[env-trinity] Fwd: env-trinity Digest, Vol 106, Issue 15
Felice Pace
unofelice at gmail.com
Fri Nov 16 12:23:49 PST 2012
Curtis and Glen are either being disingenuous or they are uninformed.
Two ommitted facts:
The dangerously low condition of UKL is due to the fact that BOR
delivered too much water to irrigators - including water to make
potato harvest easier. They probably did this on purpose so as to
justify the request to NMFS for lower winter flows. in any case they
could have retained more water in the lake; allowing it to go so low
is a discretionary action, not an act of nature as Glen and Curtis
imply.
The "pay off" for these lower winter flows is supposed to be - as Glen
asserts - higher spring flows. That is what the KBRA promised and the
KBRA is being implemented. However, last year we were promised higher
spring flows when winter flows were lowered but then spring came and
BOR said: "Oh, we're sorry but that water is actually not available."
Will the same thing occur this year?
Curtis/Cal Trout and Glen/PCFFA could have used their seat at the KBRA
table to challenge this "irrigation first" management - invoking the
KBRA's '"dispute resolution process" but they chose not to do that.
instead they act as apologists for the BOR.
Furthermore, according to the USGS Drought Monitor
(http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/) the Upper Basin is "extremely dry"
but is not in drought...nor has it been. In the Brave New World of the
KBRA, the BOR manufactures drought and folks like Curtis and Glen
defend the agency.
BOR can and does manipulate lake levels, flow releases and deliveries
to maximize irrigation deliveries. Curtis and Glen - and their
organizations - are the "enablers" giving cover to BOR for a return to
Irrigation Firtst management.
When those who claim to be working for the fish provide cover for
excessive irrigation and for corrupt "wink and nod" ESA consultation,
the fish are in trouble.
In the Brave New World of the KBRA claims of more water for salmon
actually mean less water for salmon.
Felice Pace/KlamBlog
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Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:49:16 -0800
Subject: env-trinity Digest, Vol 106, Issue 15
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Redding.com: Tribe bashes federal officials; claims
they're... (Curtis Knight)
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:37:23 +0000
From: Curtis Knight <cknight at caltrout.org>
Subject: Re: [env-trinity] Redding.com: Tribe bashes federal
officials; claims they're...
To: Andrew Orahoske <andrew at wildcalifornia.org>, "FISH1IFR at aol.com"
<FISH1IFR at aol.com>, "tstokely at att.net" <tstokely at att.net>,
"env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us"
<env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>
Message-ID:
<915DB4FF7374BF4C92980C1704EA99AF09770B at CALTROUT03.CALTROUT.LOCAL>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Andrew and all,
Just to add to the conversation below, the graph below helps explain
agricultural water delivery maximums under the KBRA. The graph also
compares deliveries of past years. As is shown, under the KBRA water
users would get less in dry years adjusting up in wetter years.
Of course this is what would happen when the KBRA implemented. One of
the primary premises of water management of the KBRA, and you see it
starting to happen to some extent per below, is to take a
comprehensive basin wide and longer term approach to allocations
instead of a single species approach.
Curtis
Curtis Knight
Conservation Director
[emailSig Fish]California Trout
701 S. Mt. Shasta Blvd. Mt. Shasta, CA 96067
w: (530)926-3755
c: (530)859-1872
cknight at caltrout.org<mailto:cknight at caltrout.org>
www.caltrout.org<http://www.caltrout.org/>
[cid:image002.png at 01CDC3E6.5C92EE80]
From: env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
[mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of
Andrew Orahoske
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 8:25 AM
To: FISH1IFR at aol.com; tstokely at att.net; env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
Subject: Re: [env-trinity] Redding.com: Tribe bashes federal
officials; claims they're...
Glen, that is the rationale portrayed by the agencies, and that
storyline makes sense. To state it simply, less water released now
means that there will likely more available later.
Fair enough. However, what about irrigation deliveries? That is the
one variable that has been left out. The real question and concern,
is does less water released now mean more water available for
irrigation? That answer is most certainly yes, as the irrigation
allocation is not determined right now.
It is great to be budgeting water, but the agency needs to be straight
about all of the reasons why the flows are low right now. It would
make common sense to say that it is for irrigation deliveries as well
as for ESA compliance.
Andrew
Andrew J. Orahoske
Conservation Director
Environmental Protection Information Center
145 G Street, Suite A
Arcata, CA 95521
Office: (707) 822-7711
Mobile: (707) 407-9020
www.wildcalifornia.org
From: env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us<mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>
[mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of
FISH1IFR at aol.com<mailto:FISH1IFR at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 3:10 PM
To: tstokely at att.net<mailto:tstokely at att.net>;
env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us<mailto:env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>
Subject: Re: [env-trinity] Redding.com: Tribe bashes federal
officials; claims they're...
In a message dated 11/2/2012 7:54:52 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
tstokely at att.net<mailto:tstokely at att.net> writes:
http://www.redding.com/news/2012/nov/01/tribe-bashes-federal-officials-claims-theyre/
Tribe bashes federal officials; claims they're endangering salmon
Government says migrating fish in Klamath River are OK
By Damon Arthur
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Officials with the Hoopa Valley Tribe are claiming federal officials
are illegally harming threatened coho salmon by reducing water flows
in the Klamath River.
Beginning Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was supposed to
increase water flowing from Irongate Dam to 1,300 cubic feet per
second on the river near Yreka.
But bureau officials decided to keep Irongate releases at 1,000 cfs to
help fill Upper Klamath Lake, said Kevin Moore, a bureau spokesman.
Hoopa Valley tribe officials claim the bureau's actions are illegal
under the Endangered Species Act and the National Marine Fisheries
Service was not doing its job to protect the salmon.
"Now for the second year in a row, the BOR (bureau) and the National
Marine Fisheries Service are violating Endangered Species Act flows
for the coho salmon," said Hoopa Valley tribal Chairman Leonard Masten
said. "If this is any indication of the bureau's future water
planning, I do not see how the salmon can recover."
Coho salmon, listed as a threatened species under the Endangered
Species Act, are in the early stages of their run up the Klamath
River, officials said. Hoopa officials are worried the fish, a large
part of their culture, won't have adequate habitat for spawning.
"Salmon are the Hoopa people's most important resource," Masten said.
But a National Marine Fisheries report on the flow releases said coho
salmon can successfully migrate and spawn in the river when the water
is running at 1,000 cfs in November and December.
As of Thursday afternoon, the river was flowing at 1,200 cfs below
Irongate, said Jim Simondet, national marine fisheries' Klamath Basin
supervisor. He said during the next two months the flows may vary, but
won't go below 1,000 cfs.
Moore said Upper Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon is at an 18-year low
and holding back water in the lake would help fill it. If there is
more water in the lake come spring, that water can be used for higher
flows in the Klamath next spring when juvenile coho are migrating to
the Pacific Ocean.
In addition to ensuring flows to protect the coho salmon, the bureau
also has to keep the lake level up to meet legal requirements to
protect the endangered Lost River sucker and short-nosed sucker, Moore
said.
Regina Chichizola, a spokeswoman for the Hoopa Tribe, said Upper
Klamath Lake was low because the bureau provided "full agricultural
deliveries" to farmers in the Klamath Basin.
Moore disagreed, saying agricultural water users did not get 100
percent of their contracted amounts. Many farms in the region also
pumped more groundwater for irrigation and many fields were left
fallow to reduce water taken from the Klamath River system, he said.
Craig Tucker, Klamath coordinator for the Karuk Tribe, said he was not
happy with the way the bureau has managed water in the basin, but
agreed that keeping river flows at 1,000 cfs would help the juvenile
salmon migrating to the ocean next spring.
"The most important time to have good flows in the river is in the
spring," Tucker said. "Right now the Upper Klamath is really low, so
if you don't fill up Upper Klamath Lake, you don't get good flows in
the spring," Tucker said.
=
Dear Klamath Basin Colleagues.....
We have to respectfully disagree with our Hoopa Tribe colleagues on
their assertion that the federal agencies "are illegally harming
threatened coho salmon by reducing water flows in the Klamath River."
This story has also gotten picked up in other forums. Hence some
clarification seems necessary.
The Action Is Legal: The current Coho BiOp fully recognized that a
"one-size-fits-all" numerically rigid in-river flow regime would
occasionally have to be flexibly modified, depending upon year-by-year
circumstances (such as drought or exceedingly low Upper Klamath Lake
(UKL) storage levels -- both of which we might be facing next year),
and in fact for the next two months such a modification was decided
upon in order to offset dangerously low UKL levels and serious lack of
October and (so far) November rainfall. In other words, it is a
precautionary measure to make sure we do not have serious water
shortfalls later in the year which would harm the fish much more.
The Bureau thus followed the legal procedure set forth in the BiOp by
formally proposing such modifications to NMFS, and NMFS fisheries
scientists carefully considered -- and formally APPROVED -- these
modifications for the next two months. That NMFS October 31st
Concurrence Letter is actually posted on the BOR's Klamath Area Office
web site for all to see, at:
http://www.usbr.gov/mp/kbao/docs/NMFS_proposal_acceptance.pdf
This is the legal procedure required in the BiOp. The action was,
therefore, completely legal. The next question to ask is, will it be
beneficial?
The Action Will Benefit, Rather than Harm, Salmon: One of the few
measures that we can effectively take to better protect Klamath salmon
in-stream is to provide more cold water in the early Spring in order
to "flush" juvenile salmon out to sea faster -- and before the
emergence later in the Spring and early Summer of massive numbers of
highly infectious spores of the usually fatal fish disease Ceratomyxa
shasta. Nearly every year, C. shasta infections kill off the adult
equivalent of the 2002 adult fish kills, and is nearly 100% fatal to
juvenile salmon that are exposed above certain levels.
But C. shasta is a warm water spore that is inactive in cold water
flows typical of springtime -- so if we have enough water early enough
in the Spring within the storage-poor Klamath system (i.e., in Upper
Klamath Lake) to flush these juveniles out to sea past the C. shasta
"hot spots" in the Klamath mainstem before these spores emerge and
become most infectious, then far more of these juveniles will grow up
to return as adults. This includes both ESA-list coho and chinook
juveniles, both of which are vulnerable to C. shasta infections.
The NMFS biological analysis was that at least this year, under these
currently alarmingly low UKL storage levels and with no assurance of
much rainfall between now and December 31st, that holding back more
water in UKL in order to have enough in the Spring for those "flushing
flows" made excellent biological sense -- and would assure higher
mainstem salmon survivals not only for ESA-list coho but for chinook
as well.
In short, emphasizing early UKL storage is an insurance policy, and
represents a precautionary approach to preventing potentially much
worse drought-related problems later, if this water year does in fact
turn against us. And unfortunately we do not yet know whether it will
or not. But each year there is always a 50% chance of a below average
water year. Wisely, NMFS decided not to bet the entire future health
of these already depressed salmon runs on what amounts to a
crap-shoot. This is particularly important given the large spawner
run for this year. Next year's hopefully correspondingly large
juvenile population needs to survive in order to buy more time for
other Klamath River restoration efforts to work.
Again, read that NMFS Concurrence Letter for a thorough analysis of
the impacts on coho salmon of this mitigation measure, and the
rationale for approval of such a precautionary measure for the rest of
this year.
In our view, NOT taking such steps, particularly under the currently
developing rainfall-deficient and low storage conditions we are now
dealing with, would have been far more risky for the fish than doing
so. We thus agree with the NMFS analysis and which this precautionary
approach.
In reality, it does not matter who "caused" the UKL shortfall, though
poorer than expected upper basin rainfall levels last water-year and
so far this water-year certainly played a large role. What most
matters now is what we proactively do now to protect the salmon if
this water year does go into drought. Unfortunately, if we spend all
our water "savings account" in the fall, assuming a normal to wet year
will follow, and we then have to face a drought, we would already have
used up all our water flow options -- and the fish would suffer.
======================================
Glen H. Spain, Northwest Regional Director
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA)
PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370
Office: (541)689-2000 Fax: (541)689-2500
Web Home Page: www.pcffa.org<http://www.pcffa.org/>
Email: fish1ifr at aol.com<mailto:fish1ifr at aol.com>
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End of env-trinity Digest, Vol 106, Issue 15
********************************************
--
Felice Pace
Klamath, CA 95548
707-954-6588
"we must always seek the truth in our opponents' error and the error in our
own truth."
- Reinhold
Niebuhr
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