else who depends on the Delta's limited water, the racy chrome fish has become a flash point in California's next water war.

 

Farmers in arid Kern County last week sued the state for protecting the striper as a sportfish. They allege the nonnative striper has been allowed to damage the Delta, preying on endangered native fish, including salmon and the ghostly Delta smelt.

 

The legal action came like a Taser strike to the state's vocal angling community. And several water law experts say the case may stand as the first blast in what's expected to be a protracted battle over California's most precious resource.

 

The new lawsuit shows that this war's front has moved beyond the traditional realm of environmentalists versus government. Rhetoric has also hardened between interest groups that have spent the past 10 years trying to cooperate on water issues.

 

"They're executioners," Roger Mammon said, bluntly labeling water exporters.

 

Mammon is a board member of the West Delta Chapter of the California Striped Bass Association. "They don't care about the Delta except that it's water and money in their pocket. I think they're full of it."

 

Anglers call the striped bass innocent. Yes, it's a predator, but they say it successfully coexisted historically with salmon and smelt, and all thrived.

 

Instead, they blame water exporters – including the Kern farmers – for a bottomless thirst that has pumped Delta water to millions of homes and farm fields at a record pace over the past seven years.

 

"What's new is that the crisis is upon us," said Dante Nomellini Sr., a longtime water lawyer in Stockton. "This thing's going to heat up a lot more than what we've got right now."

 

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. It naturally collects about two-thirds of the state's runoff and funnels it to the sea via San Francisco Bay, along the way providing vital habitat for an array of fish and other wildlife.

 

But it's also the hub of California's complex water distribution system. The 740,000-acre estuary is the diversion point for state and federal water projects serving 25 million people and more than 2 million acres of rich farmland. Those diversions, at separate pumping facilities near Tracy, reverse natural water flows, alter habitat and kill millions of fish each year.

 

A recent truce in California's water wars began in 1994 with creation of the CalFed Bay-Delta Program. This collaboration between government agencies, water consumers and environmentalists sought to protect the Delta and improve water deliveries.

 

But CalFed did not have the money and authority to meet all its goals and is now being reformulated, leaving most participants feeling shortchanged.

 

Since 2001, water exports from the Delta have neared record levels while numerous fish populations sank – including the threatened smelt, now near extinction.

 

This combination made litigation seem inevitable.

 

"A number of folks feel, for whatever reason, they are reduced to pursuing litigation as the last available option to vindicate their interests," said Richard Frank, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Berkeley.

 

The truce may have ended last August, when a federal judge in Fresno ordered Delta water exports reduced to protect the smelt. That case was brought by environmental groups.

 

The striped bass case can be considered return fire.

 

That's according to Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the plaintiffs. Calling themselves the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, they include the Belridge, Berrenda Mesa, Lost Hills and Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa water districts.

 

All are in Kern County and depend on Delta water.

 

Boccadoro said water exports get too much blame for the Delta's collapse, while other threats are ignored. The coalition fears this narrow focus will further harm fish, followed by more water cutbacks, creating a vicious cycle that will only hurt farmers.

 

Other threats they cite are poor water quality from upstream farm and urban runoff, and thousands of unchecked farm water diversions in the Delta itself.

 

The coalition will "absolutely" act on such issues, he said.

 

"They won't all be legal actions," Boccadoro said. "But there will be actions on each of the issues we believe are causing decline of the estuary."

 

Frank found it ironic that a farm group brought legal action over the Delta, when it is farmers who often decry court meddling in the Delta.

 

But he said this signifies the new battle at hand.

 

"It looks like at least some of them have decided the best defense is a good offense," he said.

 

Nomellini agrees. He represents the Central Delta Water Agency – farmers who cultivate the Delta's rich soil.

 

On Delta issues, these farmers have different interests from those in Kern County. Generally, they seek to preserve the Delta to avoid disrupting farm communities, and oppose excessive water exports which often make Delta waters too salty for their crops.

 

Yet they have a kinship with their farm brethren in the south.

 

That may be eroding.

 

"Our farmers view the other guys as breaching faith," said Nomellini. "They're part of the water grab. I don't know what we can do now other than just fight." #

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/691079.html

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