A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 24, 2008
3. Watersheds –
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Hatchery rehab to be costly and lengthy
The Inyo Register- 7/22/08
Judge orders interim plan for salmon drawn up
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By Louis Sahagun, Staff Writer
LEE VINING, CALIF. -- There was a time when it was hard to find yellow warblers at
But on a recent bright and sunny morning, a yellow warbler plunged through a gap in a stream-side cottonwood forest, flying back to the nest where her chicks were hiding. Suddenly, she was stopped in midair, tangled in a mist net.
Field biologist Chris McCreedy found the bird in his snare a few minutes later. "Hi there, sweetie," McCreedy said as he set to work. He untangled the bird, recorded its vitals -- it was a 2-year-old female that weighed 10 grams, about as much as a ballpoint pen -- and gently clamped an identification band to one of her legs.
Then he opened his palm and released her back to Rush Creek, a major tributary to Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra and the focus of an agonizingly complex and decades-long effort to heal a vast wilderness devastated by Los Angeles' insatiable thirst.
Now, 14 years after the city was ordered to reduce the quantity of tributary water it had been diverting into the
"Restrict grazing and bring back the water and things really start hopping," McCreedy said.
That's the good news. Orchestrating the restoration continues to be a challenging process for the Mono Lake Committee, a nonprofit group of environmentalists and concerned citizens organized in 1978 to save and protect a bowl-shaped ecosystem roughly half the size of
Nonetheless, Geoffrey McQuilkin, executive director of the 16,000-member group, said he is often asked, "Why is the Mono Lake Committee still around? You got the water you needed years ago. Isn't
Over the years, the committee has stopped city water diversions, potentially damaging highway widening projects and proposed lake-shore development. But its biologists still can't explain why
Then there are the endangered willow flycatchers, whose population soared with the return of
Before the tributary streams were diverted, flycatchers were commonly found in what was once a lush expanse. Flycatchers began showing up again around 2000 but in far fewer numbers. Now, they are in dramatic decline statewide because of habitat loss and competition from cowbirds.
"I'm so worried about this population of about 10 flycatchers going extinct," McCreedy said, "that I've been going around town telling people to keep cowbirds away from backyard bird feeders."
Metaphorically speaking, the nearly million-year-old alkaline
By the late 1970s, the environmental degradation in the region just east of
Further decline, the committee warned, would transform
The sex life of gulls became a touchy political drama for
Formal protests began with a lawsuit filed in Mono County Superior Court in 1979 against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power by the Mono Lake Committee, Audubon Society and three local residents. The lawsuit alleged violations of public trust and creation of a public and private nuisance by the exposing of 14,700 acres of former lake bed.
In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a California Supreme Court ruling that environmentalists have the right to challenge the amount of water that
This year, as the committee celebrates its 30th anniversary,
On a recent weekday, the northwest corner of Mono Lake reflected the alpine peaks beyond as migrating Wilson's phalaropes -- making a pit stop to bulk up during their 3,000-mile journey to Argentina -- probed its shallows to breakfast on a species of brine shrimp found no place else.
Amateur naturalist Gary Suttle, 62, of
"It's great to be on the side of creative forces generating new life instead of destroying it," he added. "It's a fantastic example of human beings at their best."
Don Banta, 80, who grew up in the
But the water in
This year, the lake level is expected to rise a foot. But as nearly always seems to be the case with
"We can feel a whole lot better than we did in 1978," said McQuilkin, the committee's executive director. "But environmental issues are not black and white. We have to be patient.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mono24-2008jul24,0,5819920.story?track=rss
Hatchery rehab to be costly and lengthy
The Inyo Register- 7/22/08
By Mike Gervais
Register Staff
It will take some time – perhaps years – but the California Department of Fish and Game will be bringing the historic Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery back on line.
That was the news this week as the DFG continues assessing the damage and initiating extensive clean-up efforts at the facility in the wake of last weekend’s flood and mudslide that destroyed much of the hatchery, killed its entire stock of fish and brought operations to a screeching halt.
As flood waters charged down
“All of the water intake infrastructure (flowing from both forks of the creek) was completely destroyed,” said Bruce Ivey, vice president of Friends of the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery. “It will be a long time before it is replaced or repaired so the hatchery can get back into service.”
Though the display pond on the east side of the hatchery grounds was unaffected by the floodwaters, the damage to the water intake system at
It is estimated the flooding claimed as many as 2,800 trout at the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery.
Luckily the historic main building of the hatchery was unscathed by the mudslide.
The California Conservation Corps (CCC) has dedicated between 20 and 30 crew members to the clean-up effort at the hatchery, the California Department of Corrections has assigned inmate work crews to the task and a six-man crew from the DFG is also on hand helping to clean up and assess the damage.
Though community support has been great, and many residents have come forward to help with the clean-up work at the historic hatchery, “the magnitude of this job is far more than a volunteer effort can handle,” said Ivey, and the state is supplying the manpower to get things back in order at the hatchery.
“I feel very positive about the DFG’s attitude at this time. Fortunately, the DFG needs this hatchery to meet their commitments to (Assembly Bill 7) and their commitment to provide fish,” Ivey said. “They would like to continue operations at
Even though clean-up efforts began as soon as the flood waters receded enough for relief workers to get to the hatchery, it may be years before the facility is returned to its full operational capacity.
Ivey predicted that it may take the state up to six months to fully assess the damages caused by the flood; six more months for engineering plans to be drawn for the work; and several more months for contracts to be drawn up and for restoration work to begin.
Though no cost analysis has been completed on damages or rehabilitation work at the hatchery, Ivey said the consensus is that it will take several million dollars to get the facility up and running again.
“I think we would be fortunate to see this hatchery in operation in the next year or two,” said Ivey.
Currently the clean-up effort at the hatchery is focusing on the three concrete, 10 by 300 feet raceways where brood stock trout are held.
Because the raceways are concrete and almost level with the ground, “it’s just a case of digging out the rocks and mud and tree limbs,” Ivey said, noting that the raceways were completely filled with debris during the flood. “A huge amount of material came down off that mountain,” he said.
The CCC workers and DFG crews are using hand shovels and back hoes to dredge out those raceways.
Next, crews will either begin focusing their attention on fixing the fresh water intake to the hatchery via
The final step in the effort to rehabilitate the hatchery will be work on the display pond.
“The display pond was not flooded, but the water has been shut off, and as a result, all the fish there have died and the pond is dry,” Ivey said.
The trout lost at the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery “were primarily brood stock and the hatchery was already on limited operations because the DFG recognized the possibility of a catastrophe as a result of the fire,” Ivey said.
The Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery’s primary function was in egg production, as the waters there are too cold to actually rear trout.
After eggs were harvested from
“Hopefully (the DFG) will be able to produce eggs elsewhere and supply the other hatcheries,” Ivey said. He added that the DFG has yet to make any decisions regarding how those other hatcheries will make up for the loss of egg production as crews work to get Mt. Whitney back on line.
If in that decision-making process the state decides to cease its operations at the
“The people of
http://www.inyoregister.com/content/view/109505/1/
Judge orders interim plan for salmon drawn up
(07-23) 16:57 PDT
U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger set a deadline of Aug. 29 for the agencies to spell out how they intend to protect winter- and spring-run chinook and steelhead trout until March, when a more comprehensive plan, known as a biological opinion, is scheduled to be released.
Wanger scheduled a court hearing Sept. 4 to discuss the interim plan.
The order followed Wanger's ruling Friday that blamed pumping and diversion policies by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources for contributing to the demise of the three salmonid species.
The hearings are a response to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice and several other environmental and fishing organizations accusing the government of endangering salmon and steelhead.
Mike Sherwood, an attorney for Earthjustice, said it is extremely important to have such a plan in place because juvenile salmon pass through the delta on their way back to the ocean in December, January, February and March and are particularly vulnerable to being sucked into the pumps.
"We're hopeful that they will do the right thing, and that what they submit to the court on Aug. 29 will be adequate," Sherwood said. "We will be monitoring that closely, and if it isn't adequate I guess there will be more hearings."
Delta water supplies 25 million Californians with drinking water and irrigates 750,000 acres of cropland. It is also an integral part of the migration pattern of the vast majority of spawning salmon along the West Coast, where there was a near catastrophic decline in ocean salmon this year.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/24/BAU711TSLM.DTL
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