[env-trinity] SF Chronicle- Tribes win Trinity flow fight

[Tom Stokely]

      SAN FRANCISCO 
      Tribes win Trinity flow fight 
      Court gives green light to revival of salmon population 

      Harriet Chiang, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer 
      Wednesday, July 14, 2004

        

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      Two Northern California Indian tribes scored a victory in their effort to restore ancestral fisheries Tuesday when a federal appeals court gave the go-ahead for a plan to revive the Trinity River's once-thriving salmon population. 

      The Hoopa Valley and Yurok tribes have been waging a decades-long battle to increase the flow of water from a dam on the Trinity and boost the river's salmon population. On Tuesday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a deal the tribes reached with government agencies could be put in place, rejecting objections from a Central Valley water agency that benefits from diverted Trinity flows. 

      Since the Trinity River Dam was built in 1964, 90 percent of the Trinity's water has been diverted to the Sacramento River for farmers and other water users. The result was an 85 percent drop in the Trinity's population of chinook salmon, which local Indians had fished for generations. 

      In 2000 the Hoopa Valley Tribe, taking the lead in negotiations for the two tribes, devised a plan with the U.S. Interior Department and other federal and state agencies to try to restore the Trinity River fishery by reducing the amount of water diverted to 50 percent. 

      The plan was immediately challenged by the Westlands Water District, a 600,000-acre agricultural tract on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that gets some of the water diverted from the Trinity. In a federal lawsuit, the district and other irrigation and power companies charged that the plan did not comply with federal environmental laws. 

      But a unanimous federal appeals court rejected most of those challenges Tuesday and ordered the restoration plan to be implemented. 

      "Twenty years have passed since Congress passed the first major act calling for restoration of the Trinity River and rehabilitation of its fish populations,'' Judge Alfred Goodwin wrote in the court's opinion. "And almost another decade has elapsed since Congress set a minimal flow level for the river to force rehabilitative action.'' 

      Having disposed of the issues raised by the district and others, Goodwin concluded, "nothing remains to prevent the full implementation of the (2000 agreement), including its complete flow plan for the Trinity River.'' 

      The decision reverses most of a ruling in January by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno. He had found that the 2000 plan did not take into account the effect that increased flows in the Trinity would have on endangered species in the Sacramento River and the Delta. 

      "This opinion is a clear victory for the anadromous fishery of the Trinity River and the future of our people,'' said Lyle Marshall, chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. 

      Robert Franklin, senior hydrologist for the Hoopa Valley Fisheries Department, called the decision "a home run.'' 

      "Budgeteers and administrators will see how quickly we can move forward to restoration,'' he said. 

      Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Westlands Water District, said there were some "mixed decisions'' in the ruling that could be interpreted in favor of his client. "We're evaluating them carefully, and we're evaluating all our options,'' he said. 

      But he acknowledged that the decision "certainly is not good news'' for the district. 

      The Yurok Tribe, which historically fished the Klamath River, became involved in the negotiations because it gave up hundreds of acres of aboriginal land in the late 1800s in return for fishing rights on the Trinity. 

      "That promise has not been kept," said Scott Williams, a Berkeley lawyer who represented the tribe. 

      He called the restoration plan and Tuesday's court decision "a good step toward repairing that broken promise.'' 

      E-mail Harriet Chiang at hchiang at sfchronicle.com. 


     
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