We stole that water fair and square
Ron Stork, senior policy advocate at Friends of the River, said much of the pressure for increased water deliveries was actually the result of a court ruling a decade ago in favor of the Stockton East Irrigation District. The judge ruled that the Bureau had to provide Central Valley project water to the district even in periods of drought.
“This is a case of the water users trying to get out of the consequences of delivering more water to their fields – and blaming it on a biological opinion protecting fish,” Stork quipped. “The water diverters, who stole the water ‘fair and square,’ are upset that the small amount of water given to fish downriver competes with the watering of their fields.”
The Oakdale Irrigation District and South San Joaquin Irrigation District have also filed a lawsuit in opposition to the biological opinion and have set up a website, “Save the Stan,” to attack it. The districts are blaming the striped bass for the decline of steelhead and salmon on the Stanislaus even though the two species have coexisted for over 120 years.
“The real problem is predation, not water flow,” claimed Jeff Shields, General Manager of South San Joaquin Irrigation District.
However, fish advocates emphasize that stripers, rather than being a “cause” of the Delta smelt and salmon population declines, are victims of the same massive water exports and water pollution that have resulted in the Central Valley salmon and Delta pelagic fish collapse.
Fish populations are crashing
The Department of Fish and Game has documented record low population levels of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, young striped bass, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad in its trawl surveys on the Delta in recent years. In fact, the DFG fall midwater trawl survey results released at the end of December document the lowest ever numbers of young striped bass and Sacramento splittail ever recorded.
The federal-state Pelagic Organism Decline (POD) team has pinpointed water exports, toxic chemicals, invasive species and more recently, ammonia pollution as the key factors behind the crash.
Meanwhile, corporate agribusiness, southern California water agencies and corporate environmental NGOs led by the Nature Conservancy are pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal/tunnel to facilitate the export of more water from the imperiled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to west side San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and southern California. Fishing groups, California Indian Tribes, conservationists, family farmers and Delta residents contend that the peripheral canal/tunnel will lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish species.
“The peripheral canal is a big, stupid idea that doesn’t make any sense from a tribal environmental perspective,” said Mark Franco, headman of the Winnemem Wintu (McCloud River) Tribe at a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento in July 2009. “Building a canal to save the Delta is like a doctor inserting an arterial bypass from your shoulder to your hand – it will cause your elbow to die just like taking water out of the Delta through a peripheral canal will cause the Delta to die.”
For more information about the battle to restore the Delta, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.
Dan Bacher is the Editor of the Fish Sniffer online and print magazine. He blogs at Sacramento for Democracy, Alternet and DailyKos.
(Picture of New Melones Reservoir 
Some rights reserved by Cowgirl Jules)
The OID study applied the biological opinions governing water demands in the Delta to the historical operations of New Melones. The study included models using statistical information from Reclamation to determine what the effects would have been had the biological opinions been in place. The FACTS resulted in the low water levels indicated in the study. It’s easy to say that New Melones will never reach these low levels and everyone is hopeful that will be true. But the threat posed by the biological opinions demonstrates the need to revise these errant guidelines.
Mike Wade
California Farm Water Coalition
On the topic of New Melones; despite assurances by the USBR representatives that the USBR will not permit New Melones to be drained, they have yet to issue a plan of operations by which it will prevent this from happening. Without an operations plan identifying which water will be used to keep New Melones operational, none of the interested parties have provided any reassurances that the potential impacts the Districts are calling attention to will not in fact happen. As opposed to conducting studies based on assumptions that may or may not happen, the Districts have simply conducted studies and developed performance models for New Melones in response to the concrete requirements the USBR has agreed to implement. The Districts are not “creating hysteria” as some have inferred. They are simply providing facts and knowledge of a technical nature that seems to be missing from a lot of these discussions.
As it relates to fishing; rather than saying the results of these studies are merely a way the Districts can “pit different groups of fisherman against each other to further fragment opposition to unrestricted water use for big farms,” why not instead do a bit of your own research and get the facts straight. We suggest you begin by reading the May 13, 2010 letter from Maria Rea of NMFS to Jim Kellogg of the California Fish and Game Commission (you can see this letter at SaveTheStan.com) in which Ms. Rea “encourages the Commission to immediately review and amend striped bass sport fishing regulations in an attempt to reduce their predatory impact and thereby increase survival of native fish.” To blame the Districts for instigating warfare among the fishermen when predation by non-native species such as striped bass has been acknowledged as a major factor warranting action is illogical.
Steve Knell, Oakdale Irrigation District
Jeff Shields, South San Joaquin Irrigation District