[env-trinity] Bureau Finally Agrees To Flow Regime On American River
Daniel Bacher
danielbacher at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 16 09:38:19 PDT 2005
Bureau Finally Agrees To Flow Regime On American River
by Dan Bacher
After years of negotiations, Department of Interior officials on September 8
agreed to support a new flow regime for the lower American River developed
by the Sacramento Valley Water Forum. The agreement between the Water Forum,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will raise
minimum flows on the river for the benefit of salmon, steelhead and other
fish.
This is a huge victory for fishery conservation and environmental groups
that have pressured the Bureau for decades to develop long-overdue
temperature and flow standards on the popular urban river stretching from
Nimbus Dam to Discovery Park. The Save the American River Association,
California Sportfishing Projection Alliance, Friends of the River, United
Anglers and Granite Bay Flycasters were among the key groups participating
in the successful campaign to finally get the federal government adopt a new
flow regime.
The adoption of these flow standards represents a significant milestone in
restoring the American River, said Ron Stork, conservation director of
Friends of the River. We chose to kept our noses to the grindstone and kept
talking with the Bureau of Reclamation even after internal deadlines
requiring an agreement had already passed.
We have been working on this agreement for some time, said Kirk Rodgers,
Reclamations Mid-Pacific regional director. I am gratified that we were
able to reach agreement for a new flow regime on the Lower American River
that will benefit fish, while allowing us to provide water so essential for
people and industry.
These flows focus on fall salmon spawning flows and summer base flows viable
for both fish and recreation. Minimum flows will range from 800 to 2000 cfs.
during the winter and 800 to 1750 cfs during the summer, based on the water
year types (critical, dry, below normal, above normal, and wet).
This is a big improvement over the meager minimum flows 250 to 500 cfs
adopted by the State Water Resources Control Boat in Decision 895 in 1958.
As somebody who has fished the American River hundreds of times, I saw the
flows go down to 250 cfs in the drought of 1975-78 and down to 500 cfs in
the drought of 1988-92.
The Water Forum is very happy and encouraged that weve arrived at a flow
regime for the Lower American River, said Leo Winterwitz, the Water Forums
Executive Director, and we look forward with optimism to completing the
entire flow standard and taking it to the State Board.
This is a huge step in restoring the American River, but there is still a
lot of work ahead of river advocates. The agreement on the new flow regime
is part of a new overall Flow Management Standard that will also include (1)
the development of a river management group, (2) a monitoring program and
(3) agreements with upstream diverters to make addition additional water
available to the system in dry and critically dry years.
Negotiations with purveyors on dry year agreements are in progress,
according to a press release by the Bureau of Reclamation. Other elements of
the flow standard will be developed in cooperation with the California
Department of Fish and Game and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS,
also called NOAA Fisheries). The parties plan to complete the overall flow
standard and present it to the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB)
for approval in 2006.
The announcement by Interior came on the heels of several letters that Felix
Smith, Board Member of the Save the American River Association and member of
the Water Forum, sent to federal officials, strongly urging them to adopt
the flow regime.
In an August 23 letter to Rod McGuiness, Acting Regional Administrator of
the National Marine Fisheries Service, Smith wrote:
The failure to prepare and implement an adequate Water Temperature Control
Plan with a flow component associated with the operations of Folsom/Nimbus
Dams and Reservoir is unacceptable. Without such careful planning, the
operations of these CVP components could adversely impact the steelhead and
chinook salmon resources of the Lower American River Parkway Preserve,
with little recourse by the public to get aggressive action to protect such
values except for a lawsuit.
The reason why minimum flows are needed was demonstrated last year when The
American River fall chinook run narrowly escaped ecological catastrophe when
cool rains arrived early in October and cooled the water temperature down.
In the previous three years, pre-spawning mortality among king salmon was
from 30 percent to 67 percent. In the worst year, 2001, 87,626 fish (67
percent) perished before spawning. DFG biologists attributed the high
mortality rates to the high water temperature conditions that prevailed in
the lower American River during low flows in the late summer and early fall,
the result of heavy water exports to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley
and Southern California during the summer.
Progress is being made towards a revised lower American River flow
standard, said Smith, after hearing the Bureau had agreed to accept the
Water Forum flow and temperature standard.
However, Smith chided the agencies for not meeting any of the deadlines set
by the parties in a Memorandum of Understanding that they signed on October
4, 2004. Under the original schedule, Reclamation was slated to file a
petition with the Water Board incorporating the new Flow Management
Standard by September 15.
The decision by the Bureau to finally adopt a flow regime on the American
River is a big victory for fish advocates and would not have happened
except for the intense political pressure that fishery conservation groups
put on the Bureau of Reclamation. However, we need to keep the pressure on
federal officials to make sure that the uncompleted sections of the flow
standards river management, upstream diversions and monitoring agreements
- are reached.
Also, the battle for fish restoration on the American needs to be seen in
the larger context of the need to stop the state and federal governments
from increasing water exports from the Delta and Central Valley at a time
when the Delta food chain is collapsing. We cant restore the fish of the
lower American without solving the problems of the entire Bay-Delta
ecosystem that it is an integral part of!
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