[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 10/23/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

October 22, 2008

 

3. Watersheds –

 

 

Judge declines to reduce pumping of delta water for salmon

The Fresno Bee

 

Judge: Delta salmon 'unquestionably in jeopardy'

Associated Press

 

Microbe being tested as non-toxic answer to quagga mussel problem

Riverside Press Enterprise

 

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Judge declines to reduce pumping of delta water for salmon

The Fresno Bee – 10/21/08

By John Ellis, staff

 

A federal judge on Tuesday denied a request by environmental groups to reduce delta pumping and take other measures at two major California reservoirs to help the state's endangered salmon population.

 

In an 11-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger didn't outright reject the requests, but said a hearing would be necessary if environmental groups wanted to pursue the proposals.

 

Environmentalists aren't sure whether they will seek a hearing because an updated opinion on how to manage the salmon is due in March, said Michael Sherwood, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. They will discuss the matter today.

 

Environmentalists had requested that:

 

Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta pumping in December and January be limited to 7,600 cubic feet per second, or to a ratio based on how much water enters the estuary, based on whichever is more protective of the salmon.

 

At least 1.9 million acre feet of water be held in Lake Shasta at the end of January, and 2.5 million acre feet at the end of February.

 

Releases from Folsom Lake be limited beginning Dec. 31 until the new salmon opinion is completed.

 

The federal government and its water agency allies had opposed the request and had presented new evidence that questioned the science used to justify the requests.

Changes requested by environmentalists would have been only for the short term until the new opinion is issued.

 

The litigation over winter-run Chinook salmon, spring-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead is part of a long-running battle between the government and environmentalists dealing with the massive Central Valley Project's effect on the fish, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

 

Wanger already has issued a written opinion that the three fish species are at risk of extinction, and the state and federal water project operations are further jeopardizing them.

 

But in Tuesday's ruling, the judge was reluctant to issue a further ruling without hearing more evidence.

 

"In light of the potential consequences of further reducing the available CVP project water [yield] to implement such remedies, and in the face of substantial scientific disagreements about the effectiveness and need for such remedies, it is improvident to issue any such relief without further hearings," Wanger wrote.

 

In addition to the steelhead and two salmon species, the government and environmental groups are sparring over the CVP's effects on the tiny delta smelt. An updated opinion on the smelt is due later this year.

 

Environmentalists filed suit involving the salmon and smelt because they said the government based project operation effects on the species on flawed data.

Wanger agreed, which is why the opinions are currently being rewritten. #

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/953695.html

 

Judge: Delta salmon 'unquestionably in jeopardy'

Associated Press – 10/21/08

By TRACIE CONE,  Associated Press Writer

FRESNO, Calif.—A federal judge ruled Tuesday that California's canal water systems are placing wild salmon "unquestionably in jeopardy," but stopped short of issuing court-order limits on pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

 

Environmental groups had sought the temporary pumping limits to guard three species of migrating salmon in the delta until a new fish protection plan is due in March.

But U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger declined to do so, after the state Department of Water Resources said last month it would voluntarily reduce pumping to protect the juvenile fish.

 

"Upon initial glance, the department believes that the judge handed down a responsible ruling," said spokesman Ted Thomas.

 

If environmental groups want to make new arguments for court-ordered pumping limits, Wanger wrote, any motion filed would be "heard on an expedited basis," an offer attorneys are considering.

 

"We need to decide whether it's worth doing for this short amount of time or not," said Michael Sherwood, an attorney for Earthjustice.

 

Chinook salmon and steelhead freely migrated on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers until the federal and state system of dams built to deliver water via canals to the state's arid areas blocked their paths. Now up to 42 percent of the endangered juvenile fish die as they are sucked into Delta pumps that send water into canals.

Wanger's opinion eased the fears of farmers worried about impacts of mandatory water cutbacks on an agricultural industry already suffering from drought, while validating concerns by environmentalists as well as fishing groups affecting by the collapse of the state's salmon population.

 

"In the meantime, we've got boats tied up this year and probably next," said a frustrated Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, referring to the resulting ban on commercial and recreational fishing.

 

The ruling stems from Wanger's earlier decision that pitted the endangered fish against Central Valley farmers. In that ruling, he said the National Marine Fisheries Service's biological opinion on water projects tied to the delta does not adequately protect salmon and must be rewritten.

 

In the meantime, environmentalists, fishing groups and water users filed briefs over how the delta and its water should be managed until then. Earthjustice had wanted the judge to order a cutback in pumping that would be legally enforceable.

 

Last month, the Department of Water Resources, intervening on behalf of the water districts who depend on canal water for their constituents, said they would operate the water systems to minimize impacts on salmon, especially during the December-January migration of juvenile fish to the ocean, until the new report comes out. Wanger said that testimony under oath made a court order unnecessary.#

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10782221?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

Microbe being tested as non-toxic answer to quagga mussel problem

Riverside Press Enterprise – 10/22/08

By JANET ZIMMERMAN

Nearly two decades of research has turned up what could be the first nontoxic treatment for the menacing quagga mussel, a crustacean that threatens water quality and ecosystems nationwide, including reservoirs near Temecula and Riverside and along the Colorado River.

 

The discovery could save some of the billions of dollars being spent to chemically treat waters infected with the mussels, and alleviate concerns about exposure to cancer-causing substances produced in the treatments, water experts said.

 

Metropolitan Water District, which serves 18 million Southern Californians, has spent about $10 million fighting quaggas by chlorinating key intake valves and draining parts of the Colorado River Aqueduct. Without treatment, the mussels clog equipment and can give water a bad taste and odor.

 

Quagga mussels reproduce so fast that they grow on top of each other and can clog water pipes and pumps.

 

The mussels, first found in the United States in the 1980s, have been a problem in the West for less than two years. They already are well established in Lake Mathews near Riverside and Lake Skinner near Temecula, two drinking-water reservoirs linked to the aqueduct. Quaggas also have polluted the Colorado River lakes of Havasu, Mead and Mohave.

 

For four years, scientist Dan Molloy and his team at the New York State Museum lab tested more than 700 soil and water samples before they discovered the quagga's nemesis: a common and naturally occurring bacterium, Pseudomonas fluorescens. In the process, they combed riverbanks, fields and microbial samples in the labs of other scientists, hoping they would find something lethal to the mussels.

 

The needle-in-a-haystack quest hit pay dirt in a North American river; Molloy wouldn't say which one for proprietary reasons. But Pseudomonas fluorescens, which in nature protects plants from root rot, is ubiquitous. Harmless to humans, the soil-loving microbe is carried into buildings on shoes and the wind, and even into milk bottles from the pipes at dairies.

 

"It is in your office, your refrigerator ... everywhere," said Molloy, director of the museum's Cambridge Field Research Laboratory in Cambridge, N.Y.

Back at the lab, the pesky, pinky-sized mussels gobbled the Pseudomonas fluorescens, which proved lethal within days. It was the first organism the researchers tried that had any noticeable affect on the little crustaceans kept in water-filled jars.

 

"For four years they just looked back at us and thumbed their noses," Molloy said. "Then ... they croaked" less than a week after exposure to the bacteria.

 

Molloy spent the following years getting a patent for this particular strain of the bacteria to be used against mussels. He learned how to grow it in the lab and apply it to water pipes, then tested it at New York power plants, where it killed 70 percent of quaggas. He found a company to produce the bacteria commercially, and the treatment is expected to be available to power and water treatment plants next year, he said.

 

Quaggas reproduce so quickly that they grow on top of each other, clogging water intake pipes and pumps and boat motors. Attaching to the bottom of boats, they can be moved among bodies of water.

 

The mussels can cover the bottom surfaces of lakes and dams, consuming food meant for native fish and causing excessive algae growth. They don't threaten human health, but some people believe infestations are linked to a resurgence of botulism in the Great Lakes that has led to massive deaths of fish-eating birds.

 

Colorado River Tests

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation tested Molloy's bacteria on mussels this summer at the hydroelectric plant at Davis Dam on the Colorado River near Laughlin, Nev. Fred Nibling, a research botanist and zoologist at the bureau, said the results were promising.

 

Next year, tests will expand to a 10-inch-wide, 100-foot-long drinking water intake line that is blocked by mussels, he said.

 

After a massive kill with the bacteria, the bodies of the mussels rot and are washed out of the pipe by the current.

 

Nibling cautioned that all tests have involved dead bacteria and the treated water was released into an evaporative pond at a sewage treatment plant, not into the lake or river.

 

"We're not even releasing any of that water, just to be extra safe," said Nibling, who has heard concerns from people anxious about the effects of bacteria on human health.

 

Molloy said that there's no possibility of infection and that the bacteria grow at temperatures lower than the human body temperature.

 

Later testing in open water would require an experimental-use permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Nibling said.

 

Such a permit is required for testing an area bigger than 1 acre and takes about six months to get, said Dale Kemery, an EPA spokesman.

 

Safer Alternative

Current treatments for quaggas, and their relative zebra mussels, use chlorine, which can kill fish and interact with organic matter in the water to create a carcinogen, Nibling said.

 

"If we can find something that can do the job that is much more environmentally acceptable, certainly we would want to look at it," he said.

 

Metropolitan Water District officials are waiting for testing and approvals from the EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other agencies, spokesman Rob Hallwachs said.

"We are watching it and other similar approaches," he said. "We're hoping one of them will be successful, but we're waiting until approvals are granted." #

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_mussel22.1556fd3.html

 

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