[env-trinity] Los Angeles Times 7/1/06 Friant Settlement

[Byron]

Settlement Reached on Friant Dam Flows

Terms of the accord in the 18-year-old case involving the San Joaquin River
remain under wraps until approved by all the disparate parties.

Los Angeles Times - 7/1/06

Associated Press

 

SAN FRANCISCO - A settlement was reached Friday in an 18-year-old court
battle over how much water should be allowed to flow from a dam on the San
Joaquin River to restore the salmon that once lived there, attorneys said. 
Terms of the settlement won't be released, and the agreement won't take
effect, until all parties - environmental and fishing organizations, farming
interests and irrigation districts, federal agencies and the court - approve
them, attorneys said.

When Friant Dam started operating in 1949, it transformed San Joaquin
Valley's main artery from a river thick with salmon into an irrigation
powerhouse that nourishes more than a million acres of farmland in some of
the country's most productive agricultural fields. 

But the 314-foot barrier also dried up long stretches of the river
downstream, making it more a home for tumbleweeds and lizards than for
spawning salmon. 

In 2004, Sacramento U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton agreed with the
Natural Resources Defense Council, which contended that the Bureau of
Reclamation, the federal agency that built and maintains Friant Dam, had
broken the law by not letting enough water flow down the river to sustain
the salmon population. 

Since then, environmentalists, federal water authorities and the farm
interests that depend on that water had been trying to reach a settlement
and avoid a court-ordered solution. 

"We're very encouraged that all these parties were able to work diligently
over the last nine months to come to a place that seems to be a reasonable
compromise," said Ron Jacobsma, general manager with the Friant Water Users
Authority, a party in the case.

The irrigation district distributes San Joaquin River water to thousands of
farms in the Central Valley. 

Kate Poole, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said
the approval process for the settlement would take up to six weeks. 

"We are hopeful that these approvals will be obtained rapidly," she said in
a statement.

That would allow the parties to begin "working together to restore the San
Joaquin River in a manner that will benefit not just the environment, but
millions of people around the state, including Northern California salmon
fishermen, Delta farmers and Southern Californians who will drink cleaner
Delta water." 

 

 

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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