[env-trinity] Trinity River advocates denounce restoration; network claims project poses harm to salmon

[Tom Stokely]

Trinity River advocates denounce restoration; network claims project poses harm to salmon
http://www.redding.com/news/2011/dec/01/trinity-river-advocates-denounce-restoration/ 

By Damon Arthur

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Trinity River advocacy group is demanding that work to restore salmon and trout numbers on the river be stopped until a review of the work is completed.

Rather than help restore Chinook salmon, the Trinity River Restoration Program has made the river worse for salmon, according to the letter the California Water Impact Network sent to program officials this week.

The network has asked that work stop on the river until there has been a review of projects completed to date. Project officials are reviewing the work, but restoration work also continues, said Robin Schrock, executive director of the program.

"We vigorously object to both the design and construction of additional (river) mainstem projects in 2012 prior to completion of the Phase I review," states the letter sent to Schrock and Brian Person, chairman of the Trinity Management Council.

Much of the work on the river has consisted of removing thick brush and adding gravel to improve spawning areas.

But the network's letter, a follow-up to a similar one sent in March by the Trinity River Guide Association, states the gravel work has filled in pools. Side channels built in the river to protect juvenile salmon also have failed, the letter states.

It goes on to say many of the river restoration projects have been an "abject failure."

Schrock defended the work and said the project has followed the guidelines of the December 2000 U.S. Department of the Interior Record of Decision authorizing the work.

In 2010, the goal was to have 6,000 fish return to the Trinity River. That year, 5,690 fish returned from the ocean, Schrock said. As of Nov. 12, 4,037 fall and spring run Chinook salmon have been counted in traps at the Trinity River Fish Hatchery, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.

Even with those numbers, it is too early to tell whether the work on the river has been successful, she said.

Work on the river did not begin until 2005. And there have been too few spawning cycles to properly evaluate the success of the projects, Schrock said. Salmon typically live three years in the ocean before returning to spawn and die in the river.

Salmon and steelhead trout once migrated up the river by the hundreds of thousands, but after construction of Trinity and Lewiston dams, the numbers of fish migrating upstream fell significantly in the 1960s.

Construction of those dams included diverting water from the Trinity River to the Sacramento River via Whiskeytown Lake.

In 2000, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, issued a decision authorizing work to restore the fishery and reducing the level of water being diverted to the Sacramento River.

Schrock said 24 of 47 restoration projects have been completed. The project has spent roughly $36 million on the river, she said. For 2012 there are two projects planned.

The river guides say in their March letter that some river work has damaged the river by filling in pools where adult fish live and has created excessive sediment in the stream.

There has been no response to either the March guides' letter or Monday's letter, said Mount Shasta resident Tom Stokely, a former Trinity County planner who worked extensively on the Trinity River restoration before retiring.

"They basically have just blown this off," Stokely said.
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