A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 1, 2008
3. Watersheds
DELTA ISSUES:
Scientists breed smelt in case species becomes extinct in Delta - Sacramento Bee
Scientists breeding backup population of Delta smelt - Associated Press
Supervisors proactive on Delta - Vacaville Reporter
TROUT RUN ISSUES:
What's killing the trout in Pescadero Creek? -
QUAGGA MUSSELS:
Boaters heed new rules - Lompoc Record
Lake County to check boats for mussels - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
County's watershed restoration grants will help protect fish; Money used to foster salmon, steelhead trout populations - Ventura County Star
WETLANDS ISSUES:
Wetland rules stir debate; Regulators emphasize creation of wetlands in exchange for those destroyed - Los Angeles Times
Old-fashioned water fight brews in Colorado; Environmentalists and growing communities prepare to square off over a proposed dam on the Cache la Poudre River - Los Angeles Times
KLAMATH RESTORATION:
Guest Column: Any Klamath dam deal must provide water for fish - Sacramento Bee
DELTA ISSUES:
Scientists breed smelt in case species becomes extinct in Delta
By Matt Weiser, staff writer
BYRON – Inside a makeshift collection of modified shipping containers lined up on a patch of asphalt, a system of gurgling pipes and buckets holds the Delta's future. Or, at least, one future.
These faded steel boxes house the beginnings of a new refuge population of threatened Delta smelt. The fish, only finger-length at adulthood, could be used one day to restore the population if their wild kin go extinct.
Unfortunately, extinction is all too likely after five years of steep population declines for the smelt and four other fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. All are known as "pelagic" fish because they live in the Delta's moving water column.
Scientists have been unable to explain the decline, much less solve it. So the refuge smelt are intended as a last-ditch effort to save the species, long considered a bellwether for the health of the estuary as a whole.
If the smelt disappear, scientists believe, other species will follow, along with a decline in water quality that could make Delta water undrinkable for the 25 million Californians who depend on it.
Smelt, in other words, are the lead car in an ecological train that's in danger of derailing.
"It's bigger than smelt," said Bradd Baskerville-Bridges, a marine biologist and co-director of the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory, where the smelt are being raised. "It's affecting all the pelagic species right now, and there's no easy solution."
The lab has been breeding smelt for 15 years for research purposes, so scientists can learn more about how the fish respond to changing environmental conditions. But the new refuge population, which started breeding in December, has added new layers of rigor and importance to the operation.
The process is like a very specialized fish hatchery, but miniaturized. And it's a hands-on process.
Eggs and sperm are extracted by gently holding each tiny smelt in the fingertips and firmly squeezing the abdomen from head to tail. The female releases a nickel-sized puddle of eggs that resembles melted butter. The male excretes a droplet of clear sperm gathered up in a tiny suction device called a micropipette.
After mixing, the fertilized eggs are held in clear tubes about 3 inches in diameter hanging inside one climate-controlled shipping container. Each tube holds layers of fine, sandy sediment through which water is constantly pumped from bottom to top.
The eggs cling to the sediment with a flexible foot, not unlike a mushroom. After eight to 10 days, they hatch into tiny embryos to form a swirling cloud that, on first glance, resembles the foam in a mug of beer. Then you realize the cloud actually consists of about 5,000 baby smelt.
Eventually the embryos respond to light and rise to the surface of each tube, where they are drawn off into buckets to grow into juvenile fish, each ghostly transparent and no longer than a fingernail.
It then takes several months on a steady diet of tiny shrimplike animals – also raised at the lab – before the smelt reach adulthood.
"They're dependent on you like babies," said Sophie Wan, a laboratory assistant supervising the juvenile smelt.
"To be working with a fish that's so close to being extinct is really interesting. It's important. People don't know how important it is."
The lab is creating the refuge population from a parent generation of just 500 smelt gathered from the Delta in December 2006. These are the last wild fish the lab was able to obtain before officials halted scientific collections in the Delta – another drastic step taken to protect the species.
These parents will produce about 5,000 young for the first generation of refuge fish, which must be tracked as individuals to ensure their genetic diversity is maintained when they become parents of the next generation in 2009.
That means more tubes, buckets and tanks.
State agencies recently contributed $2.1 million toward the effort to hire more people for the project and expand the facility into a nearby warehouse, expected to be ready in April.
There are currently no plans to reintroduce these fish. In fact, almost no one wants that to happen yet. At the moment, they represent only a backup plan.
Yet it's vital to ensure diversity in the refuge fish so that if they are reintroduced, they will behave like wild fish and not compromise any remaining in the wild.
So in addition to all the breeding steps, the lab now uses tiny scissors to take a fin clip from each male and female parent. These are stored in a color-coded vial for each fish – red for girls, green for boys – and shipped to researchers on the UC Davis campus for genetic analysis.
Scientists believe a variety of factors have contributed to the smelt's decline, including excessive water exports from the Delta to Southern California, water pollution, and invasive species that outcompete smelt for food.
Research using fish raised at the lab has shown that smelt feeding and movement depend on narrow salinity and water flow requirements. This is especially true when the fish are tiny juveniles, unable to control their own movement in the Delta's strong currents.
The fish essentially evolved to thrive in the natural ebb and flow of the Delta's rivers and tides, a pattern dramatically altered by the dams and pumps that now govern the estuary.
Before reintroducing refuge smelt, scientists also need to be sure the environment is ready for them. Otherwise, these fish might meet the same fate as their wild cousins, which appear unable to thrive in the altered water chemistry, temperature and runoff that exist now.
"It's because of human influences that these changes have occurred, so it's up to us to rectify it," said Joan Lindberg, an ecologist and co-director of the lab. "We haven't been the best stewards of the Delta. So there should be a lot of effort to understand that and manage it so it's more like a natural system." #
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/823346.html
Scientists breeding backup population of Delta smelt
Associated Press – 3/31/08
The university's Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory has bred Delta smelt for years for research purposes. But with the population of the fish plummeting, scientists have begun expanding the work as a backup plan to try to repopulate the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, if necessary.
Some scientists consider the finger-length fish a bellwether for the health of the delta and have been unable to fully explain its declining population.
Scientists are working to produce a first generation of 5,000 smelt to track for genetic diversity.
The state also has contributed $2.1 million to expand the operation. There are currently no plans to reintroduce the fish into the delta. #
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_8759097?nclick_check=1
Supervisors proactive on Delta
By Danny Bernardini, staff writer
Instead of sitting idly by while the the future of the Delta is shaped by state officials, the Solano County Board of Supervisors wants to continue to have its voice heard.
The supervisors have written letters and talked for months about involving themselves in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process, and Tuesday the board likely will adopt guiding principles to follow during the process.
These principles will attempt to keep Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team working on the environmental documents responsible for any impact on
Included in the staff reports are six proposed guiding principles that will create a framework for actions the county may take to ensure that affected communities are compensated for tax losses, increased expenses and land or infrastructure changes that result from actions by the state.
The proposed principles include:
• Further study Delta water conveyance options (including through Delta, dual conveyance and isolated facilities options) and impacts of ecosystem restoration projects.
• Mitigate negative impacts to the county, its citizens or its economic well-being and assurance that
• Preserve County prerogatives, including local land-use authority, tax revenues, public health and safety, economic development, agricultural stability and environmental protection.
• Secure financial support of infrastructure needs, including transportation corridors, levees/flood control, storage and water delivery systems.
• Ensure the county is a voting member on any Delta governance structure and that locally elected representatives are a majority of the leaders.
• Utilize legal standing for any and all proposals and programs that directly or indirectly impact the county, its citizens or its economic well-being.
The Solano County Board of Supervisors meets Tuesday at 9 a.m. in the Supervisors Chamber in
http://www.thereporter.com//ci_8740578?IADID=Search-www.thereporter.com-www.thereporter.com
TROUT RUN ISSUES:
What's killing the trout in Pescadero Creek?
Inside Bay Area – 3/31/08
By Julia Scott, staff writer
PESCADERO — Steelhead trout have been dying in Pescadero Creek for so long that scientists have a word for it — the “fish kills.”
The inexplicable deaths of hundreds of silvery steelhead trout each winter have frustrated locals and baffled scientists every year since 1995, when hundreds of steelhead first were observed belly up in the shallows of Pescadero Marsh.
Several years of testing later, officials are somewhat closer to determining the cause of the problem, which occurs in December or January when the sandbar dividing river from ocean is breached following a series of storms. Some recent developments may help secure the threatened trout’s survival, such as a recent grant from the California Department of Fish and Game to help them reach their spawning grounds and rear their young before heading down to the ocean again.
The last leg in the journey is the most perilous one, when steelhead living in the brackish waters of the lagoon are caught in the influx of saltwater stirred up when the sandbar breaks, letting in the ocean. Scientists now believe the saltwater robs the lagoon of its oxygen in places, choking the fish as they attempt to swim out to sea.
This apparently natural phenomenon may be the result of years of tinkering with the ecosystem by farmers, fishermen and even California State Parks. Officials are now at odds over whether a man-made solution is called for, or whether more human involvement would do more harm than good.
“The system is so altered from all angles that it’s hard to say what would result in better habitat,” said Joanne Kerbavaz, a resource ecologist with State Parks.
The factors that influence hydrology, habitat, and other freshwater conditions in Pescadero Creek are complex and vary widely along the dozens of miles that track the watershed back to its source in the
Further complicating the picture, several agencies manage different parts of the watershed. State Parks owns the marsh and the land around it, the Department of Fish and Game manages the creeks, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration protects the steelhead, and the California Coastal Commission has the last say over any construction projects that might alter the landscape.
One of the problems in bringing Pescadero Creek and lagoon back to a “natural” state of river flow and tidal action, with enough fresh water for the steelhead to survive, is that no one knows what “natural” used to be.
The history of human interference in the creek began in the late 19th century, when local farmers would artificially breach the 40-foot sandbar at the mouth of the creek ahead of nature’s time to prevent the creek from backing up and flooding their farmland.
They built levees along the creek for the same purpose and watered their fields with it. Meanwhile, many ancient redwood stands in the upper watershed were clear-cut to create housing on the
This legacy of logging roads and erodable hillsides continues to push sediment into the creek and its tributaries, interfering with steelhead breeding and changing the creek’s shape.
Fishermen also had their own reasons for breaching the sandbar, and they did so until the late 1970s, according to Tim Burkhart, a longtime ranger in
“In the old days, the farmers, who were also fishermen, would take their bulldozers and move (the bar) so the fish could come upstream . . . until the early 1980s, you could still fish here,” he said.
When they purchased portions of the land in the 1980s, State Parks began breaching the levees to accelerate creek flow and add more marshland habitat for the bird species that now depend on it. This process continued until the mid-1990s, until the first “fish kill” was discovered. More fish kills were reported in later years, though they were hard to count. Records obtained from State Parks show 300 fish were found dead in 2003, 63 in 2004, 170 in 2006 and 14 in 2007.
Kerbavaz says more tests are necessary to better understand how and where the tides interact with freshwater portions of the lagoon, especially in light of anticipated sea level rise. State Parks has applied for a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to study these issues in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey.
If all the agencies agree, one possible solution could involve holding the sandbar in place longer into the winter, giving steelhead smolt a better chance to grow strong and healthy. Adding a seasonal dam to prevent portions of the lagoon from mixing is another possibility.
“One theory is that if the bar forms earlier, there’s a chance to capture more fresh water,” said Kerbavaz.
However, as scientists note, altering the dynamics of the lagoon could come at the expense of something else.
Changing the freshwater-to-saltwater ratio could shrink the wetlands acreage, a big no-no in the eyes of the Department of Fish and Game. The flood plains are known habitat for the
Upriver,
They will replace it with a wider concrete culvert that will help the fish pass through. The agency will repeat the process next year, removing an old dam that dates back to the 1930s.
Efforts like these are helpful, but won’t reverse the long-term trend of population decline among steelhead in
“None of them are doing all that great,” said Moyle, a trend he attributed to many factors but most especially human population growth.
“Anecdotal reports tell us that numbers of fish existed in each of the systems much more than (they) do today,” said Moyle. “Essentially, all steelhead south of
A healthy lagoon is an important buffer zone for young steelhead, which can be reared much more quickly than those spawned upriver, according to Moyle. They are larger, healthier and more likely to return to the lagoon to breed as adults.
“The single most crucial thing in a lot of these coastal watersheds is having a lagoon that’s functional,” he said. #
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_8756564
QUAGGA MUSSELS:
Boaters heed new rules
By Sam Womack, staff writer
It was the first day the new rules were in place to protect the lake from the Quagga mussel, which can quickly destroy a lake's ecosystem, clog water pipes and cause costly maintenance for water resource agencies.
Although boats were subjected to a visual inspection at the main entrance, a high-powered wash at the west marina parking lot area and a final double-check from a park official at the launch site, boaters agreed that the process was better than a closed lake.
By noon, more than 40 boats had passed through the process, but three were turned away for not being clean and dry, said park naturalist Liz Mason-Gaspar.
Gaspar and other park employees performed duties outside of their normal job description to help with the new regulations.
Jack Barros was the first boater to request a boat launch tag that attaches the boat to the trailer and cannot be reattached if removed. He went through the procedure not to launch the boat, but to avoid the process when he comes next week to fish.
Richard Baker of
“It really wasn't that big of a deal,” Baker said. “It took maybe 10, 15 minutes.”
The wash took about 10 minutes and consisted of a hose connected to a 1,500 to 2,500 psi pressure pump and 140 to 160 degree water sprayed on the outside of the boat.
Park maintenance leader Dan Pedersen said they went through a day of training and learned where to look and what to look for when spraying the boats.
He also said the boaters that came through were in good humor and most felt “privileged to get to fish than anything else.”
The high-pressure washers were not rented, as Hernandez had told the county supervisors, but borrowed from the county public works department and
“We're right at the time where we'd hire summer seasonal help, but we'll still have to hire another four or five people on top of that,” Lake Cachuma Operations Manager Mitch Mediros said.
The county parks department said Tuesday that boats that did not pass the visual inspection would be quarantined on-site for 14 days, but that was not the case Friday.
The boats that were not allowed past the main entrance were given the choice of remaining on-site in dry boat storage or leaving with a tag on the boat and returning after two weeks.
Marvin Solorio, a park employee inspecting boats said the boat's registration number and information goes into the park's database to ensure that boaters do not try to come back before their wait period is over.
Mediros said the boats were turned away because of standing water in the bilge and engine area. He said the boaters were “a little mad” but one opted to stay and fish off the dock.
According to the checklist Solorio carried, the quarantine is only seven days if the boat is less than 24 feet in length, fails inspection but there are no mussels, out of state boats or boats from
Otherwise, it is a 14-day quarantine for boats over 24 feet in length and boats carrying Quagga mussels.
Mediros, Supervisor Brooks Firestone and County Parks Director Daniel Hernandez said boats must be clean and dry in order to proceed past the main entrance.
When asked if the supervisors had gone overboard with preventive actions, Firestone responded, “We may be going above and beyond, but it is extremely important we do so - if we underestimate the danger it could be a horrible and costly mistake.”
Since late January, no boats have been able to launch because work was being completed and the water was too high to launch at other sites.
Then Cachuma Operations and Maintenance Board (COMB) came to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors with worries over the Quagga and Zebra mussels and a call to close the lake to private boaters.
The mussels can migrate by boats transferred from an infested body of water to another. Once the dime-sized mollusk enters an environment they can cause damaging ecological changes and gross infrastructure damages, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.
COMB's worries stemmed from the fact that 80 percent of the
The Supervisors voted Tuesday to enact a series of protocols designed to prevent the Quagga mussel from hitchhiking on boats.
COMB was the only entity involved in establishing protocols for
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2008/03/30/news/centralcoast/news03.txt
Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 4/1/08
By Glenda Anderson, staff writer
Visitors bringing boats into
The mussels arrived in
The tiny, prolific invaders from
They pose "a significant and imminent threat" to
The ordinance calls for boat inspection sites to be set up at fire stations in Clearlake Oaks and
Clean boats will receive stickers.
Contaminated boats will be required to be decontaminated and re-inspected.
Local boats that never leave the county will be eligible for inspection stickers electronically if the boats have been dry and out of the water for at least 30 days.
Violators can be fined $100 to $1,000 and sentenced to up to six months in jail.
Similar ordinances were implemented in
"At this point, we're trying to protect ourselves," Supervisor Jeff Smith said.
Most other efforts are focused on educating boaters.
Anti-mussel efforts at
There also has been at least one boat inspection at
"It's huge in terms of protection of the ecology of our lake and the economy of our county," Supervisor Anthony Farrington said.
The board even considered closing the lake to boats in order to protect it, but decided it would cause too much damage to the local economy.
The rapidly colonizing mussels have caused millions of dollars in damage to water systems on the East Coast.
They made their first North Coast appearances in 1989, were found in Southern California for the first time last year and in Central California in January.
They're believed to have gained entry into the country in the ballasts of oceangoing ships.
The mussels damage water systems by attaching to and clogging water intake pipes and screens.
They also adhere to the shells of native mussels, turtles and crustaceans, consume nutrients needed by other organisms and foul the environment with their excretions, harming fisheries.
They die in great numbers, which creates a nasty stench and leaves sharp, glass-like shards of shells along shorelines.
Details of the new regulation are available by calling 263-2556. #
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080331/NEWS/803310307
County's watershed restoration grants will help protect fish; Money used to foster salmon, steelhead trout populations
By Zeke Barlow, staff writer
In an effort to restore steelhead trout and salmon populations around the state, the California Department of Fish and Game has awarded $10 million in watershed restoration grants, some of which will be used in
The funds, which come from Fish and Game and the National Marine Fisheries Service, are being used to remove barriers, replace bridges and restore habitat, among other things.
About $64,000 was given to the Ventura County Resource Conservation District to remove a stream crossing on Lion Creek, a tributary of the
"Some of these projects are not huge, but small efforts make a really significant difference," said Severn Williams, spokesman for California Trout, which helped designate which projects should be tackled. "There is a lot of writing on the wall that declining fish populations are in the future."
Over the years, more than $180 million in grants have been awarded for similar projects around the state.
Paul Jenkin, founder of the Matilija Coalition, which works on conservation issues along the
"We don't have a comprehensive big picture of water strategy on a lot of these watersheds," he said. "I don't want to see the money that could be used for something very beneficial on marginal projects when, given a little planning, you'd be able to prioritize these projects a bit better."
But Nica Knite, also with California Trout, defended the projects. "We do feel they are effective," she said. "Anything we can do to create better opportunities for the fish is a good thing." #
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/mar/29/countys-watershed-restoration-grants-will-help/
WETLANDS ISSUES:
Wetland rules stir debate; Regulators emphasize creation of wetlands in exchange for those destroyed
Associated Press
The approach, which emphasizes linking wetlands destruction and replacement efforts across expansive watersheds, has been a contentious issue since it was proposed two years ago.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the regulation's final approval Monday, saying it will help to replace wetlands and streams that are destroyed or severely impacted in construction or other activities.
"It will accelerate our wetlands conservation effort by establishing a more effective, consistent mitigation process," said Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water.
The regulation encourages expanded use of "mitigation banking," in which a developer can obtain a permit to destroy a wetland or stream if the developer agrees to invest in wetland creation or enhancement elsewhere. This approach has resulted in creation of businesses that specialize in wetlands creation.
But environmentalists worried the new mitigation policy could encourage wetlands destruction and overall wetlands loss.
"There's nothing in here that says we're going to improve mitigation. It's just going to be easier and cheaper," said Julie Sibbing, a wetlands expert at the National Wildlife Federation. "And the cheaper it is to mitigate, the more economic it is to buy land that has wetlands on it and destroy them."
She said mitigation banking already is being used, but that the new federal rule will make it difficult to argue that a developer should be required to perform onsite mitigation. A wetland often is important to a local ecosystem and "it doesn't help to move it 100 miles away," said Sibbing.
The National Academy of Sciences in a report has encouraged development of watershed-wide mitigation programs and the EPA said the report's recommendations were taken into account in the new regulation.
"We do not feel there should be a preference for onsite projects. There have been many onsite mitigation projects that have failed," said Grumbles.
The EPA and Army Corps said the new rules will increase public participation in the process and require increased monitoring of mitigation projects.
Shortly before the new rule was proposed in 2006, the General Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, found that the Army Corps could not ensure that 40,000 acres of wetland restoration work was being done. #
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wetlands1apr01,1,7752012.story
Old-fashioned water fight brews in Colorado; Environmentalists and growing communities prepare to square off over a proposed dam on the Cache la Poudre River
By Nicholas Riccardi, staff writer
But by the time it winds its way out to this laid-back college city of 120,000 people, most of its water has been grabbed by farmers and other cities that control the maze of canals and diversion dams that turn the river into a trickle.
Now a new dam and reservoir project could pull even more water out of the river before it reaches
Both sides expect the Corps to sign off on the proposal and are bracing for an old-fashioned showdown over that most precious of resources -- water.
" Mark Twain said of the West that whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting, and that applies here," said Fort Collins Mayor Doug Hutchinson.
The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is spearheading the project in partnership with 15 cities and communities that want the water, says the reservoir and dam are the most environmentally and economically sensitive ways to deal with water needs in the booming area.
"The 15 participants have done their homework; they've decided it's economically viable for them," said Brian Warner, a spokesman for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. "They need water in the future. Heck, they need water yesterday."
Opponents, mainly environmentalists who argue that
"We thought the era of big dams was over," said Will Walters of the Sierra Club's Fort Collins-area chapter. "Turns out there are still some holdouts."
The project's proponents bristle at those arguments. They note that 20 years ago, when they first proposed the dam, it was to be located right on the Poudre. But they were persuaded that it was destructive, Warner said, and they now call for pumping water from the river to a 6-mile-long reservoir in an isolated valley, rather than blockading the main river.
"We live here," Warner said from the district offices in the city of
"The river has been dried up for 150 years because it's been used for 150 years," he said.
Between the mouth of Cache la Poudre Canyon and its junction with the South Platte River, 60 miles east, lie 24 diversion structures, typically dam and canal combinations. This network sends the river water to its historical owners, mainly farmers on
The new project would be supplying water to the river's other users -- a ring of fast-growing communities that hug the northern edge of
Gary Wockner, an environmental activist who is helping lead the fight against the project, peered last week into one of the diversion channels -- a ditch known as the New Cache Canal off a dirt road just west of Fort Collins. A steady, clear stream flowed down the channel, carrying a pair of ducks.
"There's more water in this canal than there is in the river," Wockner said.
A few minutes later, he pulled his van over at the edge of a chunk of open space the city had purchased along the willow-lined banks of the Poudre and strolled down a dirt trail to the riverbed.
He walked across three-quarters of the riverbed -- nothing more than smooth, dry stones -- to the thin line of water that made up the Poudre. It is here, he said, that he takes his two young daughters to go inner-tubing during the few months the river flows high enough to enjoy, May through July.
Wockner and other opponents of the project argue that there is plenty of water in reservoirs on the eastern plains to meet the region's growth needs. The water district's clients should buy that water rather than drain the Poudre more, they contend.
Warner, however, said that would be prohibitively expensive. He added that 60% of the water that would go into the new reservoir was already being taken from the river; the district will just divert it to its own storage area. And the water will only be pumped from the Poudre during the peak flow months.
He also noted that, even if the dam and reservoir were not built, the district still had the rights to the water, and fast-growing communities in northern
"Whether this project's built or not," Warner said, "that's not going to go away."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-poudre1apr01,0,6735661.story?track=ntothtml
KLAMATH RESTORATION:
Guest Column: Any Klamath dam deal must provide water for fish
By Greg King, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center based in Arcata
Not long ago my neighbor said he'd seen me on TV discussing the
"I thought you guys wanted dam removal," he said.
My heart sank. Of course the NEC wants to tear down four dams on the
We want the dams out to open up more than 300 miles of former salmon and steelhead habitat, and to improve the abysmal water quality currently released by the reservoirs behind the dams. But dam removal is only one step, however significant.
The agreement's most controversial provision allocates to farmers 330,000 to 340,000 acre-feet of water during dry years, and 385,000 acre-feet in wet years. (An acre-foot is literally that: the amount of water it would take to cover an acre of land a foot deep.) This allocation can be renegotiated only during "extreme drought" years, but this "drought plan" will not be created until after the settlement agreement is completed, one of the many unsettling provisions of the agreement. Also, this allocation is about 10 percent more than farmers currently get during dry years under court-ordered Endangered Species Act protections.
Two species of salmon (chum and pink) are already extinct on the Klamath. Spring Chinook runs are at dangerously low levels. Klamath Coho salmon are listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act. Dam removal alone is not enough to prevent further declines. Scientists tell us that the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement may not provide enough water for salmon to avoid extinction, owing to significant allocations to farmers.
The NEC supports farmers. They provide our nation with food, and in many places productive farmland can forestall development and preserve open space. So we hope farmers in the upper Klamath basin are able to secure adequate water supplies, but not at the expense of salmon. This occurred in 2002, when farmers received 400,000 acre-feet of water and 68,000 adult salmon died in the lower Klamath. Would the agreement prevent such an excessive allocation? Probably. Would an allocation of 330,000 acre-feet also be excessive even during very dry years? Good question.
Last year, the NEC hired Bill Trush of McBain and Trush, and Greg Kamman of Kamman Hydrology, to examine the complex scientific modeling of flow allocations contained in the agreement. Trush's primary conclusion was that once the dams come out and agricultural interests get their water, there still might not be enough water in the river for fish.
Last month the NEC again hired Trush, this time to create an alternative path that scientists working on the agreement could follow to better ensure fish recovery on the
The Trush and Kamman reports are available at www.yournec.org.
At the same time, the NEC's board of directors hosted a phone conference with Thomas Hardy, associate director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory at
The NEC's rejection last month of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement was intended to make it better and to aid the recovery of the entire
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/820197.html
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1 comment:
They can be classified into several categories depending on their functions. Let's examine some of the types of pipettes used in laboratories.
Pipette
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