[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 1/21/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

January 21, 2009

 

 

3. Watersheds –

 

Tactical Change for Restore Hetch Hetchy

The East Bay Express

 

Partnership wants to slow marine protection process

The Union Tribune

 

Denis Peirce: Reason for salmon reduction unknown

The Nevada City Union

 

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Tactical Change for Restore Hetch Hetchy

An Oakland nonprofit has a new game plan for convincing Californians to restore the valley called Yosemite's twin.

The East Bay Express – 1/21/09

By Robert Gammon

 

Over the years, environmentalists have repeatedly vilified Los Angeles for raiding the beautiful Owens Valley to satiate its unquenchable thirst for water. Eventually, court orders forced LA to curtail its Sierra water grab to save Mono Lake. But there is still one major California city that takes far more water than Los Angeles ever did from a once pristine, magnificent valley in the high country.

 

And yet for nearly a century, the City of San Francisco has managed to avoid the same sort of scorn heaped on its neighbor to the south — despite the continued environmental destruction it wreaks in what is arguably the nation's grandest national park. It's safe to say that most San Franciscans, or most Bay Area residents for that matter, don't view Hetch Hetchy dam inside Yosemite National Park in those terms. Instead, they see the 380,000 acre-foot reservoir as a birthright, if they know about it at all. In fact, most San Franciscans probably don't realize that when they turn on their shower, or flush their toilet, the water comes from the Tuolumne River 160 miles away, from a breathtaking canyon of sheer granite walls that their own city ruined when it dammed it up and filled it with water 86 years ago.

 

Doing something about that lack of awareness will be the next step taken by Restore Hetch Hetchy, an Oakland-based environmental group that has fought to tear down the 300-foot-tall O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River for the last decade. Earlier this month, Restore Hetch Hetchy moved its headquarters to San Francisco and plans to open an education center on Market Street so that city residents and visitors can learn more about Hetch Hetchy, a majestic valley with soaring waterfalls that John Muir once famously described as "Yosemite's twin."

 

The nonprofit, which began as an offshoot of Muir's Sierra Club, has hired a new executive director, Mike Marshall, who plans to launch a grassroots campaign to educate San Franciscans on the environmental destruction wrought by Hetch Hetchy dam. The first step is explaining that tearing it down won't mean losing their water. "I want to set up a permanent exhibit, showing what restoring Hetch Hetchy would really entail," Marshall told Eco Watch. Marshall replaces Restore Hetch Hetchy founder Ron Good, who took a job last year working for the National Park Service at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez.

 

For decades, the restoration of Hetch Hetchy valley has been viewed as nothing more than an outlandish pipe dream. San Francisco's political movers and shakers are dead set against it. The most prominent, and vocal, opponents have long been House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has called restoring Hetch Hetchy "indefensible."

But Marshall is used to tilting at windmills. In 2000, he ran the campaign against Proposition 22, the first statewide initiative that banned gay marriage. In fact, Marshall is a longtime political campaign consultant, and his hiring represents a shift from environmental to political activism for Restore Hetch Hetchy. Marshall said that when he first signed up to run the campaign against Prop. 22, his friends thought he was crazy. "Nine years ago, no one wanted to take on that issue," he said. "No one applied for the job, and we started out with no money, but by the end we had raised $6.5 million."

 

Prop. 22 won by a landslide, but eight years later, its offspring, Prop. 8, which sought to roll back the state Supreme Court's decision to overturn Prop. 22, only won by 5 percentage points. In the intervening years, more and more Californians came to accept the idea of gay marriage. His friends now think Marshall is crazy for taking on the Hetch Hetchy fight, but he believes the same type of transformation can occur. He hopes eventually to put the restoration of Hetch Hetchy on the ballot in San Francisco, or to convince the board of supervisors to rally to its cause.

 

But for that to happen, Marshall said his group has to convince San Franciscans that they won't lose their water. He points to studies conducted by Environmental Defense, UC Davis, and the State of California, which all concluded that tearing down the dam and letting the Tuolumne River run free is "feasible." San Francisco, as a result, would not lose its water rights to the Tuolumne, but Don Pedro Dam, farther down the river, would likely have to be enlarged to accommodate more water, and new smaller, water storage facilities would have to be built.

 

But the biggest road block for restoring Hetch Hetchy is the price tag. The 2006 state study concluded that the total would cost between $3 billion and $10 billion. That's a huge number, but, in reality, it is both an infrastructure and an environmental project. And with the emphasis on infrastructure spending over the next several years to put the country on better financial footing, rebuild America, and create a green economy, there may never be a better time than the next decade to restore Yosemite National Park to its original grandeur.#

 

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/tactical_change_for_restore_hetch_hetchy/Content?oid=907940

 

Partnership wants to slow marine protection process

The Union Tribune – 1/17/09

By Ed Zieralski

A group of recreational fishing interests has asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to suspend the Marine Life Protection Act process until financially challenged California has the money to fund it properly.

 

The Partnership for Sustainable Oceans, which includes MLPA South Coast Region stakeholders such as Bob Fletcher of the Sportfishing Association of California, has sent a letter to Schwarzenegger requesting a meeting.

 

The partnership has “serious concerns regarding the availability of funds necessary to adequately implement the MLPA going forward,” the letter states. The PSO wants to meet with the governor to discuss a strategy to “ensure the health of our marine environment going forward.” The PSO's alternative to the MLPA process is to allow existing state and federal fisheries' management practices to play out and do the work for which they were funded and designed to do.

 

The PSO told the governor that when there's enough money to properly complete the MLPA, then the state should proceed.

 

The MLPA calls for the redesign of California's system of marine protected areas along its 1,200 miles of coastline. The Department of Fish and Game estimates that the state needs as much as $40 million a year to monitor, enforce and do public outreach with regard to these protected areas.

 

Lacking proper data, enforcement and funding, the PSO said, the MLPA process will result in permanent placement of marine protection acts that “either unnecessarily restrict recreational angling or prohibit it entirely.”

 

“Not only does that fail to comply with the requirements of the MLPA, it arbitrarily and unnecessarily creates additional economic hardship in California whose citizens are suffering terribly,” the PSO said.

 

Much of these financial struggles were evident at the two-day Marine Life Protection Act's regional stakeholder event in San Diego this week. The major theme of the meetings was haste.

 

No question the MLPA Initiative's paid facilitators are in a hurry-up offense the likes of which any NFL offensive coordinator would envy.

 

They talked fast and continually asked South Coast stakeholder members, especially the commercial and recreational fishermen, to talk to scientists and others “off-line.”

 

Even the scheduled scientist-presenters, armed with Power Point presentations and such, were shoved along.

 

The public was hustled in and out. Attorney Peter Flournoy, who represents commercial fishing interests, spoke during the public comment period and scolded the MLPA Initiative team for “steamrolling” the process.

 

The reason for the accelerated pace of the MLPA process is obvious now. The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative team has run out of allotted state money. It once again will put out its hand to its financial backers, the preservationist-backed Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. The RLFF has donated more than $18 million to keep the MLPA process afloat.

But now other funding for the MLPA process has dried up.

 

Projected state money will be wiped out in proposed budget cuts.

 

Schwarzenegger this week asked the Legislature to make more tough cuts to close a record $42 billion deficit forecast over the next 18 months.

 

All of this has gotten the attention of the Fish and Game Commission, which has the final approval on any marine protected areas. Commissioner Dan Richards of Upland has been the panel's common-sense voice in asking that any future marine protection acts be properly funded. He asked for the cost analysis by the Department of Fish and Game.

 

The recreational fisheries partnership isn't asking the MLPA initiative team to leave the playing field. It is asking Schwarzenegger to recognize this financial fiasco and headlong rush to fisheries management, and call a timeout to get the play right. #

 

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/17/1s17outdoors221147-partnership-wants-slow-marine-p/

 

Denis Peirce: Reason for salmon reduction unknown

The Nevada City Union – 1/21/09

By Denis Peirce

 

Denis Peirce writes a weekly fishing column for The Union and is host of “The KNCO Fishing & Outdoor Report,” which airs 6-7 p.m. Fridays and 5-6 a.m. Saturdays on 830-AM radio.

 

The Department of Fish and Game released their statistics for the abbreviated 2008 salmon season last week, just two weeks after the end of the season.

The information collected by DFG at hatcheries, by biologists working in the field, and through data analysis will be presented to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) in February for review.

The PFMC will analyze the data and make recommendations, based on conservation goals, on which runs of salmon can sustain a fishing season with allowable harvest in 2009.

The 2008 season was limited to November and December on the Sacramento River between Knight’s Landing and the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.

“This season was set because the Sacramento late-fall Chinook run was stable, allowing an opportunity for anglers to catch a salmon,” said Neil Manji, DFG Fisheries Branch chief.

The late fall run is one of four distinct runs on the Sacramento River. The late fall occurs between the fall and winter runs.

The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) estimates that about 2,400 Chinook salmon were harvested and 100 caught and released during the November and December season.

Coded wire tag readings indicate that late-fall Chinook salmon run were caught, while anglers successfully avoided any major contact with depleted fall-run and endangered winter-run stocks.

DFG scientific aides and biologists collected scale samples and recovered coded wire tags for salmon caught by anglers.

Analysis of the data collected by DFG shows that hatchery salmon comprised 71 percent of the catch. Of 147 coded wire tags successfully recovered and read, all tagged salmon but one was of Coleman National Fish Hatchery origin and of late-fall Chinook descent. One salmon was of winter-run decent.

The best fishing occurred during the first half of the season, with catch rates of one fish per boat being common. The DFG statistics estimated 89,500 hours of fishing during 16,500 trips resulting in 2500 fish landed.

There were two historical survey periods in 1998–2002 and 2007–08 available for comparison. Fishing time more than doubled with only a slight increase in harvest for the period. But in my opinion, that we had any season at all preserved the precedent that we do have a freshwater salmon fishery in the central valley.

The reason for the declining salmon stocks has not been definitively ascertained.

According to a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study there is a gradation from south to north in the decline of salmon stocks. From the central California coast north to the Canadian border, the farther north you go the better condition the salmon runs are in.

This supports the theory that ocean conditions are the reason for the decline in the salmon numbers. In 2005, the upwelling of nutrients off the California coast did not occur until late in the year leading to speculation that the young of that year lacked a good food source.

This past spring and summer had an exceptionally good nutrient upwelling. The krill abundance off our coast was excellent as the young salmon moved out of the Golden gate.

The DF&G efforts to protect the salmon smolts from predation with net pens provided a maximum crop from available eggs. I am hoping that a couple years from now we will see a recovery of the premier north state fishery.#

 

http://www.theunion.com/article/20090121/SPORTS/901209899/1060/NONE&parentprofile=1060&title=Denis%20Peirce:%20Reason%20for%20salmon%20reduction%20unknown

 

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