www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/perspective/article_151374a8-da82-573f-b807-251f78130817.html

The North County Times - Californian

By BO MAZZETTI -- Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians of North County

Posted: Sunday, August 8, 2010 12:01 am

The federal government, with the help of the California Department of Fish and Game, is trying to wrest control of the San Luis Rey River watershed from local water districts, and all of us who depend on its groundwater. And right now, they are winning.

California is out of money, yet the state's Fish and Game Department is pouring taxpayers' dollars into a recovery plan for the Southern California steelhead trout ---- a native species of steelhead (not imported or stocked varieties), which, if it ever existed as a population, has not been seen regularly in the river since the 1940s.

It's time to call timeout before any more money is wasted on an effort that would result in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service taking control of pumping in the watershed.

The goal of the Fisheries Service's plan is to fill the dry riverbed with enough water for the steelhead to regenerate and renew migration from the river to the ocean and back upstream to reproduce. This will require restricting our water use and regulating pumping.

Public comment on the Fisheries Service's draft plan ended in May, and preparation of the final plan is under way. Homeowners, businesses and farmers who aren't aware of the plan, or did not comment previously, need to be prepared to weigh in.

Environmentalists, conservationists and steelhead trout enthusiasts need to be aware of how the scope and scale of the plan, not to mention violations of the Endangered Species Act, will derail worthwhile local efforts to improve water quality and to restore habitat. For all of us, it's a bad plan, for the wrong river, at the wrong time.

The fact that the plan pits our water needs against a native species of fish that many respected biologists debate ever existed as a distinct species may seem like a bad joke. But it is not.

Beginning with a reduction in the amount of water available to water districts, cities, farmers and ranchers, the plan casts its search for water even to all those dependent on fragile groundwater wells and aquifers. And under the Endangered Species Act, the plan potentially supersedes the planning and decision-making authority of local water districts, cities and the state.

The scope of the draft plan requires an impossible sacrifice by current water users. Anyone betting that the final plan will be any better and remove the San Luis Rey as the "best river in the region to sustain a viable population of native steelhead trout," is gambling on their future.

The plan gives no thought to the price that water consumers and taxpayers will have to pay to ensure a continuous flow of surface water along the river, or the groundwater diverted to sustain it.

Nor is there any consideration of the economic downside. Paying more for less water will affect already stretched water districts, and may be the fatal economic blow to farmers, ranchers and businesses already teetering on the edge of financial exhaustion. The plan will also limit future economic growth, because businesses require water ---- water, which will be rationed with the trout given top priority.

As fantastically impossible as the plan is, it would be a mistake to believe that it will die under the weight of reality. The plan has taken on legs under the Endangered Species Act, and the legs are headed for our pocketbooks and our water supply.

Anyone familiar with the river's degraded state would rightly be skeptical of any plan to find enough new water sources to rehabilitate it. Not that we wouldn't like to see it returned to its natural and pristine state. But, we also have the common sense to know, no matter how noble the intent, that where there is no water, there can be no fish.

Because of prolonged drought, current and projected population growth, Southern California's reduced supply of imported water from the Colorado River and Northern California, and the increasing demands for conservation and rate hikes, water is more than a critical issue ---- it may become a survival issue.

Do we really want the federal government, specifically the Fisheries Service, dictating who and what survives? This may be the beginning of a long, drawn-out water war, and we need to be armed for the fight.

Despite some significant opposition, the plan is gaining official momentum. If the public and our elected representatives do not stop it, we will find our water use dictated by the plan and our water controlled by the Fisheries Service. The longer we wait, the more difficult and costly it will be to stop or moderate the official plan.

Water districts, water suppliers and even the military reviewed the plan and found it lacking solid scientific evidence and unrealistic. Those voicing opposition included the Metropolitan Water District, the San Diego County Water Authority, the city of Escondido, Valley Center, and Yuima water districts, Vista Irrigation District, San Luis Rey Municipal Water District, San Luis Rey Indian Water Authority, Pauma Valley Community Services District, the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Pendleton and the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers.

All expressed concern about the scarcity of water and warned that taking water needed to sustain a population of steelhead trout would severely affect their ability to serve their customers' current needs, let alone future demands.

Everyone familiar with water politics in California, and the odds against importing dwindling water supplies from sources other than current users, took exception to the plan's nonspecific recommendations about where new sources of water could be found.

As the draft plan itself points out, formidable obstacles will have to be overcome. In addition to limiting water production activities in the river and surrounding ground water basins, physical barriers will have to be overcome. These include recreational activities, culverts, bridges, roads, road crossing barriers, levees, channels, dams and other surface water diversions.

Overcoming the obstacles sounds impossible. But never fear, the fish police have a plan—a plan that will make the Fisheries Service the "Big Brother" of North County's water use.

Can Lake Henshaw release enough water to satisfy the Fisheries Service's expectations for the steelhead's miraculous reincarnation downstream? And who will have to give up their water to make it happen?

The Fisheries Service's plan further notes that salt, nutrients and pesticides in the river must be reduced, water temperatures must be lowered, invasive species must be eradicated, river sediment loads must be flushed and riparian areas along the river must be restored.

The Army Corps of Engineers, in commenting on the plan, noted that climate warming and the "northward shift of species is occurring, and expected to increase; and cannot be fixed on a local level." Put bluntly, "Populations in the southern portion of these species are going to be lost ... Resources are scarce and should not be wasted trying to restore populations that are unlikely to respond."

The fatal flaw to the plan is that inadequate flow rates cannot be realistically overcome. Inadequate flows to sustain the steelhead (according to the plan) are caused by urban development and agriculture. In other words: our lives and livelihoods. The solutions to this threat—reducing water use and/or rationing imported water from another source such as the oversubscribed and shrinking Colorado River—are not viable. It's possible, albeit costly, to fix roads, bridges and culverts for fish passage. But countering projections that San Diego County is going to get drier, hotter and thirstier; moving livestock and farms to reduce water pollution; and revising land use policies to protect a fish are probably not.

No people mourned the death of the river when the waters were diverted to the cities more than the Indian bands. Our ancestors were the first to settle on the river and thrived there. No communities suffered more from the loss of river water. Yet over the objections of the tribes in the early 1900s, the federal government gave away the water the tribes needed for food and farming.

Now, too late, they want to recover the water and rehabilitate the river, not for the tribes, or all the other people who now depend on it, but for a mythical species of trout: a smart fish that probably followed its survival instincts, and migrated to more suitable habitats.

The draft plan may be reviewed at: http://swr.nmfs.noaa.gov/recovery/steelhead_scs.htm.

BO MAZZETTI is the chairman of the Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians of North County.