Which is better to catch in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta on a fly rod? A tackle-busting striped bass that can put up a heart-pounding fight, or a two-inch-long Delta smelt that would be hard-pressed to drag any line off the reel? Pick the smelt, and you could go to jail, because it is protected under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts.
A Delta advocacy group’s short-lived proposal to relax angling regulations for striped bass in order to save the Delta smelt has renewed a heated debate about strategies for protecting endangered species.
This past summer, the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta submitted and then suddenly withdrew a petition to the California Fish and Game Commission to reduce the current striped bass size restriction from 18 inches to 12 inches and to increase the daily bag limit from two fish to six. The goal of the regulation-changing petition, according to the coalition, was to reduce the population of the presumably voracious, smelt-eating stripers. It raised the ire of anglers who like catching stripers and want the regulations left alone.
The commission’s staff had started reviewing the petition with the objective of considering hearings next summer. Following those hearings, the commission would adopt new regulations in December 2017, so they could take effect on January 1, 2018.
The coalition had sent out e-mails to its supporters urging them to endorse the change at the commission’s meeting held in August. But because the commission had not included the proposal on the meeting’s agenda, the group could only make their case as a public comment item at the meeting. Commissioners limited the coalition’s pitch to ten minutes. The time limit so frustrated coalition members that they withdrew their proposal.
The now-dead petition from the coalition, which is made up of agricultural interests, contractors, labor unions, and urban water districts, had said that changing the striper regulations would be an important step in restoring the populations of smelt and of chinook salmon, another species that is threatened or endangered, depending on the region of the state. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Congressman Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, introduced House Resolution 4582, which would remove language from the Central Valley Improvement Act requiring “reasonable efforts to ensure all anadromous fish naturally produce at twice the average levels in Central Valley rivers and streams.” The striped bass is an anadromous species, spending part of its life in the Pacific Ocean north and south of San Francisco Bay. HR-4582 adds: “Striped bass are non-native anadromous fish that prey on native salmon and steelhead and must be reduced in abundance to prevent the extinction of Central Valley salmon and steelhead.” The U.S. House of Representatives approved HR-4582 on July 15, and the measure is under review by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The changes reflected in the legislation and in the petition to the commission are the latest proposals in the high-profile Delta debate. Environmental groups, however, say reducing the striper population will not help the endangered smelt. Well-respected University of California Davis fisheries scientist Peter Moyle agrees. “People don’t seem to get that the striped bass have declined along with the smelt,” Moyle told the Los Angeles Times, adding that many other predators, such as herons, egrets, and sea lions are also eating the tiny smelt and salmon smolts. “They [the fish] need a functioning estuary.”
Does a functioning estuary include two 40-foot-wide, 30-mile-long tunnels that would divert water around the Delta? The State Water Quality Control Board started a hearing process to answer that question, rekindling the noisy debate about the tunnels — a debate that stretches from the farm fields in the Delta to the ornate halls of the state and national legislatures.
The debate was kicked off in early August, when an issue involving the tunnels was attacked at a hearing before the water board. Under consideration was whether to allow the construction of three intake points on the Sacramento River between Clarksburg and Courtland in order to divert water around the Delta.
The intakes are key to Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to build twin underground tunnels to ship water 30 miles away to the massive pumps at Tracy for transport via open canals to serve some 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland. The tunnels have been a high priority for the governor, beginning when he proposed a similar plan called the Peripheral Canal, which statewide voters rejected in 1982. The current version is still a high priority in the governor’s final term in office.
“The existing infrastructure does not work well — not for ecosystems, not for people,” said John Laird, secretary for the state Natural Resources Agency, who represented the governor at the hearing. Letty Belin, senior counsel with the state’s partner, the U.S. Department of Interior, said the project is a major priority for the Obama administration. But at the hearing, farmers near the river in Clarksburg and others vocally opposed the project as a water grab for Southern California interests.
At the hearing, protunnel and antitunnel factions testified about how funding commitments could make or break the controversial project to transport water around the beleaguered Delta, a popular destination for fly fishers seeking to hook striped and black bass.
An influential water-agency coalition spokesman told the water board that lack of guarantees of water deliveries could jeopardize funding for the project: Jason Peltier, executive director of the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority, a south-of-the-Delta agency, told the water board that without these guarantees, his agencies might not provide money for the tunnels and water project. The authority is made up of 29 south-of-the-Delta water districts, including those serving the cities of Tracy, Pacheco, the high-tech Santa Clara Valley, and includes the Westlands Water District, which provides water for 2.9 million acres of farmland. The authority has been considered a major funder for the $15.5 billion Delta water project, which includes the tunnels proposed by the governor.
To protect threatened and endangered fish, the governor has proposed his so-called “Water Fix,” a wide-ranging set of Delta strategies. The governor’s 22-page proposal to fix the Delta contains 10 actions for protecting and restoring the Delta over the next 30 years as the state’s population is projected to grow from 38 million to 50 million.
Some of these actions include reducing statewide water use by 25 percent, promoting local water-efficiency laws, increasing use of recycled water, supporting the Delta Stewardship Council’s efforts to achieve the “coequal goals” of providing water for commercial use and for fish and wildlife, restoring thirty thousand acres of critical Delta wildlife habitat, restoring key mountain meadows, eliminating unscreened water diversions and barriers to fish migration, opening spawning areas by removing defunct dams and improving fish passage around other dams, improving groundwater management and increasing water-storage facilities, including groundwater and above-ground storage, and building the Delta tunnels. In one of the first of many agency approval steps, the state water board will weigh the balance between protecting the environment and providing water for the state’s agricultural and urban areas.
Discussion of how to protect fish at the water board hearing prompted Peltier to express his concern over providing funding if water deliveries to his districts are reduced to meet environmental goals. The project “must work not only for the environment but for those who are paying the costs,” Peltier said. As proposed, the costs would be paid by water agencies that Peltier represents, and not by taxpayers.
(In a related story, funding by Westlands, one of Peltier’s districts, might have received a setback when a rating agency placed a negative watch on a $29.8 billion bond to pay for Westlands portion of the Delta project. Fitch Ratings issued the watch because Westlands is the sole guarantor of a 2013 bond issue by the water authority. Westlands provides water in the western San Joaquin Valley and in San Benito and Santa Clara Counties.)
Led by Stockton-based Restore the Delta, environmental groups have said that the governor’s plan allows the tunnels to be built, but does not do enough to restore the Delta’s ecosystems. The group has listed the following “real water solutions” to create its version of a functioning estuary, which it calls a “sustainable Delta.” Instead of funding expensive tunnels, invest the money in local water-saving initiatives, such as water conservation, wastewater reuse, groundwater recharge, capturing rain water, gray water use, and fixing leaking local pipes. Provide incentives to grow crops that use less water. Continue to promote the successful residential strategies for encouraging removal of lawns, drip irrigation installation, and replacement of leaky toilets. Encourage others to follow the Metropolitan Water District’s lead in creating the largest recycling programs in the world. Promote projects that store water locally, rather than relying on reservoirs far from where the water is used. Strengthen Delta levies to ensure water reliability. And purchase toxic farmland and use the properties for wind-energy generation.
Most importantly, the group suggests protecting fish by getting more water flowing through San Francisco Bay, rather than to Southern California. “Freshwater flows are critical to the survival of this state’s salmon fishery,” says the group, because “salmon migrate from the estuary’s watersheds, through the bay to the sea,” and the flows “also help to flush out pollutants.” State and federal water officials “have repeatedly stated the Delta outflows must significantly increase if the estuary’s historic fisheries are going to survive.”
While the two sides disagree on how to fund and fix the Delta, everyone agrees that many problems exist — an opinion bolstered by California Department of Fish and Wildlife monitoring data. In 2015, department netting samples in the Delta showed an index of 7 for Delta smelt, compared with 343 in 2011. The index for striped bass was 52 in 2015, compared with 272 in 2011. Also, numbers of American shad, the popular and sturdy sport fish sought by fly fishers, have decreased, with an index of 79 in 2015, compared with 894 in 2011. The index is a relative measurement of the Delta’s fish species health and does not indicate the number of actual fish.
The plummeting numbers and lack of plans to protect the fish have resulted in many lawsuits and legal decisions, the most recent of which sided with commercial fishermen and could force federal water managers to increase the amount of water to support fish in the Delta. As with many legal rulings affecting the Delta, highly technical implementation details will determine if fish actually receive more water.
Stephan Volker, an Oakland attorney who represented the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association in the four-year-old case, told the press that if there is less water pumped to Southern California, there is less reason to build the tunnels.
Other Conservation News
Bruce Babbitt Helps Out. Governor Jerry Brown has hired Bruce Babbitt, former secretary of the interior in the administration of Bill Clinton, to serve as a “special advisor” on the Delta. The former governor of Arizona will be paid $120,000 per year to respond to issues affecting the Delta, particularly regarding the governor’s proposed tunnels. Both sides in the Delta debate praised the credentials of Babbitt, who will work on the issue in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
First Female Head of the Fish and Game Commission. With the hiring of Valerie Termini, California’s Fish and Game Commission has its f irst female executive director in its 146-year history. Termini comes from the California Ocean Protection Council, where she served as the fisheries policy advisor and as interim executive director. California Department of Fish and Wildlife director Charlton Bonham said, “We’ve heard from a number of stakeholders that the executive director should be up to speed with the commission’s vast authorities and have specific knowledge of marine policy issues. Ms. Termini’s background brings precisely this expertise.”
New Commission Appointees. In other news of the agency that sets fish and wildlife policies, Governor Brown made two appointments to the California Fish and Game Commission. Russell Burns, 55, of Napa, has been business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3 since 2006. Peter Silva, 63, of Chula Vista, has been president and chief executive officer at Silva-Silva International since 2011. He served as assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2009 to 2011, senior policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California from 2005 to 2009, and vice chair of the State Water Resources Control Board from 2000 to 2005.
