[env-trinity] Delta Pumping Stations

[Byron]

Delta fish crash remains a mystery

Contra Costa Times - 12/28/05

By Mike Taugher, staff writer

 

The giant bucket rises from two stories beneath the concrete floor.

 

Like a huge colander, water spills from its sides to reveal hundreds of
silvery, flopping shapes in an inky bath. Most are on their sides or upside
down. Many are bleeding.

 

These are the fish -- more than 3,000 of them -- collected during the past
24 hours near the largest water pumps in the state.

 

Like the 15 million other fish "salvaged" here each year as part of the
state system to deliver trillions of gallons of water to Southern
California, these small striped bass, shad and other species were diverted
through a system of screens and pipes to a pair of warehouse-like buildings
on a windy plain below Altamont Pass.

 

In one of the buildings at the John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective
Facility, operators Doug Nolan and Mike Ford identify the fish by species,
count them and drop them into a holding tank before moving them to a
separate oxygenated tank on the back of a truck and hauling them back to the
Delta.

 

"Most people think the water just flows down there. They don't realize all
the work we have to do," said Nolan.

 

For decades, anglers and environmentalists worried about Delta fisheries
have suspected that an enormous toll was being exacted by the state-owned
pumps here and smaller federal pumps down the road.

 

Millions of fish probably don't survive the ordeal of being salvaged, they
contend, and innumerable eggs, fish larvae and food sources too small to be
captured by the screens are destroyed at the pumps.

 

So when scientists early this year confirmed that Delta fish populations had
dramatically declined, they looked again at the pumps with suspicion.

 

"I think the problem is they pump so much water out of the Delta, they pump
all the food out with it," said Joe Horn, a bass fisherman who has plied
Delta waters for 50 years.

 

But scientists cautioned that the pumps were only one of a number of
possibilities to explain the recent ecological crash.

 

Invasive species of clams, weeds and fish are markedly changing the Delta in
unpredictable ways, and little is known about pesticides and other toxic
compounds in the Delta.

 

Still, the pumps remain as suspects, because they could be either taking a
greater toll on fish populations -- especially in the winter months -- or
contributing to changes in the aquatic habitat.

 

And pumping has been relatively high in recent years. In 2000, the year the
CalFed program was signed, the annual state and federal water deliveries
from the south Delta topped 6 million acre-feet for the first time.
Deliveries have topped that threshold three times since then.

 

The precipitous drop among the Delta's open-water fish populations began
about 2002.

 

Last year, the Delta smelt and young-of-the-year striped bass populations
hit record lows and do not appear to be improving this year. (Biologists say
adult striped bass are faring better but cannot explain why.)

 

The primary index used to measure Delta smelt populations, for example, fell
to 74 last year; during the 1990s that number ranged from a low of 102 to a
high of 1,078.

 

For young-of-the-year striped bass, the index last year was 53 even though
it has in most years been above 1,000. In 1967, the first year for which the
index was calculated, the figure was more than 20,000.

 

Since the cause of the problem is unknown, it is unclear whether CalFed
could have prevented it. However, the fish crash "raised questions about the
effectiveness and prudence of some CalFed activities," according to a recent
performance review by the state Department of Finance.

 

Other fish that had healthy populations in recent years have been hit just
as hard by whatever is hammering the Delta.

 

Just ask Gene Buchholz, owner of the Hook, Line and Sinker bait-and-tackle
shops in Oakley and Bethel Island.

 

"The threadfin shad have literally disappeared," he said.

 

This is the time of year he normally stocks up on the bait. In a typical
fall and winter, Buccholz freezes 300 to 400 pounds a year to sell the
following summer.

 

He has a standing order from one dealer for 30 to 40 pounds of threadfin
shad every Friday.

 

"I haven't gotten any shad from him in three weeks," Buchholz said. "There
is a definite problem. ... I can't get shad. They're gone."

 

The crisis in the Delta stands in contrast to the increasing number of
salmon that are passing through the Delta. 

 

Salmon populations in spawn areas like the Sacramento River, Butte Creek,
Clear Creek and other Northern California streams have increased
substantially in recent years.

 

But success in salmon populations, which are less dependent on the Delta
than the open-water species now in decline, has been overshadowed by the
widespread fish crash.

 

Although confirmation of the three-year decline in the Delta occurred in
January, it was not until a May 1 story in the Times that it received
widespread attention. Since then, lawmakers have held hearings and $1.7
million was dedicated to intensify scientific study of the problem.

 

The study's initial focus was on the pumps, invasive species and toxics,
including pesticides in runoff. Last month, scientists set out two leading
theories that will be further investigated next year.

 

Some critics have complained that CalFed's science program should have done
more to address the fish crash earlier.

 

"It was advertised as something that would catch these problems at their
early stages and move that information to decision-makers so they could
solve problems before they became crises," said Steve Hall, executive
director of the Association of California Water Agencies.

 

But the science program developed into a program that emphasized broad
research efforts at the expense of more targeted scientific endeavors to
help guide policymakers.

 

Greg Gartrell, an assistant general manager at the Contra Costa Water
District, said that was one of the big problems with CalFed: money was spent
on studies without a lot of thought given to how those studies would help
make things better.

 

"You got nice things, but not the right things," he said.

 

 

Byron Leydecker

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Advisor, California Trout, Inc

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org

http://www.fotr.org

http:www.caltrout.org 

 

 

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