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Single-species approach throttles water
supply
Capital Press Editorial
February 12, 2009
The two giants of California water management, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources, dumped a hot potato on California's Water Resources Control Board last week.
The issue California faces isn't a one-state question. All of us involved in managing natural resources run the risk of coming face-to-face with forced single-species management. That's when the law requires you look after just one part of a complex natural system supporting many living things.
In a joint letter driven by the mounting probability of a historic water shortage in 2009, the water agencies asked the water board to invoke a little-used section of California law and temporarily waive long-standing water-quality standards for outflows from the massive Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
California has a state government that's broke. Its farmers and urban dwellers face a worsening drought that didn't break with last week's storm. Now the Golden State could become the poster child for why single-species wildlife management is a broken concept. That's what the federal Endangered Species Act demands. Board staff members began reviewing the six-page letter this week. The question of altering delta outflows wasn't anywhere on the water board's already busy spring agenda. But it could get there before you read this editorial, if staff buys the urgency plea made by Reclamation and DWR.
They want to alter flows, effective this month. If low precipitation continues, they promise to be back for more waivers.
In short, what's proposed is holding back some reservoir water in the Sacramento Basin, in hopes that it will help summer migration of the already troubled fall Sacramento River chinook salmon run.
But cutting down the amount of fresh water discharged into the delta will make survival of the small delta smelt even more iffy than it is now. Smelt are listed for ESA protection. (A federal judge is calling the shots on State Water Plan and Central Valley Project pumping of export waters bound for San Joaquin Valley and points south, until Reclamation and DWR revise their smelt protection plan.)
Altering flows will also change water used by a host of delta-traversing fish under ESA protection along with a resident whale. Odds are that in the six weeks left in California's winter-spring precipitation season, neither the Sierra snowpack nor lower-elevation sites will catch enough moisture to offset impacts of this dry winter plus reservoir drawdowns made in the two previous irrigation seasons.
National weather forecasters recently made it sound even chancier. They said La Niņa conditions in the equatorial Pacific are apt to continue through April. Typical La Niņas, including the current one, make for wetter times in the Pacific Northwest and droughty conditions in much of California.
Few state water control agencies have the broad responsibility and authority given the California Water Resources Control Board. It doesn't just issue water right certificates. If the board finds that flows it authorized under changed conditions jeopardize the environment, it can make temporary revisions under Section 1453 of the Water Code.
The Endangered Species Act track record for Central Valley salmon and steelhead isn't a pretty one. They all go to sea through the delta. ESA protection covers the Sacramento winter run of salmon, two Central Valley spring chinook runs, four steelhead runs, the green sturgeon and a resident killer whale population.
About the only delta salmon somewhat healthy are the fall chinook. But as commercial fishermen will tell you, they became so scarce that last year fishing was all but banned.
So is it time for getting beyond single-species management in the delta - and across the country? We think so. And instead of focusing on keeping one critter alive, it's time to bring consideration of all an ecosystem's critters into the mix, weighted against economic impacts and publicly debated water-use priorities.
That's going to take national action, beyond the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't decision placed before California's water board.
The two giants of California water management, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources, dumped a hot potato on California's Water Resources Control Board last week.
The issue California faces isn't a one-state question. All of us involved in managing natural resources run the risk of coming face-to-face with forced single-species management. That's when the law requires you look after just one part of a complex natural system supporting many living things.
In a joint letter driven by the mounting probability of a historic water shortage in 2009, the water agencies asked the water board to invoke a little-used section of California law and temporarily waive long-standing water-quality standards for outflows from the massive Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
California has a state government that's broke. Its farmers and urban dwellers face a worsening drought that didn't break with last week's storm. Now the Golden State could become the poster child for why single-species wildlife management is a broken concept. That's what the federal Endangered Species Act demands. Board staff members began reviewing the six-page letter this week. The question of altering delta outflows wasn't anywhere on the water board's already busy spring agenda. But it could get there before you read this editorial, if staff buys the urgency plea made by Reclamation and DWR.
They want to alter flows, effective this month. If low precipitation continues, they promise to be back for more waivers.
In short, what's proposed is holding back some reservoir water in the Sacramento Basin, in hopes that it will help summer migration of the already troubled fall Sacramento River chinook salmon run.
But cutting down the amount of fresh water discharged into the delta will make survival of the small delta smelt even more iffy than it is now. Smelt are listed for ESA protection. (A federal judge is calling the shots on State Water Plan and Central Valley Project pumping of export waters bound for San Joaquin Valley and points south, until Reclamation and DWR revise their smelt protection plan.)
Altering flows will also change water used by a host of delta-traversing fish under ESA protection along with a resident whale. Odds are that in the six weeks left in California's winter-spring precipitation season, neither the Sierra snowpack nor lower-elevation sites will catch enough moisture to offset impacts of this dry winter plus reservoir drawdowns made in the two previous irrigation seasons.
National weather forecasters recently made it sound even chancier. They said La Niņa conditions in the equatorial Pacific are apt to continue through April. Typical La Niņas, including the current one, make for wetter times in the Pacific Northwest and droughty conditions in much of California.
Few state water control agencies have the broad responsibility and authority given the California Water Resources Control Board. It doesn't just issue water right certificates. If the board finds that flows it authorized under changed conditions jeopardize the environment, it can make temporary revisions under Section 1453 of the Water Code.
The Endangered Species Act track record for Central Valley salmon and steelhead isn't a pretty one. They all go to sea through the delta. ESA protection covers the Sacramento winter run of salmon, two Central Valley spring chinook runs, four steelhead runs, the green sturgeon and a resident killer whale population.
About the only delta salmon somewhat healthy are the fall chinook. But as commercial fishermen will tell you, they became so scarce that last year fishing was all but banned.
So is it time for getting beyond single-species management in the delta - and across the country? We think so. And instead of focusing on keeping one critter alive, it's time to bring consideration of all an ecosystem's critters into the mix, weighted against economic impacts and publicly debated water-use priorities.
That's going to take national action, beyond the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't decision placed before California's water board.
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