[env-trinity] Redding.com: Sacramento River hits historic lows

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.redding.com/news/2014/jan/11/sacramento-river-hits-historic-lows/ 

Sacramento River hits historic lows
Water levels at their lowest in more than 20 years
By Damon Arthur
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Kirk Portocarrero spends a lot of time on the Sacramento River. As a fishing guide, he makes his living off the river.
And he has never seen the river flowing like it is this winter.
“This is the lowest I’ve ever seen it in 30 years I’ve been working on the river,” Portocarrero said.
On Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey gauge in the river below Keswick Dam measured 3,260 cubic-feet per second flowing down the stream.
Don Bader, deputy area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at Shasta Dam, confirmed the river flows are at their lowest in more than 20 years. He said the flow in the river hit 2,800 cfs in the spring of 1992 and went even lower in March and April 1989 when flows dropped to 2,400 cfs.
The bureau has had to cut back releases from Keswick Dam to conserve water in Lake Shasta for spring and summer when water demand is greater for agricultural irrigators downstream in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley.
The bureau also needs to conserve its supply in the lake to continue to provide cold water for salmon in the river, he said.
Driving the low dam releases is the lack of rain and snow that typically fills Lake Shasta and feeds the river. Last year’s 12.81 inches of rain eclipsed a record low level that had held since 1932.
Since July 1, only 3.56 inches of rain has fallen, compared with the normal of about 15.53 inches that normally falls by this time of the year, according to the National Weather Service. As of this time last year nearly 20 inches of rain had fallen since July, the weather service said.
Saturday brought meager rainfall to the Redding area. The National Weather Service on Saturday afternoon reported .05 inches of rain had fallen on Redding, while a hundredth of an inch had fallen in Red Bluff. Mount Shasta saw the highest in the North State with .13 inches.
Sunshine is predicted to return and stay most of this week.
Winter rains bring runoff from creeks that feed into the river.
But rainfall and water from tributaries has gone missing this winter, bringing historically low levels to the river and the lakes.
Lake Shasta is 86 feet lower this year than at the same time last year, according to the bureau. Bader said the lake is still about 100 feet higher than its all-time low in 1977.
John Ruth, of Redding, who was out walking his dog along the river Thursday, said he can tell the river is lower because there is a white ring of rocks resembling a bathtub ring along the shore of some parts of the river.
The white rocks with moss on them are usually submerged, he said. Ruth said he remembers the river running lower in the mid-1970s.
“You can tell there’s more gravel showing. That’s where the water level is,” Ruth said, pointing to rocks on the shore near the Highway 44 bridge in Redding.
Dave Jacobs, also a fishing guide on the Sacramento River, said that as the river level dropped this past fall salmon nests that were once underwater were left high and dry, killing the eggs and baby fish in the pools.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials have said 20 percent to 40 percent of the salmon nests, called redds, have been left above the water level as the river level dropped beginning in November.
“There’s definitely some concern with that,” Jacobs said. The young fish killed in the river are naturally raised Chinook salmon, rather than salmon reared at Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Anderson, he said
“That poses a really big problem,” he said of the loss of naturally born fish.
The Golden Gate Salmon Association, which represents commercial anglers, marinas, food processors and restaurants, says the Sacramento River is an important component of California’s $1.4 billion salmon industry.
The releases out of Keswick Dam are typically low at this time of year. But with so little rainfall, there is even less water in the river because there is so little flowing into the river from tributaries.
Last year on Jan. 9, there were 4,438 cfs flowing from Keswick, according to the state Department of Water Resources’ Data Exchange Center.
Officials at Coleman had originally planned to release 750,000 young salmon from the hatchery in December, but postponed letting them go because of low river flows.
Scott Hamelberg, project leader at Coleman, said the little fishes’ bodies are undergoing a change that enables them to live in salt water and they can no longer wait for rain.
After they hatch, young salmon swim out to the Pacific Ocean and live there for two to three years. They then return to spawn and die in the same area where they hatched.
If the late-fall-run salmon tentatively set to be released Monday don’t head out to sea pretty soon, they become disoriented and won’t ever leave and live out their typical life cycle, Hamelberg said.
The hatchery held off on the release, hoping to get a good rainfall, which muddies up the water and increases the flow in the river, which provide cover for the little fish (about 5 inches long) from predators, he said.
“When we have really low flows like we have right now you have lots of predators that can eat the fish,” including other fish, birds and mammals, Jacobs said.
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