[env-trinity] Warm Flows Imperil Feather River Salmon Run

[Daniel Bacher]

Warm Flows Imperil Feather River Salmon Run

by Dan Bacher

(Oroville) Normally king salmon fishing is excellent for bank anglers and 
boaters on the Feather River this time of year. But the action this year has 
been so poor because of warm water temperatures that many experienced 
fishing guides are canceling their fishing trips on the Feather and going 
elsewhere.

“The river water temperature below the Afterbay Outlet is 72 to 74 degrees,” 
said Hardy Dunn, fishing guide. “The fall run won’t enter the Feather if the 
warm water conditions don’t cool down.”

Anglers are concerned that the water temperatures are a result of the 
hydrology of the river being designed to further the needs of agribusiness 
at the expense of fish. The water is warmed up in the afterbay, since the 
rice farmers prefer the warmer water for irrigation purposes, according to 
Rene Villanueva of Steelie Dan’s Guide Service.

Current releases to the Feather River are 600 cfs. in the low flow area 
below Oroville Dam and 2900 cfs below the Thermalito Afterbay Outlet, a 
combined release of 3500  cfs. Anglers are hoping for more cold water to be 
released from the dam through the low flow area to cool water temperatures 
down.

“I’ve cancelled my trips on the Feather River because the fishing is so 
slow,” said Villanueva. “This is the worst ever season for salmon I’ve ever 
spent on the Feather since 1992, when I started guiding there. The rice 
growers have control of the water and this is hurting the fish.”

Kevin Brock, fishing guide, found a dead salmon, apparently with gill rot 
(columnaris), on the bank of the Feather River outside of Oroville last 
week. “The water temperature has been above 70 degrees all week below the 
outlet hole,” he said. “The fish was showing the start of gill rot.”

Neither Ryan Broddrick, DFG director of the Department of Fish and Game, and 
Sonke Mastrup, the Deputy Director, were available for comment at press 
time. However, they were investigating the matter.



Judge Rules That Bureau of Reclamation Violated ESA On San Joaquin River

by Dan Bacher

A federal judge ruled in late July that the Bureau of Reclamation and other 
agencies violated the Endangered Species Act by approving 25-year contracts 
for water diverted from the San Joaquin River at Friant Dam.

In his 78 page ruling, Judge Lawrence Karlton of the U.S. District Court in 
Sacramento determined that the federal government failed to adequately 
assess the impacts of the contracts on endangered salmon and other 
threatened fish and wildlife, accusing the federal government of “arbitrary 
and capricious conduct.”

The contracts continue to leave 60 miles of the river, once a key 
contributor to the state’s ocean salmon fisheries, dry, dusty and lifeless 
most of the year. Hopefully, the judge’s decision will compel the agencies 
to reverse years of ecosystem destruction and let the river flow once again.

The Bureau’s decision to sign long-term contacts perpetuated the 
environmental disaster that occurred after Friant Dam was finished in the 
late 1940’s. The diversion of the river resulted in the extermination of the 
historically large and vibrant San Joaquin River spring chinook run that 
ascended the Sierra Nevada before Friant Dam blocked upstream migration.

Five decades of dewatering of the San Joaquin, combined with federal and 
state diversions from other San Joaquin tributaries and the Sacramento 
system, have culminated in the Delta food chain crash that state and federal 
scientists have documented over the past three years.

Karlton cited numerous violations of the law by three federal agencies - the 
Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National 
Marine Fisheries Service.

“While numerous examples may be found, perhaps the clearest example of 
arbitrary conduct was when the Bureau, knowing that the Fish and Wildlife 
Service bases its analysis on the full contract amount, nevertheless, 
adopted a no jeopardy finding,” said Karlton. “Because the Bureau failed to 
carry out its duty to ensure against jeopardy and adverse modification, and 
because the Bureau knew of the deficiency, the court must conclude that its 
conduct was arbitrary and capricious.”

Karlton, in a previous ruling last fall, determined that the signing of the 
contracts violated the state Fish and Game codes, including the section 
(5939) requiring dam operators to release enough waters below dams to keep 
the fisheries in “good condition.”

The case, NRDC v. Rodgers, is a 17-year-old case challenging Bureau of 
Reclamation operations at Friant Dam. Earlier in the case, a unanimous panel 
of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco invalidated previous 
long-tern contracts for violating the ESA, forcing the Bureau to continue 
water deliveries to Friant farmers under short-term contacts while new 
environmental review were undertaken.

“This ruling documents the government’s utter failure to consider the 
wide-ranging impacts of Friant diversions on downstream fisheries and the 
San Francisco Bay Delta,” said Kate Poole, a senior attorney with the 
Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued the case for a coalition of 14 
fishing and conservation groups.

The plaintiffs include Trout Unlimited, California Striped Bass Association, 
National Audubon Society, Stanislaus Audubon Society, California 
Sportfishing Protection Alliance, United Anglers of California, California 
Trout, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Sierra Club, 
Bay Institute, San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, Friends of the River and 
the Nor-Cal Fishing Guides and Sportsmen’s Association.

“Karlton’s decision was the correct one,” said Zeke Grader, president of the 
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “The Bureau is nuts 
for going ahead with the contracts when the amount of water available is in 
question. The Bureau should have done only 1 year renewals, when the water 
available is uncertain, rather than locking in the contracts for 25 to 40 
year.”

“This ruling is enormously significant to the restoration of fish and 
wildlife resources on the San Joaquin River and throughout California,” said 
Byron Leydecker, chair of Friends of the Trinity River and consultant to 
California Trout. “The key issue here is what three agencies are consulting 
on under ESA:  the actual or the potential amount of water contracted.”

The judge ruled that it must analyze the potential (full contract), while it 
only analyzed the recent historical deliveries in the case of Friant.

“The implications of this are huge – imagine analyzing full contract 
deliveries for San Luis Unit, with its huge drainage and selenium problems,” 
explained Leydecker. “It’s impossible to believe that the Fish and Wildlife 
Service could reach a ‘no jeopardy’ conclusion under ESA with such a 
scenario.”

The potential is that many, if not all, of the contract renewal 
consultations the federal agencies have done so far may have “authorized” 
full contract deliveries while not analyzing the impacts of these 
questionable deliveries. This ruling also throws into doubt the joint state 
and federal plans to export more water from the Delta – which the signing of 
the Central Valley Project contracts is based on.

It will be interesting to see how the Bureau and other agencies respond to 
the decision. At press time, neither a spokesman from the Sacramento or 
Fresno office of the Bureau of Reclamation was available for comment on the 
court decision.

The massive Central Valley Project is the largest federal reclamation 
project in the West. Congress enacted the Central Valley Project Improvement 
Act (CVPIA) in 1992 to protect and restore Central Valley fish and wildlife, 
including mandating the doubling of anadromous fish populations, yet many of 
these species continue to decline.

“Fisheries agencies have used many of the same defective approaches when 
considering other long-term contracts,” said Hal Candee, NRDC senior 
attorney. “Their inadequate approach fails to address how CVP operations 
threaten the health of the entire bay delta ecosystem.”

Faced with this precedent, I believe that the federal government should 
immediately suspend all of the long term contacts already signed or in the 
process of being signed in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys until the 
Bureau determines how much water is necessary for endangered fish.

When a judge determines that the federal agencies designated to protect fish 
and wildlife have engaged in “arbitrary and capricious conduct,” contracts 
signed in violation of the law should be held invalid and not re-signed 
until the exact impact upon salmon, steelhead, Delta smelt and other 
endangered species by the Friant and other Central Valley projects is 
determined. Natural science must upheld over political science – it’s the 
law!