A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
February 19, 2008
3. Watersheds
DELTA ISSUES:
Is bass to blame for decline of smelt population? -
QUAGGA MUSSELS:
Quagga mussel threatens dam; Quick-growing mollusk creates problems for
County staff urges OK of Klamath Basin pact - Eureka Times Standard
Spawning salmon numbers dwindling in Napa River - Napa Valley Register
SALMON DECLINE:
Guest Column: What is behind the salmon decline? -
Editorial: Parkway redemption? -
DELTA ISSUES:
Is bass to blame for decline of smelt population?
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
THE DELTA - For 129 years, they've shared the Delta, swimming the same sloughs and even eating the same food.
Can it be that the striped bass has been chowing down on its neighbor, the diminutive Delta smelt, the whole time?
So claims a coalition of farmers, which filed suit last week against the state of
The south
About eight months ago, they formed a group called the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, and it has filed suit in federal court in
But the lawsuit appears to contradict what some experts say about the biology of the Delta and the relationship between the two fish species.
"All the studies that have been done on striped bass feeding habits show that they virtually never take Delta smelt," said Peter Moyle, a
And that's supported, he said, by studies in which striped bass have been cut open and their stomach contents examined.
Although they were introduced into
The farmers' coalition admits the striped bass is not the sole cause of the smelt's decline, but neither are the export pumps, said Michael Boccadoro, a spokesman for the coalition.
The group says there are a range of reasons. For example, it has also threatened to sue two power plants in
"The reality is a convergence of all these factors," Boccadoro said. "Everybody's going to have to contribute" to a solution that will lead to a sustainable Delta.
The latest lawsuit also illustrates how difficult it has become to tell who is who in the Delta wars.
The various interests groups have adopted similar names: Coalition for a Sustainable Delta sounds like it would have much the same cause as Restore the Delta, a Stockton-based group that calls for reducing water exports.
Indeed, at least one media report from last week mistakenly said that environmentalists had filed the legal action.
Boccadoro said that the coalition's name is perfectly appropriate; the landowners are seeking solutions to make the Delta sustainable.
Jay Sorensen, a longtime striped bass fisherman in
"That's why you have all these organizations that are being formed, because of the political rhetoric that's going on now for fish and wildlife in this state," he said.
The state Fish and Game Department once stocked striped bass in the Delta but suspended that practice because of concerns that the striped bass might eat smelt as well as baby salmon.
The lawsuit claims striped bass eat 5.3 percent of the Delta smelt population each year, as well as 6 percent of the winter-run chinook salmon and 3 percent of spring-run salmon. The numbers come from Fish and Game documents, the coalition says.
Also, rules that prohibit fishermen from taking striped bass less than 18 inches long, and from taking more than two striped bass longer than 18 inches, have allowed more smelt to be killed, the lawsuit says.
A Fish and Game spokesman said he could not comment on pending litigation.
Moyle, the UC Davis fish expert, said trawling in the 1970s would frequently yield samples that were half-smelt, half-striped bass, evidence that both species once thrived together.
"There's very little evidence of (stripers) being major predators of smelt, even when smelt were abundant," he said. #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/A_NEWS/802170339
QUAGGA MUSSELS:
Quagga mussel threatens dam; Quick-growing mollusk creates problems for
By Keith Rogers,
LAS VEGAS — Invasive quagga mussels are adapting well to life in the desert, especially in Lake Havasu, where scientists have determined their reproduction rate is three times faster than when the pesky mollusks infested the Great Lakes years ago.
Leonard Willett, the Bureau of Reclamation's quagga mussel coordinator for the lower Colorado River dams, said the effort to deal with quaggas, which were discovered last year first in
"Reactive approach means you're going to live with the mussels. You're going to control them, but you're going to live with them," he said in a recent presentation to the Lake Mead Water Quality Forum.
He projected that as the infestation sets in and begins to clog hydroelectric power cooling pipes and other hardware in Hoover Dam's operations, the maintenance-and-control bill could reach $1 million a year, especially if pipes get plugged with quagga colonies.
That could cause turbines to overheat and shut down until cooling pipes can be cleared of the invasive species.
"This is an evil critter, not good," Willett said. "It is going to cause a lot of problems when we're going to have to install control measures."
Among the options for controlling the invasion is to use a bacteria product that targets the quagga mussels.
While that method still is being developed, Willett said it looked promising.
Other choices are mechanical filters and using chemicals like chlorine to kill them, or a combination of filters and ultraviolet light.
At the end of the day, though, there would be shells from dead quaggas to dispose of and discharge permits to obtain.
So far, conditions for quaggas to thrive appear to be more than adequate at Davis Dam at the south end of
In October, a colony coated the dam's exterior penstock gate like carpeting.
A month later, downstream at Parker Dam on
"At Parker Dam, there is a lot of colonization. At Parker, there is no hope. They colonize repeatedly," Willett said.
With warmer year-round temperatures than bodies of water in the
In addition, Havasu has the right mix of food, calcium and dissolved oxygen to sustain colonization.
With that, Willett said, "You're going to get mussels. I'm not surprised."
Near Hoover Dam, quaggas have been found more than 200 feet deep in
Not only do they pose a threat to the cooling pipe system for hydroelectric turbines, but also to the network that supplies domestic water for workers and visitors at the dam.
They prefer to cling to flat, stainless steel structures where water flows slower than 6 feet per second.
"Mussels really like stainless steel. They don't like copper or brass," Willett said.
The Casitas Municipal Water District fears the mussel could turn up at
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/feb/17/quagga-mussel-threatens-dam/
County staff urges OK of
By Jessie Faulkner, staff writer
The main impact of the agreement on the county, Mattson wrote in a report to the board for Tuesday's meeting, is the on-going expense of funding a representative to attend regular meetings of the Klamath Basin Coordination Council for the next 10 years.
”The Department estimates that there will be six to 10 meetings per year for the first three years,” Mattson wrote.
“The estimated cost to the county's water budget could run about $1,200 per meeting or $7,200 to $12,000 per year, assuming the meetings were attended and held in Yreka or
The board is also scheduled to consider a resolution that will commit the county to payment of prevailing wages in any public works contracts issued in its role as the regional manager for the North Coast Integrated Regional Water Management Plan.
”This means that all projects in the Proposition 50 Implementation Grant are subject to state prevailing wage,” Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard wrote in a report to the board.
To meet those requirements, the county contracted with SHN Consulting Engineers & Geologists Inc. for assistance in preparing a labor compliance program that will be submitted to the state Department of Industrial Relations. The supervisors are scheduled to vote on whether to submit the proposed program to the state.
The county continues to be actively working on the situation resulting from the closure of the Martin's
Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist is requesting that the board authorize her, as chair, to sign a letter in response to the tribe's request.
At the same time, Public Works Director Mattson reports that county, state and federal representatives met at the bridge on Feb. 14 for a field review of the work proposed to stabilize the span.
”After site review,” Mattson wrote, “the representative from the FHWA (federal highways) signed the funding approval request for improvements to
Mattson said a walk-through at the site with interested contractors has been scheduled for Feb. 22, the bid opening for Feb. 29 and awarding the contract on March 4.
The Federal Highway Administration will pay 100 percent of the cost of work completed before June 1, according to the staff report. For work after June 1, the federal contribution falls to 88.5 percent with the balance (11.47 percent) to be made up between the county (25 percent) and Office of Emergency Services (75 percent).
Those funds, if necessary, will come from the Humboldt County Public Works Department's Engineering budget, Mattson reported. #
http://www.times-standard.com//ci_8293907?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com
Spawning salmon numbers dwindling in Napa River
By Kerana Todorov, staff writer
Fewer chinook salmon returned to spawn in the
Smaller salmon runs were reported in other watersheds in the region as well, noted RCD biologists who surveyed a stretch of the
Jonathan Koehler, a senior biologist at RCD, said these results point to poor ocean conditions, including shifts in the amount of plankton available to fish and shrimp for the salmon.
The waters where the counts are low have one thing in common — the ocean, he said. “All our fish go out to the ocean.”
To do the survey, RCD biologists counted salmon nests or redds — areas in the bottom of the river the fish clear with its tail to spawn — from St. Helena to north
Counting redds is more accurate than counting fish, because adult fish can easily be double counted, the RCD biologists explained during a recent presentation of their findings.
The biologists found nine redds per kilometer — or more than four fewer than in 2005 and 2006 along the 4.5-mile stretch between Oakville Crossing and St. Helena, where most redds are found.
Koehler stressed more counts will have to be done to establish long-term trends. It is only the fourth year that data has been collected on the chinook salmon spawning season in the
In the Central Valley, the number of chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River this fall was a record low, a particularly distressing result, according to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a group that proposes salmon fishing rules to federal officials every spring along the
Chuck Tracy, a salmon staff officer for the Pacific Fishery Management Council, on Friday said a low salmon run in the
“It does look like there is a coastwide trend,” said
“We don’t know for sure” why this is happening, said Tracy, who explained the lower count may lead to a shorter commercial salmon season this year.
Chinook salmon return to the
Chris Malan, a
The river’s health suffers from various factors, including poor water flows, increased temperature and severely eroding banks along the river, she explained.
The
RCD biologists also collected 70 DNA samples from carcasses which they shipped to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/02/16/news/local/doc47b6932d61391903577685.txt
SALMON DECLINE:
Guest Column: What is behind the salmon decline?
San Francisco Chronicle – 2/19/08
By Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors
But what if this treasured salmon run is in trouble for other reasons? What if government scientists were increasingly suspecting changing conditions in the ocean as the primary factor? And what if environmental groups were publicly reluctant to blame another human activity - recreational and commercial salmon fishing - because the groups were allies in court skirmishes against the water projects?
When it comes to figuring out why any given fish species is thriving or struggling at any given moment, usually the experts point to a variety of factors. First, a little background on salmon. There are three different "runs," or populations, of salmon that migrate from the Pacific Ocean, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and up the
Protections have not been extended to the more abundant fall run. Its population has gone up and down over the last 10 years like the stock market, varying between 300,000 and 800,000 fish. But this past fall, the official run was 90,414 returning salmon, the lowest in a quarter century. When the information was released, the blame-the-delta-pumps theory was once revived.
Looking at the human impacts on salmon, here are three to consider. Yes, there are the delta pumps of the State Water Project and Central Valley Project. But, their operations are carefully regulated when salmon are migrating to minimize possible impacts. These same pumping restrictions were in place when the salmon run skyrocketed to record highs too.
A second human activity is the state's nurturing of a destructive, artificial fishery in the delta, a population of non-native striped bass. According to a 1999 study by the California Department of Fish and Game, the bass consume a significant number of the fall salmon run as the fingerlings (called smolt) try to swim through the delta to the ocean.
Third, there is fishing of salmon in the delta and upstream for pure recreation. What percentage die this way before they spawn? Perhaps 25 percent, according to a 2006 report by the Pacific Fishery Management Council.
And then there's a fourth "culprit"- Mother Nature. Changing ocean conditions have dramatically lowered food sources for salmon in recent years. "The ocean environment has a strong influence on how many survive the initial period at sea and how many come back to spawn three to four years later in the Sacramento River," a biologist with the Farallon Institutes for Advanced Ecosystem Research told The Chronicle. Climate change will exacerbate these problems in the ocean. Indeed, this is not a problem unique to the
Despite all these factors at play, single-focused environmental and fishing groups are blaming the water systems in the delta for the salmon's problems. We need to have a more candid and complete conversation about how to minimize all human impacts facing the salmon and other important delta species. Instead of wasteful litigation, an approach based more on science and cold, hard facts is the only way to create a better water system that provides
Laura King Moon is the assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors, a nonprofit association of 27 public agencies from Northern, Central and Southern California that purchase water under contract from the
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/19/EDKJV3JUV.DTL
Editorial: Parkway redemption?
The conflict along the
People fortunate enough to own property along the river bluff want to build houses with unobstructed views of the parkway.
Members of the public who invested in the purchase and upkeep of this multimillion-dollar scenery don't want it marred by the visual blight of intruding homes.
On Wednesday, the Sacramento Board of Supervisors again sided with a bluff owner and against the broader public interest. That's not surprising. This board and previous boards have a lousy record of protecting the scenic values of the
Wednesday's vote means that two more homes will be built above the parkway, just 35 feet from an eroding bluff.
The property owner claims he will screen the homes with vegetation, yet there is reason to be dubious. As the photo below shows, the county has done little to enforce the screening guidelines of its 1985 parkway plan.
The 4-1 vote makes a strong argument for replacing the current crop of supervisors (with the exception of Don Notolli, who voted to protect the parkway). Yet there may still be time for the supes to redeem themselves.
At Wednesday's hearing, the Save the American River Association showed supervisors image after image of riverfront homes with fences, pergolas and structures that appear to violate county ordinances.
Supervisors said they would work with SARA to deal with any infractions. County residents should hold them to that promise.
The supervisors should also finish a long-overdue update of the parkway plan. The public deserves assurance its investment in the parkway will be protected for generations. #
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/716715.html
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