[env-trinity] Northern California Tribes Push for Higher Profile in Water Battles

[Richard Pruitt]

Northern California Tribes Push for Higher Profile in Water Battles, 
Salmon Debates
NCM Report, News Feature, 
Julie Johnson, May 19, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two Northern California tribes have a great deal to 
say on how to protect endangered West Coast salmon and how best to 
balance demands on fresh water in the state. 

Yet the concerns of the Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes do not always
receive careful consideration as deals are negotiated in the court 
system and in government offices to decide how the region's 
scarce water resources will be apportioned. 

Media coverage of California's "water battles" often leaves tribal 
voices out as well. 

In a presidential election year, the stakes are high, because the
federal government typically exerts pressure on communities and 
negotiators to cinch up water deals before November, says Mike Orcutt, 
the Hoopa Valley Tribe's fisheries director.

In 2002, the death of over 30,000 salmon along the Klamath River, which
is fed by the Hoopa Valley's Trinity River, attracted a flurry of media
coverage that often included tribal voices. 

But in-depth articles are now being written on Pacific Coast water
issues without mentioning tribal interests at all. A March 17 story 
in The Wall Street Journal on water battles and water's cost in 
California's Central Valley completely overlooked the views of the 
Hoopa Valley Tribe, says tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall. 

In a letter to the editor published April 19, Marshall said the story
ignored a huge cost of the water diversion schemes meant to provide 
Central Valley farmers with irrigation: "The fish are dying, 
threatening our livelihood, and causing economic devastation in Pacific
Coast communities from Coos Bay, Ore., to San Francisco Bay."

Much of the river water that once coursed naturally from 
Northern California sierras to the sea was dammed and diverted in the 
1950s for crops in the once-arid Central Valley, now one of the 
nation's most lucrative agricultural areas. 

Marshall argues in this letter that U.S. government promises to 
rehabilitate the Trinity and provide enough water for its salmon are 
routinely ignored as federal authorities side with “agribusiness giants" 
and their desire for cheap water. 

The sticking point is a year 2000 agreement, signed by 
President Clinton's administration, that said Trinity River water 
levels were to be brought up to almost half of natural flow. 

The remaining flow was earmarked for hydropower and irrigation.

But the Westlands Water District -- which covers a large swath of the 
Central Valley -- and power suppliers filed a lawsuit, claiming that 
this change would cause harm to Central Valley residents and businesses. 

That lawsuit is still in the federal court system and the burden has 
been put on tribes to prove the drain on water is adversely affecting 
the river basin and its wildlife.

The Hoopa tribe, along with the neighboring Yuroks, have put decades of
hard scientific research into proving their observations that that 
low water levels caused by diversion for hydropower and irrigation 
are bad for the fish, says Joseph Orozco, manager of tribal 
station KIDE 91.3 FM Hoopa Valley Radio. 

The tribes also are trying to weigh in on a related, equally contentious
debate concerning the ecological viability of hatchery salmon versus 
wild salmon stocks. 

Those who say that the Trinity River and other West Coast watersheds 
are not quite as threatened as tribes and environmentalists contend 
base part of their arguments on the fact that hatchery salmon have been 
successfully introduced into rivers and are living alongside wild salmon 
stocks. 

This month, President Bush's administration proposed, then abandoned, 
a controversial plan to take many species of West Coast salmon off 
the Endangered Species list because of the presence of hatchery fish 
in the rivers. 

Orozco says the tribe is marshalling evidence to prove that hatchery 
fish are no substitute for wild stock. Plus, he argues wild salmon 
could be adversely affected by interbreeding with hatchery fish that 
are more susceptible to disease and smaller than wild salmon. 
Worse, the hatchery fish, unused to having to compete for food also 
"seem to feed" on wild fish eggs, he says. 

Hupas who throughout their history have relied on salmon for sustenance
can even taste the difference between the two, an indication of how 
important healthy salmon stocks are to the tribe's identity and well 
being, says Orozco. "Those who have been raised on salmon all their 
lives can practically tell what creek the fish they eat came from." 

The tribe has been reaching out to nearby communities, and even to 
groups in the Central Valley, in order to share research showing 
that even when rivers such as the Trinity appear "healthy" because 
of abundant rain or snowfall, the strain year after year that is slowly
sapping at its life. These efforts contributed to several parties 
dropping out of the Westlands lawsuit, including the Port of Oakland, 
the city of Palo Alto and Alameda County, according to Orozco.

John Fistolera, legislative director of the Northern California Power 
Agency, one of the lawsuit's main backers, says the 2000 agreement to 
restore half the Trinity River's flow did not fairly account for the 
adverse effects reduced water would have on agriculture and hydropower 
in an energy-strapped state. 

The Hoopa tribe, meanwhile, has focused on its own awareness building: 
one event, begun after the 2002 fish deaths, involves an annual 
relay-style "fish run" along rivers and streams during spawning season 
by students carrying batons carved to resemble salmon. 

George Kautsky, deputy director of the neighboring Yurok Tribe Fisheries
Department, says the neglect of tribal, and environmental, interests in 
the Trinity River water negotiations is a long story. 

He says the original 1955 contract dictating use of the Trinity River's
water was a compromise among agriculture, hydroelectric power, and 
local ecosystems. 

“It was a three-legged stool, but the fish and the tribal land were 
neglected,” Kautsky says.



Richard Pruitt
rickpruitt at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.
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