Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
June 12, 2009
1. Top Item–
Water managers: Federal fish plan flawed
Plan would reduce Delta pumping by about 330,000 acre feet per year
Capital Press-6/11/09
By Wes Sander
Local water managers are calling a new federal plan aimed at protecting fish misguided and illegal.
Westlands Water District says the National Marine Fisheries Service bypassed the required environmental-review process, including an examination of impacts to industry, for the biological opinion it released last week.
The plan would mean greater restrictions on
The long-awaited document lays out water-temperature and flow guidelines that the service says are necessary for protecting winter and spring-run Chinook salmon,
"We don't even know how devastating it's going to be at this point," said Westlands spokeswoman Sarah Woolf. "We've been trying to do calculations on our own, but they're very ambiguous about when their cutbacks are going to occur."
The current opinion is itself the result of a lawsuit. It was ordered last year by federal Judge Oliver Wanger in
The plan calls for reducing Delta pumping by about 330,000 acre-feet per year, or 5 to 7 percent of water pumped by the federal Central Valley Project and California's State Water Project, the agency says.
Agricultural water use in
NMFS says the plan underwent peer review by the CalFed Independent Science Board and the Center for Independent Experts, making it "solidly grounded in the best available science."
"What is at stake here is not just the survival of species but the health of entire ecosystems and the economies that depend on them," said Rod Mcinnis, southwest regional director for NOAA's Fisheries Service, in a statement.
The plan won't take effect immediately, the agency says. It factors drought conditions and health-and-safety concerns into its water restrictions from year to year, the agency says.
U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein called the opinion a reason to focus on a long-term water plan that includes new infrastructure for conveyance, storage and desalination, along with conservation measures.
"The longer we wait, the worse the crisis gets," Feinstein said in a statement. "So, I firmly believe the solution must be agreed to this year."
Westlands agreed, calling for completion of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which would cover many of those bases. But the "patchwork" of NMFS's biological opinion is flawed, and "a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and of federal endangered species law," the district said in a statement.
Westlands is planning to sue, as it did last year over a similar biological opinion targeting the Delta smelt, likely charging the agency with inadequate environmental review, Woolf said.
"They were notified by other agencies and by (the court) that they needed to do an environmental review, and they still did not do one," Woolf said. "What this means moving forward is that our devastating economic situation ... will only continue into the future regardless of hydrology."
Curtis Creel, water resources manager with Kern County Water Agency, objects to the plan's focus on water flows, saying other factors - like habitat loss, local Delta diversions, and pollutants from power plants and discharged water - play parts in fish survival.
Meanwhile, growers already suffering drought conditions will see greater cuts, Creel said.
"They're ignoring the fact that this has a huge impact on both agricultural and industrial users in the Bay Area, Central Valley and
Further cutbacks in wet years would compromise the district's ability to bank water underground, a practice that brings a measure of reliability to the district's supplies, Creel said.
"We're disappointed, he said. "We still have a lot of analysis to do, but our first (impression) is that they could have done a better job on the science. I don't have any confidence that the actions they're proposing will have any benefit to the fish, but they will definitely have an adverse impact on agriculture."#
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=51962&TM=45489.74
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