[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 4/30/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2009

 

3. Watersheds –

 

Delta fix a must, speaker warns

The Stockton Record

 

State agrees to resume stocking trout in Marin reservoirs

The Marin Independent Journal

 

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Delta fix a must, speaker warns

The Stockton Record – 4/30/09

By The Record Staff

 

STOCKTON - Someone must make a hard decision about how to fix the Delta, a decision that will likely involve trade-offs, a Stanford University professor of civil engineering told alumni and community leaders on Wednesday.

 

Delta smelt are "definitely on the way out," Stephen G. Monismith said during a luncheon address, while other species such as striped bass and salmon also have declined.

 

Changes to the state's water delivery system - such as a peripheral canal, the "$10 billion experiment" - may not be enough, he said.

 

"We seem to be getting more and more questions," Monismith said. "I wish it was as simple as re-plumbing the Delta."

A key issue, he said, is how much fresh water flows through the Delta and out into San Francisco Bay.

 

When flows are high, saltwater is pushed back to the west; during low flows, salt creeps into the Delta and potentially affects the amount of food available for fish, not to mention water quality for farmers.

 

He said a holistic approach to the Delta is needed, rather than considering its many parts piece by piece.

 

"At least people are starting to think about what we want the Delta to be," he said.#

 

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090430/A_NEWS/904300327/-1/rss14

 

State agrees to resume stocking trout in Marin reservoirs

The Marin Independent Journal – 4/29/09

By Nels Johnson

 

In what he called a "big victory for fishing in Marin," an effort by state Assemblyman Jared Huffman has persuaded the state Department of Fish and Game to resume the trout stocking program at Lagunitas and Bon Tempe lakes.

 

Huffman said it's possible a rainbow trout plant could be made in "a matter of weeks," but because the stocking program is suspended during warm summer months anyway, it will certainly resume by early fall.

 

"It's great news, just great news," Huffman said.

 

"Oh, my god!" exclaimed veteran Bon Tempe angler Dr. Hank Simmonds, a Marin Healthcare District board member who refused to buy a fishing license this year, or a water district pass, in protest of the trout stocking ban. "I thought it was all just a ploy by the state to save money," he said, adding, "I'll have to go out and buy a license."

 

The program that deposits trout into hundreds of lakes across California was outlawed in November in designated waters, including the Marin reservoirs and about 175 others, pending an environmental study required by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette. The judge acted after a lawsuit that contended non-native fish imperil native species including the endangered red-legged frog.

 

But Huffman, a fisherman and former Marin Municipal Water District director, was convinced the two Marin lakes were inappropriately included in the ban, because district rangers have never found a red-legged frog in them and the lakes are "two or three dams removed" from threatened salmon and steelhead fisheries in Lagunitas Creek.

 

"If I didn't feel very confident we weren't putting endangered species at risk, I wouldn't have gone to bat" for the program, Huffman said.

 

The assemblyman said he was inundated with letters, e-mails and calls from people angry about the stocking ban, including parents "distressed they had no place to take their kids to fish." Anglers led by Milt Hain of Fairfax rallied at Western Sport Shop in San Rafael and circulated petitions signed by more than 800 people urging the ban be eased.

 

Huffman, who monitors the Department of Fish and Game as head of the Assembly's Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, convened a meeting of water district personnel, including Gregory Andrew, Marin Municipal fishery manager, and Fish and Game brass.

 

In a formal report to Fish and Game, Andrew said: "Our survey data indicates that California red-legged frogs have not been observed in MMWD reservoirs and high densities of bullfrogs might preclude red-legged frogs, despite some good habitat. There was one occurrence of a single red-legged frog documented in Lagunitas Creek, below Kent Lake, in 2006."

 

Further, Andrew reported, "While it is not impossible, in my opinion there is a remote chance for any trout that are planted into Lake Lagunitas and Bon Tempe reservoir to enter Lagunitas Creek."

 

Huffman said, "Fish and Game feels the facts and data are sufficiently compelling that they can resume planting in these two lakes" despite the Sacramento court decree requiring an environmental report. A Fish and Game spokesman was not immediately available for comment on whether plants will resume next month, or next fall.

 

No trout have been planted in Marin Municipal lakes since last fall, but the reservoirs have remained open to fishing.

 

Judge Marlette's ruling followed a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Stanford Legal Clinic on behalf of the Pacific Rivers Council and Center for Biological Diversity. The judge decided that stocking contributed to declines in native fish and frogs, including the red-legged frog, mountain yellow-legged frog, Cascades frog, California golden trout, McCloud River redband trout and Santa Ana sucker.

 

The red-legged frog, the inspiration for Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," is the largest native frog in the West. The frog, listed as a threatened species since 1996, has been sighted across Marin, most recently in Bolinas.#

 

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_12256451

 

 

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