[env-trinity] Times Standard Editorial: Bureaucrats to Klamath fish: Drop dead

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.times-standard.com/editorials/ci_26309167/editorial-bureaucrats-klamath-fish-drop-dead

Editorial: Bureaucrats to Klamath fish: Drop dead
Eureka Times-Standard
POSTED:   08/09/2014 08:24:24 PM PDT1 COMMENT
UPDATED:   08/09/2014 08:24:27 PM PDT

In recent days, we've heard from private citizens, from environmental advocates and from tribal leadership, from the North Coast's congressman.
We've heard from many voices on the North Coast, voices united in one plea to federal bureaucrats: Release water from Trinity Lake to cool the waters of the Klamath River. Spare the Klamath salmon and the communities which rely on them another catastrophic fish kill. Act now before it's too late.
So far this plea, grounded in solid science and all-too-recent history, has fallen on deaf ears. The Bureau of Reclamation told local tribes, government officials and water stakeholders at July's end that, no, it would not release Trinity water to the Klamath, diverting it instead to the Central Valley, where, the bureau says, it will be used to protect endangered winter-run and spring-run salmon listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in the Sacramento River and its tributary, Clear Creek.
As Congressman Jared Huffman said in his statement reacting to the decision: "By state law, Trinity River salmon — which begin their upstream migration in the Klamath River — must be protected before water is used to bail out the Central Valley Project. When you find yourself in a hole, you're supposed to stop digging, but Reclamation has dug itself a hole it cannot get out of, and tribes and fishermen may once again pay the price."
Let us be clear. The Central Valley, home to some of the most productive agricultural land on the planet, even now in the dry depths of our state's worst recorded drought, would have had more than enough water to save its fish and not condemn ours to disease and death — so long as state and federal authorities had bothered to learn one simple word.
If state and federal authorities had learned to tell the agribusiness behemoths of the Central Valley that one word, we on the North Coast would not be at risk of witnessing a repeat of the catastrophic fish kill of 2002. One word. Just one:
"No."
"No," you can't have so much water. Learn to use your own.
"No," you're going to have to save your own fish, because, giant agribusinesses, if you have a bum year, it will look horrible on your spreadsheet, sure — but you'll recover.
"No," the fish of the North Coast won't have so easy a time of it. The fish of the North Coast stand a good chance of dying off in large numbers. Only then, says the Bureau of Reclamation, will it reconsider its recent decision. But by then it may be too late, because ...
"No," we here have not forgotten 2002, when more than 70,000 adult chinook salmon died off as a result of a similar federal decision to send water elsewhere during a drought.
"No." Just no. It's such a simple word. It needs to be said more often.
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