Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 3, 2009
3. Watersheds –
Deal settles Red Bluff Diversion Dam suit
The Red Bluff Daily News
Delta plan draws ire of locals
The Capital Press
What to do with a dead whale? Santa Cruz
The Contra Costa Times
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Deal settles Red Bluff Diversion Dam suit
The Red Bluff Daily News – 4/03/09
By Rich Greene
RED BLUFF — The Red Bluff City Council agreed Wednesday to drop its lawsuit against the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, as the two sides reached an agreement to work together to mitigate impacts caused by federally mandated operational changes at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.
The canal authority will pay the city $30,000 and offer other resources to be used in exploring ways to offset the loss of recreational activities at Lake Red Bluff.
The seasonal lake is formed when the dam gates are lowered. The raised water level allows water to flow into the canal.
However the dam's impact on migratory fish have limited its operation, and a pending court case might not allow the gates to be lowered at all this year.
The city agreed not only to drop its lawsuit, but support the canal authority's efforts to secure funding for a water pumping and fish screen project.
That $200 million project would replace the dam's role in getting water into the canal that irrigates 150,000 acres of farmland.
Both sides also praised Assemblyman Jim Nielsen and especially Congressman Wally Herger for helping reach the compromise.
Councilman Forrest Flynn said Herger's commitment to look after the interests of the city and not just the canal authority was a deciding factor in his vote.
The council approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the authority by a 3-2 vote.
Councilman James Byrne, who voted no, said the lawsuit was aimed at the wrong people to begin with and ended up costing the city more than it was worth.
"Basically all that's happened is the canal authority gave us $30,000 to go away," Byrne said.
"The city was looking to lose Lake Red Bluff without any compensation or mitigation at all," City Manager Martin Nichols said. "The lawsuit got our needs on the front burner. I really believe it was part of getting the necessary attention of our congressman and our assemblyman."
Herger sent a letter to Nichols on March 18 stating his intentions in helping mitigate the situation.
"I cannot make any financial guarantees to the city, just as I cannot make any financial guarantees to area farmers," the letter said. "What I can guarantee you is my commitment to seek workable solutions for both the city of
Flynn said, while the pumps were not the city's first choice, it would have been selfish to continue blocking a project that will help irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.
As it was before the lawsuit, both sides began shifting their blame toward environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act after the MOU was signed.
Herger on Tuesday testified to the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee much to that point, telling his colleagues about the negative impacts the ESA was having in Red Bluff. #
http://www.chicoer.com/portal/news/ci_12061040?source=rss&_loopback=1
Delta plan draws ire of locals
The Capital Press – 4/02/09
By Wes Sander
State officials constructing a conservation plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta made a long circuit of public-input events up and down the state last month, delivering a Powerpoint outline of alternatives in a plan to save the delta's collapsing native fish habitat while maintaining water exports in future dry years.
It was all part of the required public-comment process for the state's Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Some previous meetings had been calmer. Others - especially those in and near the delta, where locals feel they're on the losing end - were more lively.
Their last meeting was one of their liveliest events.
On March 26, the middle school auditorium in the tiny town of
The team of federal and state officials made its usual presentation, and the following comment period lasted the rest of the night. The surrounding
References to past wars were abundant. One speaker compared the plan to the aggression of Nazi Germany, another to the internment of Japanese-Americans, saying its confiscation of rights and possessions would be similar.
The entire plan was denounced as a water grab for
"We are not prepared to see the delta restored to its natural state, as environmentalists are clamoring for," said Dave Sterling, a resident of nearby Walnut Grove. "Please don't throw those of us who call the delta home under the bus."
To show he identified with their concerns, Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources, sported the same neon-yellow T-shirt worn by most in the audience.
It was handed out at the door by the organization North Delta CARES, which opposes any water diversion upstream from the delta, saying increases in delta salinity would destroy their livelihoods.
One way or another, pumping from the delta will harm endangered species, including the Delta smelt, currently the most high-profile of a list of endangered or threatened species native to the estuary.
To balance the health of delta ecosystems with water needs in a future widely expected to be drier, various studies and plans have recommended some version of a peripheral canal-an idea that's been around for decades, most recently defeated by voters in 1982.
Such a canal would allow water slated for pumping south - to San Joaquin and Imperial valley farmers and southern cities - to bypass the delta altogether. This would reduce the effects of the current south-delta pumping; the huge force of the state and federal pumps draws in endangered fish, and disrupts habitat by reversing the delta's flow direction.
Therefore the state must apply for a federal permit that shields it from penalties and legal action for killing those species. For the permit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requires a management plan that would ensure the species' long-term health.
"Folks realize it's a major challenge to restore an ecosystem in a place such as the delta," said Carla Nemeth, spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency, which is constructing the conservation plan. "We're contemplating some pretty big changes in the hydrodynamics of the system. The folks who live in the area have a pretty big stake."
Linda Robertson drove an hour and a half from her home on
She operates boat slips and hosts contestants for bass tournaments, and protested that any plan for above-delta diversions would turn local waters salty, impacting the bass and her business.
"We are going to fight in any way we can to stop this water grab by
But a return of some salt to the delta is exactly what planners want. The delta lost its brackish tidal flows starting after the Gold Rush, when settling miners began dredging its channels and building levees to form islands.
The shift to fresh water has also contributed to shifts in the overall ecosystem, and native species have declined.
Current alternatives offered for the conservation plan, therefore, include areas where salt water would once again flow in with the tides, creating intertidal marshes that host an abundance of species.
Some speakers in
The delta is what it is now, many residents say, not what it was a century and a half ago.#
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=50144&TM=50746.65
What to do with a dead whale? Santa Cruz
The Contra Costa Times – 4/03/09
By Cathy Kelly
After a dead
Marine biologists said there is no obvious sign of trauma on the 25-foot whale and they are not sure why the young female died. California gray whales are close to shore at this time of year, as they migrate from their winter home in the warm waters off Mexico to summer feeding grounds surrounding Alaska.
Thursday, the plan was to use the buoyancy of an early Friday high tide to tow the whale at least 10 miles offshore, said Dan Buecher, the city's wharf supervisor.
The tricky part will be the surf conditions in the rocky cove just west of Its Beach where the whale washed up, he said.
Later Thursday, when high surf predictions began rolling in, a back-up plan was hatched — to use a tow truck to haul the whale up the cliff to a low-boy trailer, and drive it out to the city landfill, Buecher said.
"It's an evolving plan," he said. "It's looking like the land way is safer, but we won't know until we are there."
A towing company the city has used to recover vehicles assessed the situation and said they could do it, he said.
That is, if the tide doesn't dislodge the whale and move it tonight.
Either way, city workers will be out whale-side about dawn Friday, assessing the conditions.
The whale was first sighted early Wednesday, on the east side of the
As marine mammal experts, federal fishery authorities, the Coast Guard and city officials discussed the best way to deal with it, the carcass drifted slowly toward
Thursday morning, the tide was low and a UC Santa Cruz graduate student was studying the whale as best she could in the small cove, without the possibility of doing a complete necropsy due to the populated and small spot where the whale landed.
Robin McClenahan, who works with Long Marine Lab and the California Marine Mammal Stranding Network, said the blubber and blood samples she took from the yearling will probably not tell them how the whale died.
Gaining that information would necessitate cutting the whale up to examine it's vital organs, she said.
"If it was a more remote area, we could do a full necropsy," McClenahan said. "But it makes a really big mess and parts wash up for a while afterward. We don't want to chum the surfing spot in
The 2-ton whale showed signs of a boat strike, which likely wasn't the cause of death. It was thin, not thin enough to lead her to believe it had starved to death, she said.
"Normally, in the last few years, whales we see have died from Orca predation, but not this whale," she said. "It could be cancer or anything; they die from all the same things people die of; you never know."
People gazed down at the whale from the West Cliff pathway and others walked down from Its Beach to get a closer look.
Antonella Gentile hurried down on her lunch hour to get a closer look, after reading a newspaper story about the whale. She snapped some photos with her cell phone and was sending them to her mom, she said.
She said the sight didn't sadden her, because it seemed that the whale had died of natural causes. The smell was pretty bad, she added.
"It's cool to see wildlife up close, even if it's dead," Gentile said. "The baleen was really neat."
It was unclear Thursday whether Long Marine Lab scientists could conduct a necropsy at a landfill, if the carcass ends up there, said Teri Sigler, the lab's stranding coordinator.
Soon, the whale will be too decomposed on the inside to get good pathology, Sigler said.
Either way, it needs to be moved, said Robert Yerena with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"For obvious health reasons, they need to get it off the beach," he said.
In some cases, whale carcasses can be deeply buried in the sand, he said, but the cove is too small for that.
The plan to hoist the whale onto a trailer is "very unusual," Yerena said, but possible.
"It could explode; due to expanding gases," he said. "I just advised them of that and told them to talk to (a Long Marine Lab veterinarian) about relieving the pressure before they move it."
Buecher, the wharf supervisor, said it was unfortunate that an unusual current and very high tide Wednesday landed the whale where it did.
"It lodged in a particularly difficult cove, with rocks and a shallow reef," he said. "There is no easy way to get it out of there."#
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_12058930?source=rss
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