www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/08/03/18655252.php

by Dan Bacher

Tuesday Aug 3rd, 2010 5:33 PM

(Sacramento) The State Water Resources Control Board today, by a unanimous vote, approved a science-based report identifying the amount of water needed to keep Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fish, wildlife and ecosystems alive.

The board adopted the final document, with a few minor changes and improvements, including many suggested by fishing and environmental groups, after testimony by dozens of fishermen, environmentalists, farmers and Delta residents today.

"The board just put the stake through the heart of the co-equal goals of restoration and water supply, as defined by increased exports out of the Delta," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "The document says that to restore the Delta, you need to increase Delta flows."

"It's not what some of us expected when we started this process in 1986, but we welcome the adoption of this document after 24 years," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "This report does two major things: it recognizes that flows are essential for the restoration of the Delta and it recognizes that the estuary needs more flows than it is getting now."

"Flows are not the only thing required to bring back the estuary, but they they are the building block to restoring the estuary and salmon and other fish populations," emphasized Grader.

The report, released in late July by SWRCB staff, calls for more water to be left in the Delta instead of diverting it through the giant state and federal pumps to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and southern California cities, according to Grader. The report's findings mirror calls for more water made by fish biologists, other scientists, and state and federal wildlife officials who have studied the problem.

Grader said the staff report also supports the findings of two federal fishery plans (biological opinions) that call for more water to prevent the extinction of federally protected fish species, including Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter and spring run chinook salmon, Delta smelt and green sturgeon. The opinions also bolster fall-run chinook salmon that support an important coastal fishery.

The report comes as fishermen face a third year of closed or heavily-restricted salmon seasons due to the collapse of the once-mighty Sacramento River fall-run chinook salmon, a commercially valuable species heavily dependent on a healthy Delta flows to allow the survival of migrating baby salmon.

"It's good to see state water officials finally recognizing that it's in the state's interest to allow water to flow west through the estuary because of all the jobs related to the salmon fishing industry, both commercial and recreational, that depend on rebuilding our salmon runs," added Grader.

Grader emphasized that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta/San Francisco Bay estuary is the most important estuary on the West Coast of the Americas and is considered California's single most important ecosystem. "Diversions of more than 50 percent of the estuary's freshwater inflow during much of the past decade have decimated the ecosystem and left many of its fisheries and the industries they support teetering on extinction," he stated.

Grader said the report could be used to inform various state processes with the potential to "greatly improve" the way the state manages water in the Delta. It also has great potential to help rebuild the Sacramento's once massive chinook salmon run, which supports thousands of fishing jobs and fishing families throughout the state.

"Sport fishermen and business are really glad that the state adopted a science-based approach and approved this report," said Dick Pool, administrator for Water4Fish, a fishing-based organization with over 78,000 supporters. "We've seen what happens when we don't follow science in the Delta: collapsing fish populations and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity from fishing. Our state economy has lost 23,000 salmon-related jobs already. It's time to adopt the science-based approach and bring our fishing jobs back."

The report's recommendations are the first to ever clearly identify the amount of water needed to keep the West Coast's most important estuary healthy. It quickly drew attack from the agricultural and development interests that have engineered recent increases in water withdrawals that have significantly contributed to the Delta's collapse, according to Pool.

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